Trivia / Taskmaster (NZ)

• Career Resurrection: David Correos credits this show with reviving his TV career. Between his debut at the Edinburgh Fringe and this show, he had a period of many missed opportunities and work dried up, so he decided to shift his focus to his standup and comedy writing until he got the call for Taskmaster NZ.
• The Cast Show Off: The Season 2 cast is exceptionally musical, with David, Guy, Laura, and Matt all getting opportunities to perform songs. Urzila, on the other hand, leaned into the fact that she doesn't have much musical talent.
• Content Leak: The Season 2 champion was spoiled when the panel reunited to launch Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee and Laura Daniel wore a crown for the occasion.
• Corpsing:
  • Paul's shoulders start shaking when Guy does a yawn and stretch on their first date in "Bing Bang Schlong", and it takes visible effort for his deadpan demeanour to return.
  • In "Unbung", Paul's usually stoic demeanour cracks wide open while Guy Montgomery is describing his family's weird Christmas traditions.
• Directed by Cast Member: Season 3 contestant Josh Thomson is on directing duty for Season 4.
• Doing It for the Art: Although it wasn't clear if the show would be renewed for a second season, Paul Williams turned down multiple work offers so he could keep his schedule open.
• Dyeing for Your Art: The Taskmaster Trophy really is made from a mold of Jeremy Wells' head, which required that he be encased in resin while breathing through straws put up his nose. In a Season 2 recap, he recalled feeling horror when told that the head mold was missing and he might have to go through the process again. Luckily, they found the mold in time.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Jeremy and the contestants are kept in the dark about tasks are going to make sure in-studio reactions are genuine. Not even Paul, who writes the tasks and scripts, is exempt as he's left dumbfounded by two different prize submissions in "Unbung".
  • David Correos attributes the fierceness and violent lyrics that came out during the diss-track task to the pain and exhaustion he was feeling at the time^note It was the last task of a long filming day, and he was suffering from two herniated disks that required surgery after production wrapped on Taskmaster overwhelming his ability to regulate his emotions.
• Friendship on the Set: The Season 2 cast got along so well that they continued making appearances together as "The Five Friends" and reunited to be the first panel for the test run of Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Season 2 features Matt Heath, who hosts a radio show with Taskmaster Jeremy Wells.
• No Export for You: The show for the longest time was not exported anywhere but New Zealand, Sweden, and Norway, but never the UK (the original country the show itself comes from). This changed on 28 August 2023, where the first three seasons were put up on All4, notably bypassing Taskmaster SuperMax+, a subscription service specifically catered to watching Taskmaster internationally.
• On-Set Injury: Urzila Carlson rode a bike down a self-constructed ramp for a task that was ultimately cut. While performing the stunt, she fell and broke her clavicle in three places. She required surgery and permanent screws to treat the injury. This pushed production back by six weeks so she could recover, film her remaining solo and team tasks^note the injury had a knock-on effect on the rest of the cast as the Abraham Lincoln task had to be postponed, so everyone had to hold onto their burner phones for much longer than production had anticipated, and attend the studio recordings while in pain and dealing with limited mobility.
• Prop Recycling: In Season 2, Jeremy reveals that the throne he sits on was taken from a Santa parade.
• Reality Subtext: Josh Thomson wears a grey suit and glasses in Season 3's "Best Friends". This was because he'd asked Ray O'Leary to be his doppelganger in that episode but Ray refused to appear on camera in anything other than his Iconic Outfit so Josh had to dress like Ray. The glasses led to some problems because Josh's eyesight is perfect but he wore Ray's prescription lenses, leading to massive headaches during filming.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Paul Williams, the Taskmaster's Assistant, is the younger brother of Guy Williams, who is a contestant in the first series. Jeremy jokes that this is due to New Zealand having only eight people in it.
  • Season 2's Laura Daniel is engaged to be married to Joseph Moore, TMNZ's creative producer.
• Recycled Script: Unlike most other international editions, which borrowed tasks wholesale from the UK original, the New Zealand production made a conscious effort to avert this trope by writing mostly original tasks. That said, they have adapted several tasks from the UK version:
  • Season 1's "My Uncle John" has the "get to 10 points" task, which is identical in premise to Series 1's "Down An Octave", which asked contestants to "get to 11 points", and both iterations even feature random Red Herring objects to confuse them.
• Sleeper Hit: Early reviews were lukewarm and Taskmaster fans were questioning the need for an adaptation, but the show turned out to be a hit—doubling TVNZ's audience in key demographics.
• Trolling Creator: The production team is well aware that there is a vocal anti-Jeremy crowd. Sam Smith, one the producers and task writers, has fun with this by putting out tweets that tell such viewers to tune in to get outraged by Jeremy's scoring decisions.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Paul Williams and Sam Smith, who write the tasks and make a conscious and considerable effort not to copy any tasks from the original UK programme, had to discard at least two tasks for season 2 because they featured word-for-word (by pure coincidence) on Series 11 of the original UK programme, which aired just as they were about to film them (the "making the house haunted" and "stack plates on a scooter" tasks).
  • There was a filmed task for season 2 that was cut because of time constraints. It was something along the lines of "Protect Yourself. Paul Will Attack You In Ten Minutes." where Paul attacks the contestants in a different way.
    • Paul throw frozen peas at David who tried batting them away with a knife he grabbed in preparation
    • Matt wore a helmet and hide inside a wheelie bin before Paul came out of a bush with a pool noodle sword in each hand.
    • After squirting Urzila with a water gun, Paul had to retreat and call a time-out when she advance on him with a bat and tennis racket.
    • Paul slowly rolled a paper-mache boulder, painted grey, towards Guy and almost ruined his cream suit due to the wet paint and wet grass leaking onto his hands.
    • Laura donned armour and barricaded herself in the caravan, only for Paul to attack her with words by shouting through the door.
  • Season 2's lotion-squirting task was supposed to be a tie break but it was presented as a regular task because production failed to put a time limit and it was just open-ended enough that contestants came up with overly complicated attempts to win.
  • Urzila Carlson talks about another task that was cut from Season 2 on her podcast That's Enough Already (with guest Phil Wang from the UK series), and Guy Montgomery discusses the task as well on Taskmaster: The People's Podcast. The task was to "do the stupidest thing," with 5 bonus points for executing said idea. Urzila broke her collarbone when she rode a bike down a self-constructed ramp, flew off the bike, and was knocked unconscious briefly. BUT, this wasn't why the task was allegedly cut. The actual reason was because Guy Montgomery decided to put his penis into a plugged-in toaster (not activated, that would have been stupid) and floated a COVID-19 conspiracy theory while looking straight down the camera. There simply was no way the editors could cut Guy's attempt into anything that wasn't offensive or controversial.
• Written by Cast Member:
  • Paul Williams has really dedicated himself to the show and his role as the Taskmaster's Assistant — just like Alex Horne on the UK series, Paul cowrites all the tasks on Taskmaster NZ.
  • Angella Dravid and Brynley Stent, who both competed in Season 1, are credited in Season 2 with additional writing. Season 2 contestant David Correos later joins them for Season 3. Season 2's Matt Heath and Season 3's Josh Thomson join the writing team in Season 4.
• You Look Familiar: Ray O'Leary first appeared in Season 3 as Josh Thomson's doppelganger before becoming a contestant in Season 4. This makes him the first person to appear within the franchise as two different "characters".

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