With MasterChef Junior set to air its eighth season on Fox sometime in 2020, viewers still
can't seem to get enough.
But what's happening behind the scenes, and what's Gordon Ramsay really like with the
kids?
We decided to take a deeper look.
Here's what you might not have known about MasterChef Junior.
As any teenage television star could probably tell you, being cast in a TV show or movie
doesn't allow you to get out of school.
And the MasterChef Junior crew has had a plan in place to continue schooling for their contestants
since the beginning.
When asked about the first season, executive producer Robin Ashbrook told HuffPost that
it took almost three weeks to film.
So, you can imagine no school district would allow a child to be out of school for that
long.
According to Ashbrook, there are classrooms right next to the kitchen so mandatory class
requirements can be fulfilled, in between the four hours of filming each day.
"The only thing that's better about the adult MasterChef is that the adults have no school
to do."
And those schooling requirements have stayed in place as the show recruits new contestants,
although the timing requirements have changed significantly.
According to the casting requirements, the contestants selected must be available for
filming for close to nine weeks, missing a whole lot more school in their hometown.
However, the requirements do note that a teacher will be on set during filming to fulfill school
requirements during that time.
At least if the whole cooking thing doesn't work out, they still have reading, writing,
and arithmetic!
As if the filming requirements for the kids weren't complicated enough, producers throw
parents into the mix as well.
But, if you really think about it, putting a child on a plane alone to film a show for
hours on end is probably not the best idea.
According to the MasterChef Junior casting requirements, if selected, the child competing
and one parent will need to be available during the entire timeline of filming.
So, not only is the child making a huge time commitment, as well as working around schooling,
the parents are leaving work for weeks on end to support their child on the show.
When asked about parental inclusion on the show's first season, Robin Ashbrook told HuffPost
there was a chaperone on set at all times, saying:
"They were at all times able to see what was going on in the kitchen.
All of the parents actually sat together and watched what happened.
They really bonded.
It certainly wasn't a Dance Moms atmosphere."
When it comes to cooking shows, the prize purses can certainly vary.
On one hand, you have The Great British Baking Show only dishing up a trophy and a cake stand,
while MasterChef hands out a whopping $250,000.
But again, MasterChef is made up of well-trained adults.
Yet MasterChef Junior gets pretty close to its adult sibling, handing out a trophy and
an astonishing $100,000 to the contestant between the ages of 8 and 13 who wins.
What's a kid to do with $100,000 before they even hit their teenage years?
As it turns out, the winner is awarded a trophy and a check, but that money is inaccessible
until the child turns 18.
Season seven winner, 13-year-old Che Spiotta told Parade he already was thinking of what
to do with his money when he could finally access it, saying:
"I will definitely save some of it.
I will get a nice gift for my mom because she helped me so much through the whole thing.
She was out in L.A. with me and she organized everything, so I will get her a nice gift."
After years of watching MasterChef, with Ramsay's very straightforward and blatant critiques:
"So if you want to lose this challenge, continue working like you are.
If you want this challenge, step up."
...or his yelling at chefs on Hell's Kitchen:
"You dirty pig!
Get out!
Get out!"
...the idea of him hosting a version of a cooking show entirely devoted to kids was
pretty difficult to grasp for many viewers.
But Ramsay has certainly shocked viewers over the past seasons, showing a caring side that
many hadn't seen before.
He's given the kids plenty of constructive feedback throughout the course of the show,
even hugging some of the contestants when they've had a particularly rough day.
Season six contestant Evan Estrada confirmed Ramsay's soft side when filming MasterChef
Junior when he told the Chicago Tribune:
"He's absolutely amazing.
He is not mean at all.
He is super fun.
He loves to joke."
As with any cooking show, you really have to think about how it's possible to work with
so many sharp objects under such furious time constraints.
But on MasterChef Junior, things go shockingly smoothly.
In fact, Sandee Birdsong, culinary producer for the show, told Salon Magazine that the
kids actually cut themselves far less than the adults do on MasterChef.
"Okay, good luck.
Watch those fingers."
But, just in case their challenge goes awry and they do injure themselves, the show has
plenty of medics on standby.
According to Robin Ashbrook, there's a medic at the end of every single row of stations
on standby, just in case.
He told HuffPost:
"He has his or her eyes on one kid at all times.
There's no such thing as rubber knives and pretend boiling water on this show."
As it goes with any reality cooking show, there has to be one clear winner and the rest
of the contestants will be eliminated along the way.
And, in theory, those contestants should be judged based on their culinary skills or the
specific requirements of each challenge.
But some MasterChef Junior viewers haven't been so convinced.
Caroline Framke published her concerns in The Atlantic, noting a confusing scene from
the show's second season.
According to Framke, the end of the season showed a pop-up restaurant challenge in which
Oona, a 9-year-old girl and Sean, a 12-year-old Asian-American boy, were competing on a team
with their leader, Samuel, a 12-year-old white boy.
After Samuel made huge missteps during the competition and failed to serve as a good
team leader, he was still the one to stay, with judge Graham Elliot at the time stating:
"Crucially, you were the one that looked the most comfortable in that environment."
Framke said of the show:
"It can still be a microcosm of the same old exhausting gender and race biases ingrained
in daily life."
If you've watched the show, time and time again you've seen the kids helping each other
out in the kitchen.
It's not exactly in a child's nature to be terribly competitive, and that can be seen
on this show.
But what if they were prepped ahead of time, so they were, indeed, quite confident of their
competition skills far before filming begins?
"Now are you confident?"
"Yes I am."
After the second season began to air in Australia in 2011, the Herald Sun reported that the
"reality" of the show may not be all that real.
The show's production company, Shine, said that the contestants did receive some information
about challenges ahead of time, but not the recipes.
Parents of a contestant anonymously told the Herald Sun that the young chefs know what
they will be asked to cook ahead of time, allowing them to work on the dishes at home,
saying:
"The kids act all surprised but they have had the recipes for weeks."
Whether they're receiving tips ahead of time or full recipes, it does make you wonder.
After all, the kids certainly don't seem to crack under pressure too easily on the show.
When it comes to reality cooking shows, things get heated.
Contestants have meltdowns when making the simplest of mistakes during a challenge, or
they cry when they're sent home.
And while you see a bit of this on cooking shows with adults, you definitely see it on
a show focused on 8 to 13-year olds.
But crying may actually be encouraged on MasterChef Junior, as the judges let the kids know it's
okay not to hold it back.
Gordon Ramsay told Deadline that it's healthy for the kids to cry when they receive a critique
in the kitchen, saying:
"Bottling up emotions can lead to dangerous things.
I think crying is healthy."
Former judge Christina Tosi told Deadline that it was her goal not to make the kids
cry, but in reality, it's inevitable.
First thing's first, when you're going to launch a cooking competition show on television,
it needs to have contestants.
"Are you the next MasterChef Junior?"
"Yes, Chef!"
"Or, do you know a talented home cook?"
But when MasterChef Junior producers began their search for the inaugural season, they
didn't expand their reach terribly far.
In a 2013 interview with HuffPost, Robin Ashbrook said that the show was picked up by Fox a
little late in the game, so there may not have been as much time for casting as they
would have liked, explaining:
"We actually physically sat and did casting sessions in two cities, New York and Los Angeles.
My intention and hope is that for any future seasons, we'll cast much wider."
As of 2019, the castings had been increased to include a bigger demographic, but not by
much.
The 2019 castings were scheduled in Houston, New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.
Although auditioning for a reality cooking show can sometimes seem just as simple as
cooking an elaborate dish and catching the process on camera for submission, the MasterChef
Junior requirements are a bit more complicated.
"I got an apron!
Yeahhh!"
Castings are set up as pre-registered open calls, and MasterChef Junior's casting requirements
note that not everybody that shows up will be given an opportunity to audition.
According to Kelli Hendon, whose daughter Kate ended up on the show, there were close
to 300 kids at the casting she and Kate went to in Atlanta.
The pair told The Randolph Leader that part of the process was to cook an egg and to cut
food with a knife.
After making it past that first try out, Kate was called back to Atlanta to make a dish
for the producers and it was filmed to see how well she did in front of the camera.
The next step included interviews, psychological evaluations, background checks, and even video
tours of her family home, but she still didn't know if she had made it.
Finally, Kate was called to California for a final audition of 48 kids, and she was one
of the 24 selected to be on the show.
Talk about a long, complicated process.
It's hard to imagine putting three adults in a room with 24 kids, and allowing them
to critique their mighty masterpieces along the way.
But perhaps the selection in judges was all part of the plan, as all of the judges on
the show are, in fact, parents too, and they probably understand a thing or two about kids.
Gordon Ramsay has five children of his own, and the show's newest judge, Daphne Oz, has
four kids of her own.
Aaron Sanchez told Parade in a 2019 interview that since he and Ramsay are both parents,
they might be better equipped to work with the kids on the show.
He explained:
"Maybe because Gordon and I are parents and we understand the patience level it takes
with kids, how they retain information and how long it takes to improve, so I never get
frustrated."
"I'm making lobster tacos."
"What?
You are speaking my language."
MasterChef Junior turned the world of cooking shows on its head when it debuted in 2013,
crowning children under the age of 14 with the title of a lifetime.
And with that title, winners of the show have gone on to continue showing off their culinary
skills in a multitude of ways.
The winner crowned in the first season, Alexander Weiss, has proven that a win in the MasterChef
Junior kitchen can lead to years of culinary success.
Weiss, who was 13 when he won the competition, certainly didn't go back to a typical teenage
life after collecting his trophy.
TheRecipe reported in 2018 that Weiss had been devoting his time to working in a number
of restaurant kitchens after the show, and according to his own Facebook page, he's now
offering in-home dining experiences for personal clients.
The first season winner has also gone on to attend The Culinary Institute of America,
something he noted on his Instagram that he's been dreaming of since the age of 13.
Even if only one of the contestants can take home the ultimate grand prize trophy and the
$100,000, it doesn't mean the whole experience was a total loss.
The amount of exposure the kids get by being on the show and demonstrating their culinary
aptitude continues to open doors for them as they get older.
The MasterChef Junior name has continued to make that happen for several of the previous
contestants already, putting their live show on the road.
MasterChef Junior Live! launched in September 2019 and brought previous winners, as well
as season fan favorites, to live stages, where they competed in front of crowds across the
U.S.
The 2020 tour is headed to at least 40 tour stops, giving previous contestants exposure
to traveling the U.S. and the ability to continue connecting with their fans.
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