'The Mole' Executive Producer Says True Crime Inspired the Netflix Reboot

Chris Culvenor gives a look behind-the-scenes of the highly-anticipated return of the reality series, as well as how people can play along at home.

For over a decade, corners of reality TV fandom have been unified in one saying: Bring back The Mole. The series, adapted from a Belgian show, tasks a group of strangers with completing a series of tasks to add to a communal pot. But one of them is the titular "Mole," a saboteur enlisted to stop as much money from being earned as possible. After airing five seasons in the 2000s (the most prominent being the first two hosted by Anderson Cooper), the show was canceled by ABC, and its chances of renewal seemed dead and buried.

Enter Chris Culvenor. The Aussie has copious amounts of experience developing reality TV in the United States and Australia as part of Shine America and Eureka Productions. He's worked on hits like The Biggest Loser, MasterChef, and Holey Moley. But what led him to resurrect The Mole was, interestingly enough, a Netflix documentary.

"If you remember, a few years back," Culvenor tells Parade.com, "there was this great documentary called Don't F**k with Cats that was on Netflix. And on that, you saw all these armchair detectives solve this incredibly complex case. And that was the spark in my head."

Find out more about Culvenor and The Mole in our interview below, including the reboot's unique editing structure and approach to casting and challenges. The Mole premieres with its first batch of episodes on October 7 on Netflix.

Related: Everything to Know About Netflix's The Mole (Including When It Premieres)

It's been 14 years since the U.S. has had a version of The Mole. What made you decide to pursue rebooting it all this time later?
Firstly, I was a massive fan of the original. I was a fan of the Australian version, and then I went and watched all the Anderson Cooper versions as well. So I was coming at it from a bit of a superfan's perspective as well. And then, if you remember, a few years back, there was this great documentary called Don't F**k with Cats that was on Netflix. And on that, you saw all these armchair detectives solve this incredibly complex case. And that was the spark in my head.

That led me to think we now live in a different world from when The Mole launched. True crime is extremely popular. Crime podcasts are extremely popular. Everyone has a little bit of detective in them. So what better time to look at bringing back this classic format? So we worked with the original creators, who are from Belgium. We pitched our vision of how we wanted to reimagine The Mole. And we worked with them hand in hand and with Netflix to launch it for 2022. So it was the process of being a superfan initially. But that documentary series spark sparked the idea of bringing it back.

I feel like The Mole is a format that stands the test of time, hence how it works 20+ years after it was introduced. What's interesting is the show proper doesn't really include elements to indicate it's in 2022, save using phones as a prop during elimination. How did you purposely try to bring that timelessness into the show?
You don't want to buy a Ferrari, then mess with it too much. It's so beautifully put together and crafted. We didn't want to adapt The Mole and then produce something that fans around the world didn't recognize. But I think what we were really excited about is that there's a whole generation of people who didn't experience the first one. So introducing the fantastic format to them, we were really excited about fans like yourself having the opportunity to join the adventure again.

And I think there was something very exciting about doing it for Netflix. It's a global whodunnit that's happening and banding us all together. And you think about when The Mole was first released, and you're trying to suspect "Who is the Mole," you might talk about it with your friends or your family. But that was it. A lot of previous versions were actually before social media. So we're really excited for this global discussion to happen in real-time with the show. And that's why we're excited for this new generation to embrace the format.

Previous episodes of The Mole followed a typical structure, always ending with elimination. This season, however, has a distinctly different type of storytelling. Every episode instead ends on a cliffhanger, with eliminations happening in the beginning and middle of episodes. It's very reminiscent to me of The Circle, which also airs on Netflix. What made you decide to go in that direction?
It was a decision that was based on the fact that show was moving to streaming as opposed to a traditional broadcasting cycle. So in the traditional broadcasting cycle, generally, watching one episode a week, you have a beginning, middle, and end. And that structure works really well for those platforms. Netflix, obviously, is built very differently, where there's a binging model. We want people to sit back and watch more than one episode.

So the decision becomes less about sticking to a format and more about what's best for the service, what's best for that structure. So often, we just end on a cliffhanger, just like any great scripted series might end on a cliffhanger. We just thought, "Let the story tell us where to start and end the episode," as opposed to a strict structure. So that was definitely inspired by the idea of a binging model as opposed to a weekly.

The episodes are released in batches of five, then three, then two. Did that also affect how you structured the story for that week, assuming everyone would watch that batch in one go?
So that's a decision that we made in collaboration with Netflix. They know their audience so well and how their audience likes to consume certain shows. So it's a decision as much as they have a clear idea about what they want the cadence of that drop to be. And what we then do is work with them about finding what cliffhangers make sense at those junctures. So it's a back and forth to make sure that the viewing experience suits the Netflix viewer, but also is going to keep them hooked so they watch the next batch.

Let's talk about the cast for this season of The Mole. Did you have a particular goal in mind when you were recruiting these dozen people? Were you looking for people who knew the show, or newbies ready to learn on the fly?
There were a few things we were looking for. I mentioned that everyone is sort of this at-home detective now. And we really wanted people who had this passion, this curiosity, this investigative mindset about how they approach life. It didn't mean that they needed to be a true crime junkie. But we needed to get the sense that they would really throw themselves into this game, which is unraveling this mystery. We talked a lot about those movies like Ocean's 11 or Mission Impossible, where you have these heists or capers, these action events. And we wanted people who you could plug into those amazing challenges, and they could hold their own as well.

And then wanted to make sure we had diversity. Diversity in background, but also diversity and how they were going to approach the game. So we didn't want 12 players of former FBI investigators seeing if they could crack it. There's a firefighter, a pilot, a gamer. All these people who come from different backgrounds with different sorts of histories, and watching them play the game. And not only that but being able to suspect different people and very clearly identify them with different brands and different identities as well.

The challenges/missions this season range from big spectacles channeling some of those movies you were referencing to small moral dilemmas. How did you find the balance between those two types of tasks?
I feel like when it comes to The Mole, it's really about finding the balance between mental, physical, and emotional challenges. Mental, obviously, solving puzzles and deciphering codes. Physical, people literally pulling off incredible stunts. And then emotional, the moral dilemmas that people are put under. And that is really at the heart of the game, these kinds of dilemmas that people face along the way. Do they sabotage? Do they not? Do they subterfuge? Do they not?

So, for us, it was about giving the audience and the cast a variety of all of those things. And I think the best challenges are ones that are very simple, but allow for moments of sabotage so the audience can very clearly understand what's going on. There are moments of success or not. And those moments where people are successful or not can either be sabotage, or it could just be someone who didn't quite get to the end in time or made a mistake along the way. And what's great about that is obviously, it throws up lots of questions and suspicions about who the Mole is.

And like all good games, you plan it out one way, and then when the players do it, they go in a completely different direction from when you expected.
There's nothing that makes me more excited than us having an idea about how something is playing out and watching it turn on its head. Because generally, the reality of what we get is so much better than we ever envision.

Alex Wagner hosts The Mole, continuing the tradition of broadcasters hosting since back with Anderson Cooper. How did she get brought onto the show?
The show is an interesting one, because it is a show which is all about investigation, all about getting to the bottom of the mystery. So I think it's no coincidence that Anderson Cooper was cast for that original host because he comes from that background of someone who was getting to the bottom of a case or a story. So when we looked for who was going to be the host of this show, we wanted all those attributes. We wanted someone who was curious, who was passionate about finding the truth, who could take in an unfolding story and sort of make sense of it.

And that's where Alex just came. She was absolutely top of our list. And the great thing is she was as excited about the opportunity as we were excited about having her. She was the first person we went out to for this, and we were able to get her on board. Now she is obviously the host of the show, but she doesn't know who the Mole is. So she is going along for this ride with our 12 players. We think she did a great job because she's obviously extremely personable and charming. But she's got this great edge when she needs to. She's interviewed and dealt with some of the biggest political and political people on the planet. So she knows how to command a room when she needs to as well.

One of the biggest parts of The Mole's previous seasons was clues that the editors would put in throughout the season so that the audience could also play a game about who the Mole is. Will that be the case in this season as well?
In every aspect of this show, we wanted the audience to be the 13th player. That was always on our mind when we were producing the show, when we were editing the show. In every aspect, we were thinking about, "What is the audience thinking right now? Where are they looking? Who are they suspecting?" And yes, the clues along the way, if you don't pick them up, will be revealed at the end.

There is currently no announcement from Netflix about season two of The Mole. But should it happen, do you already have ideas about what you would want to do?
I think one of the things that's great about this show is people go on this incredible adventure internationally. This season, Australia offered so many incredible destinations. So I'm excited to take the show to other destinations. And just like great action franchises take place in different continents, I'd love to do the same with The Mole. So that's where I can see us taking the same twisting incredible mystery, but maybe with a different setting and different backdrop.

Next, here's everything to know about this season of Survivor 43.