When your critically acclaimed reality show has already run for 37 seasons, like Phil Keogan’s The Amazing Race, it’s important to keep your audience engaged without deviating from the core format that made the show so successful in the first place.

“We try to mix things up a little to keep everyone on their toes,” says Keogan. “After 37 seasons, it’s a constant challenge for us to be consistently good without deviating from the format that works at its core.”

Keogan came by diversity Virtual FYC TV Fest: The 2024 nominees together with Tom Campbell, Executive Producer of “RuPaul’s Drag Race”, and Sam Rees-Jones, Executive Producer of “The Traitors”. The trio spoke with diversity Michael Schneider talks about her work and the biggest challenges in reality TV.

Rees-Jones, whose third season of “The Traitors” is just beginning, said it was “brilliant” that players had been able to develop more complex strategies once the rules of the game had become established through the show’s broadcast and audience familiarity.

“The Traitors,” in which a group of guests attempt to solve a murder mystery in an old castle in Scotland, is currently in the middle of production on its third season. Rees-Jones commented on the change he observed in his contestants’ strategies between seasons 2 and 3.

“It’s really brilliant that players know more about the game because their strategies become more complicated and complex, which is really exciting to watch,” says Rees-Jones. “So you have better strategies for loyalists and better strategies for traitors. So it’s a joy to watch them come into the game with a little more knowledge and try to raise the bar a little bit.”

He continued: “The cast is the most important thing in the building block. What we love about our formula is that when the castle gates open, the game changes. The journey in Season 3 was completely different from Season 2 and Season 1. It was exciting to watch different people take on the challenge in different ways.”

Reflecting on the challenge of creating RuPaul’s Drag Race, Campbell recounted how, despite positive feedback 17 years ago, the show was initially rejected by many networks because of concerns about advertising revenue.

Ultimately, Logo, a then-fledgling network, picked up the show, and although it initially seemed like a step back from RuPaul’s former fame, it proved to be the ideal platform for queer voices to share their stories.

He acknowledged that the road to success was long, noting that it took eight seasons for the show to even be nominated for an Emmy: “That was never our goal, but it’s an incredibly beautiful thing for the people who work so hard for the queens, who are not just contestants, but performers. So being on the show gives them this worldwide platform.”

“It’s been a pleasure every year to reinvent the show and people have discovered it, and I think people are still discovering it, and that’s what’s exciting about it,” Campbell said.

Watch the full interview above to hear what it was like for the cast of RuPaul’s Drag Race to meet Vice President and now presidential candidate Kamala Harris.