‘House of Villains’ Host Joel McHale on Show Shocks & Trash-Talking, Plus Update on ‘Community’ Movie

If anyone knows reality TV, it’s Joel McHale. The actor and comedian lent his witty remarks to clips from reality shows on The Soup for more than a decade. Now McHale is hosting House of Villains, the competition series on E! which sees 10 infamous reality TV villains living together.

In what can be described as Big Brother meets The Surreal Life, the contestants maneuver through numerous mental, physical, and emotional challenges while forming beneficial alliances, and strategizing to avoid banishment. After is all said and done, one will win $200,000 and the title of America’s Ultimate Villain Supervillain.

Still left in the game are Johnny Bananas (The Challenge), Johnny Fairplay (Survivor), Bobby Lytes (Love & Hip Hop), Omarosa (The Apprentice), Tanisha Thomas (Bad Girls Club), Shake Chatterjee (Love is Blind), and Anfisa Arkhipchenko (90 Day Fiancé).

As things heat up, we sat down with McHale to get his feedback on how the game has panned out. Plus, he gives Community fans some hope on when we’ll possibly see the much-anticipated movie.

You have a long history with reality TV from both sides of the camera. How is it for you to look back and see how much the genre has changed and evolved?

When The Soup started, it was the Wild West of reality television. The rules were not set or hadn’t really settled in, So, you got some shows that were pretty wild. Like Being Bobby Brown, Flavor of Love, and Britney Spears’s show with Kevin Federline. I think publicists would have lost their minds today if there were shows like that. Everyone was throwing stuff against the wall to see what was sticking. There was The Real World back in the 1990s and then Survivor got that Super Bowl audience. So The Soup brought you the wildest clips. It was very fun, but I think now it has been years, and I think it’s more polished. You still have stuff like Love Island, and Bachelor in Paradise, but you kind of know what you’re getting. These shows are wild on purpose.

Casey Durkin/E! Entertainment

Enter House of Villains. 

With something like House of Villains and being on the other side, I just think, “Thank God they let me tell a zillion jokes.” It’s why I agreed to do the show. Okay, it’s not the only reason, but all the contestants are veterans and know how to play the game or know what to do. I thought it was a great idea to bring in people who were basically singled out in their shows because they were unique and having them go up against each other was cool. And as long as E! was cool with me pointing out the absurdity, I was cool with it. I was happy to do it. It was really fun, and I made a lot of new friends.

It seems like the ones who have been doing well in the competition have experience in reality TV competitions. What do you make of the strategy played so far? For me, the best was Bananas creating chaos by planting a threatening note under his pillow and making Corinne [Olympios] the scapegoat for it. 

These folks are as television or reality television savvy as you will find. I’m in full agreement this is the way the game is designed to be played and Bananas is playing it masterfully. The same thing with Johnny Fairplay. I think people think these shows are silly or fluff, but these are the games of our current culture. They are the games where we come as a culture, TV streaming, or watching society.

I’m not kidding when I say they are operating a different level in this competition. It’s really fun to watch. They are playing wonderfully absurd games. You have to be very strategic, and funny and your tactics can’t be too obvious. Just like when Big Brother premiered, I thought it was a really good show because it’s unique. This is pulled from that model. If you were just a person on the street who just wanted to be on a reality show, I think they would be gone on the first day.

Another fun part of the show is the trash-talking. Like Tiffany “New York” Pollard’s epic parting words for Omarosa. 

They will fight to the end. Tiffany Pollard, now as we’re friends, you see she is pretty quiet and grateful. Then she has this very television-savvy part of her where it’s time to turn on the firehose and let you have it. That tirade was just eloquent and Shakespearean and so well done. What a way to go out. Tanisha is television gold. She should have her own talk show. She delivers when that camera is on. You think about the tension, but these people have all been in this situation and know what it feels like. It’s like a veteran professional athlete deep in the fourth quarter, who is behind, waiting for their turn to get in there and rain down threes.

And you never know who is going to show up at the door or onscreen as guests. We’ve seen familiar faces such as Carole Baskin, Abby Lee Miller, Spencer Pratt and Danielle Staub. Who will we see next?  

We have Tom Hanks coming on. That’s not true, but wouldn’t it be great if it was? We’ve had some great guests. I think the last one is [Below Deck’s] Ben Robinson. I’m not going to tell you what the challenge is, but I think it involves fire. And I’m not even sure.

From the battle royale and redemption challenges we’ve seen so far, what have been your favorites to watch? 

When they were getting keys out of the ice. The effort that everyone was making. It was like zero to mayhem in an instant.  I was like, “This is very good TV.” The effort. They know the gameplay and know when to pour it on.

Corinne basically took her pants off so she could rub her butt against the ice to warm it. I have to say it was a very effective strategy. I couldn’t believe it. I like the one on the football field with the big ball around. During “Balls Out,” I think I said balls 400 times, and it made me very happy. That night was also one of the coldest nights in LA. We were there a long time, but it did not reflect the temperature because people were freezing.

Casey Durkin/E! Entertainment

Who has surprised or impressed you with their gameplay? Anfisa has done well staying under the radar for the most part. 

Yeah. I made several jokes about how quiet she was. Like, stop talking so much because she doesn’t say much at all. I’m going to say Johnny Bananas and Omarosa come to mind as really good game players. Fairplay too. They are all good, but if I had to pick it would be Omarosa and Bananas because they’ve been doing this for a while. To watch them operate, I don’t think I can think of things they do. They are two very good game players.

Who should E! recruit if there was a season 2? 

I have an idea, and it is probably pretty bad. Have all these same people come back and compete again. Maybe add a couple of people. Bring the people to play again for a second season. It might be a terrible idea and may be good or bad. But other than that maybe Richard Hatch. Maybe one of the doctors from Dr. 90210 way back when. I’d like to get Flavor Flav on the show. He put a lot of money in my pocket and made Soup a lot easier with Flavor of Love and Strange Love. If he is still around, I’d like to get Puck from that first Real World. That would be an alright one.

I was thinking about this game when Community popped on. It was the paintball episode. How well do you think Jeff Winger or even yourself would do in this environment? 

I think Jeff Winger would have done better than me because Dan Harmon is smarter than me, and he writes a character that is smarter than me. I’m extremely competitive and love sports and all that stuff, but these folks are pros. You can watch TV and think you can do that. You get there and then are like, “Oh crap. This is way harder than I thought.” Jeff Winger would do better than me. But my character from It’s Wonderful Knife is pretty menacing to. He would probably break the law though and be arrested for assault.

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As we’re at the end of the year and head into 2024. Do you think we’ll see that Community movie in 2024? 

Obviously, the strike put us on hold as we were going to shoot it last summer. Basically, we need to coordinate the schedules, but my guess is it will be next summer when we get back to it. This is all a guess, but I think it will be next summer. I know when the strike ended it became a waterfall of everyone rushing back to work. That’s my guess. I hope it’s not any later than that because it would be great if they could get the movie out for the holidays next year. But, again, this is all speculation.

House of Villains, Sundays, 10/9c, E!