Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The first sea­son is yet to wrap on CNC3, but The Ro’dey Show is al­ready set for a sec­ond sea­son filled with new tal­ent, new lo­ca­tions and more celebri­ty ap­pear­ances. That’s the promise from co­me­di­an Rodell “Ro’dey” Cum­ber­batch, who said bring­ing new tal­ent on-board is im­por­tant for the show.

“I al­ways say, it’s not just about Ro’dey, Ro’dey and Ro’dey. The coun­try that we liv­ing in... is a lot of tal­ent­ed peo­ple here that just want the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do some­thing that they’re pas­sion­ate about and re­al­ly reach their fullest po­ten­tial,” he said,

“The show is def­i­nite­ly about open­ing the gates to new tal­ent, writ­ers, ac­tors, and we def­i­nite­ly have the peo­ple who have the pas­sion and who have the dri­ve to cre­ate a plat­form for those things to ac­tu­al­ly come in­to ex­is­tence.”

Cum­ber­batch said new episodes will ex­plore, not on­ly T&T but the Caribbean and there are plans to fea­ture re­gion­al tal­ent.

“We very heavy on ad­ver­tis­ing our cul­ture, our peo­ple, our en­vi­ron­ment, our lo­ca­tions. We have a lot of his­to­ry here. It’s not just about the laugh­ter, you’ll al­so learn some­thing,” he said.

To achieve this, the show’s pro­duc­ers will be ven­tur­ing to more out­door lo­ca­tions, seek­ing out places that “peo­ple who liv­ing here for 40 some­thing years nev­er ever see be­fore.”

Cum­ber­batch be­gan do­ing short comedic videos for an on­line plat­form some years ago. In these videos, he por­trayed some 18 char­ac­ters, pit­ting them against each oth­er in hi­lar­i­ous sto­ry­lines. How­ev­er, while these char­ac­ters re­main part of his act, in the tran­si­tion from an on­line plat­form to main­stream tele­vi­sion, it’s no longer a one-man-show.

“Be­ing able to take the char­ac­ters now and ac­tu­al­ly let them in­ter­act with peo­ple—the tran­si­tion has been very smooth. I re­al­ly en­joy it. Now that you have an­oth­er el­e­ment, you have an­oth­er per­son, you could bounce off that en­er­gy,” he said.

Among those in­ter­act­ing with these char­ac­ters in the first sea­son were, apart from oth­er ac­tors, celebri­ties such as so­ca stars Nes­sa Prep­py and Pred­dy. Cum­ber­batch promis­es this el­e­ment will con­tin­ue in the new sea­son but will be ex­tend­ed to in­clude from”ath­letes to peo­ple who are en­tre­pre­neurs in their own light.”

“We want to try and in­volve any­body who has their own brand to cre­ate some­thing and to be a part of it.”

Cum­ber­batch said there are plans to go as far as a sea­son 5, but the for­mat of the show can change as nec­es­sary. He be­lieves the show will con­tin­ue “as long as the peo­ple want the show and they ain’t start to say, ‘Oh god! We fed up! How much times we go see you?’ We will keep go­ing.”

There will be live tap­ings of some seg­ments of the pro­gramme at CNC3’s new­ly opened GM­Labs. Ro’dey’s man­ag­er, Sharon Cum­ber­batch, said this will al­low fans an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be a part of the show.

The Ro’dey Show first aired on Oc­to­ber 1. Sea­son two be­gins film­ing in Jan­u­ary and will air in April 2020.

The show is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Ro’dey En­ter­tain­ment Lim­it­ed, Star Stu­dios and CNC3. CNC3 set out on the col­lab­o­ra­tion to be the lead­ing lo­cal con­tent broad­cast­er in T&T and be­lieves the show was the per­fect pi­lot show for this lo­cal con­tent dri­ve.