In the absence of CBS's usual summer favorite Big Brother, the network released the highly-anticipated competition series, Tough as Nails, on Wednesday. Executive produced and hosted by Phil Keoghan, the face and brains of The Amazing Race, Tough as Nails pits blue-collar workers against each other in back-breaking, laborious challenges. Keoghan traveled across the country to find the 12 toughest Americans who will each compete for a grand prize of $200,000 and a 2020 Ford pickup.
The competition is laid out differently than most, as no one will be eliminated during the series. Explained by Keoghan in the premiere, the show will follow two competitions: one individual and one for teams. As the show develops, contestants will be eliminated from the individual competition to win the grand prize, but will stay on to compete with their team of 6 to win smaller, episodic prizes.
At the opening of the show, contestants were seen gearing up to compete in a dirt yard littered with stacks of shipping containers. They wheelbarrowed heavy bags of spec mix and laid brick at this first site before heading out to a rail yard the following day. While a full itinerary of filming locations has yet to be released, it's known that each competition will be held at real job sites throughout California, where blue-collar workers sweat day in and day out. According to Cinemaholic, the series is filmed on-location in and near the greater Los Angeles area.
Screen Rant did some digging, and the premiere's third challenge, in which contestants rushed to lay railroad tracks and three times their body weight in coal, was filmed at the Filmore & Western railway based in Filmore. Casting took place last Fall, accepting both online submissions and in-person tryouts at pop ups across the Midwest. As part of his casting tour, Keoghan criss-crossed America's heartland, making stops in St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, New York City, Cincinnati, and Las Vegas to cherry-pick the toughest of the tough. Casting was wrapped up at the top of the new year, and filming took place in the first few months of 2020 before the pandemic shut down Hollywood production.
A Reddit user theorized the precise filming dates, narrowing the filming window to January through February. Although, California's year round sunshine makes it difficult to pinpoint from the premiere episode alone.Promo videos for future episodes show the contestants working in similar settings full of dirt and barren expansive land beaten dry by the California sun, finding ways to get their hands dirty every where they go.
Source: Cinemaholic