Kriti Mehrotra
Unlike serious and undeniably mouth-watering cooking shows like ‘The Great British Bake Off’ and ‘Masterchef,’ Netflix’s ‘Nailed It!’ takes a similar concept and makes it hilarious as well as horrific. In each episode, amateur home bakers with poor track records strive to recreate intricate desserts in the hopes of redeeming themselves to win the $10,000 grand prize. Yet, the final results are almost always disastrous — sometimes even worse than expected. With that, of course, fans can not help but wonder whether what they see on the show is real or not. So, we’ve got the details for you.
Is Nailed It! Real or Scripted?
With the incredible comedian and actor Nicole Byer as the host, alongside renowned French pastry chef Jacques Torres serving as the perpetual in-house professional and a different guest judge in every episode, ‘Nailed It!’ has always been touted as a reality competition series. In simpler words, it’s as authentic as possible, which the creators, executive producers, and cast have confirmed over the years. They’ve even gone as far as to concede that its whole notion is inspired by the famous “Pinterest fail” memes and that production was a “long shot.” However, it came to life and then thrived.
More importantly, though, according to comic Nicole Byer and chocolatier Jacques Torres, everything we see on our screens, including and especially the mistakes, is not at all scripted or directed. While Nicole told LA Times, “People are incredible. They’re truly so wild. They truly top each other with the mess they make,” Jaques stated, “I’m still surprised how bad some of those people can do. Oh my God, and then we have to eat bad, bad, bad cake over and over again.” There have been times where this duo has had to spit out the contestants’ creations, but they always try everything.
In an interview with Vulture, they reemphasized their comments and implied they don’t fake their reactions either. For one, we can probably assume that they don’t have to due to the circumstances outlined above. Secondly, when it’s judgment time, it’s rare to see random jump cuts in the 30-minute-long episodes despite the fact that filming takes 10-14 hours, so they seemingly don’t have much time to think about what to do or say. However, we believe that the critics might often sugarcoat their opinions to not hurt the feelings of the bakers. They stay frank, but they may not be brutally honest.
As Jacques said, “We eat raw dough. We eat raw cookie. We eat massive buttercream in cakes that are still warm. We eat salt. We have to taste things that you will not put in your mouth. But you know what? That’s television. You have to do it.” We should mention that post-production editing plays a huge role as well. After all, Nicole admitted that in the period they are shooting, she gives them “three different shows.”
Nicole added, “You could do wild, mild, or tame. I think they went in between tame and mild. There’s a little innuendo in the show, but I don’t think it’s any more than, like, a Disney movie.” Also, she and Jacques are close friends in real life. In short, the only things scripted are the recipes provided to the contestants, the basic concept of each installment, and presumably the episode openings Nicole performs.
Read More: Who is Nailed It! Host Nicole Byer?
