‘Raid the Cage’ Host Damon Wayans Jr. on How ‘New Girl’ Characters Would Play the Game (VIDEO)
Time is money in CBS‘ Raid the Cage — literally. The new game show premieres on Friday, October 13 after The Price Is Right at Night, with New Girl alum and comedian Damon Wayans Jr. and The Real‘s Jeannie Mai serving as hosts.
Based on the Israeli format by United Studios, Raid the Cage is an action-packed game show where strategy, teamwork, and nerve are key to winning big. In it, two teams of two race to grab-and-go prizes from the Cage before time runs out and the cage doors close.
Extra seconds get added to the clock with each correctly answered trivia question, giving players more time to snag prizes that range from cool trips to electronics and even new cars. The team that banks the highest total dollar value in prizes wins, keeps what they grabbed, and progresses to the final round where they must try to “Beat the Cage” to win the night’s biggest prizes.
Trying to make it out of the cage doors before they slam shut naturally produces some hilarious physical comedy. As Wayans tells us in the video interview above, players crash into the cage doors “so many times,” and he (and the audience) can’t help but laugh.
“Greedy people wind up hurting themselves,” he teases. “They’ll get what they need, and then they’ll have time to get out. But then they’ll see something on the way out and they’re just like, ‘I gotta get that.’ They’ll grab it, smash right into the freaking cage, and you’re just like, ‘You didn’t have to grab that,’ but I understand.”
Damon Wayans Jr. and Jeannie Mai on set of Raid the Cage (Credit: Pepe Molina/CBS)
The unintentional physical comedy of the series is one of the big appeals for the comedian, who says viewers will be in stitches watching contestants try to avoid getting caught in the cage. “It is hilarious” seeing the unnecessarily creative lengths players go to get out of the cage in time, Wayans says. “Even if they’re not crashing, just diving out of the cage is so dramatic. Just run out!”
Wayans’ stand-up comedy experience helped him prepare for his first game-show hosting gig. “Doing stand-up [and hosting a game show] are kind of the same. It’s very presentational,” he explains. “The difference, though, with stand-up and game shows is that I have to be charismatic when I’m delivering this pertinent information for the contestants. That was a challenge, but I welcome that challenge.”
“It’s so real when you’re on set and you’re with these contestants and they’re nervous, you can feel their energy, their nerves, their adrenaline,” Wayans continues. “And I think as a host, it’s your job to make them feel a little more at ease or let them know that they can accomplish this daunting experience.”
Mai helped him learn that lesson. “She’s so engaging and empathetic with the contestants, and it brought another side out of me,” Wayans says of his co-host (pictured with Wayans above), with whom it was “very easy” to build their on-screen rapport. “As a comedian, you want to jab, make fun of them, kind of kick them while they’re down,” he says. “They’ll come out [of the cage], they have $0, someone else has $30,000, and the comedian in me is like, ‘It’s not looking good, man! You’re probably gonna lose!’ But Jeannie’s like, ‘No, you’ve got to build them up!’ It’s never over on Raid the Cage.”
How would the characters of New Girl fare in Raid the Cage? We asked Wayans to split his character, Coach, Nick (Jake Johnson), Winston (Lamorne Morris), and Schmidt (Max Greenfield) into teams and imagine how the game would play out. He’s not convinced there would be any winner. “Those four together are just bumbling idiots,” he jokes. But he does think Coach would excel in the cage.
Hear about the rest of his dream New Girl–Raid the Cage crossover and more in the full video interview above.
Raid the Cage, Series Premiere, Friday, October 13, 9/8c, CBS
