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Ari Shapiro is taking the reins as the host of The Mole Season 2. The journalist has a long history with the show, starting when he auditioned for the original version of The Mole years ago. Ahead of the reality competition series’ return, premiering June 28 on Netflix, Shapiro spoke with TV Insider about his new role.
“It still feels so surreal to me,” Shapiro said in our video interview above. “I’ve always loved this show. It feels like this wild adventure where every episode is in a different location. You’re solving puzzles. You’re trying to figure out who you can trust. The show never feels like it’s unnecessarily cruel to the players, so being involved with The Mole has always been a dream for me.”
Shapiro recalled his appearance on Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’ Las Culturistas podcast last year as a major moment in his journey to becoming the next host of The Mole.
“We were talking about reality TV, and Matt said, ‘You’d make a great host of a show like The Mole.’ And I said, ‘Do not joke about that. I would absolutely love. In a heartbeat, I would totally host a show like The Mole,‘” Shapiro remembered saying. “And then I had a call a few weeks later with my agents where I mentioned that, and they said, ‘Well, actually, Netflix is looking for a new host for The Mole.’ And I said, ‘Shut up.’ The next thing I knew I had a call with Netflix, and a few weeks after that, I was literally on a plane to Malaysia, and then I had to sit on this secret for a year.”
Shapiro is no stranger to hosting. He’s the emcee of NPR’s All Things Considered. “I’m very used to explaining things, so that aspect of the job came very naturally to me,” he said. He later added, “But I also think that as a journalist who interviews people every single day, I’m constantly asking myself: Is this person lying to me? Can I trust them? And so The Mole is a game where that question [of] ‘Who can you trust?’ and ‘Who is lying to you?’ is really at the heart of the gameplay. I think I brought a lot of experience to that, and it was fun that I didn’t know who the mole was as we were filming, so I was kind of behind the scenes playing along with the contestants trying to figure out who was lying and assess their gameplay.”
The host teased that the Season 2 missions are “next-level epic. There were things that I saw in the descriptions of the episodes before we arrived to film them that made my jaw drop.”
Shapiro is close friends with Alan Cumming, who notably hosts Peacock’s The Traitors. Shapiro and Cumming have a cabaret show called Och & Oy! and perform around the country. When Shapiro got his gig hosting The Mole, Cumming had some tips from one host to another. “His advice included wear lots of kilts and tartan, get a castle, say the word ‘murder’ as often as you can. And so I thanked him for his generous advice, and then I went in my own direction,” Shapiro revealed.
The Mole, Season 2 Premiere, June 28, Netflix