An Interview with Stephen Yemoh, Executive Producer of ‘The Anonymous’

THE ANONYMOUS-- Pictured: "The Anonymous" Logo -- (Photo by: USA)

Stephen Yemoh is an accomplished television producer that has worked on such shows as Love Island and Squid Game: The Challenge. His latest project is the fascinating new competition series, The Anonymous. Which debuts on USA Network on August 19, 2024, and in anticipation of its arrival, we sat down with Stephen to discuss this fascinating new show!
 
But before we get into the interview, here are some details regarding the show, so you have a full understanding of the conversation ahead!
 
"The Anonymous" is a strategic competition played in two worlds, the real world and anonymous mode. The Digital Anonymous Networking Interface, or “DANI” for short, has invited 12 players to live in her domain and work side-by-side to raise a prize fund of up to $100,000. Despite their close quarters, all players will have their own private underground hideouts, where each is completely anonymous and can say anything and everything behind the mask of a unique handle. In their hideouts, players can provide raw, unfiltered takes on their fellow contestants. They will scheme, connive and deceive to build influence and advance their game. The question is: Can they stay anonymous while doing so, or will the other players guess their identity?  
 
Each week DANI conducts tests where all contestants must try and match players to their handles. The player who is best at staying anonymous becomes the one with the power to eliminate their competitors. In a game where every move is calculated and a single misstep can expose who you truly are, only one will take home the grand prize. 
 
John Betancourt: I would love to start off by getting to know what it was that inspired the creation of this very unique show.
 
Stephen Yemoh: We're always trying to find good new competition formats, things that spark an interest with the viewers. And I think we wanted to answer some, some kind of broad questions, like, you know, we live in an age of social media. How can we bring social media into a potential competition, reality format, and ask that sort of question of, what will people do when nobody knows that it's them that is doing it, basically, which is what The Anonymous sort of actively tries to, sort of answer. DANI's put them in this position where they can say, whatever they want, for the good of their game, but no one actually knows that it's them. And how does that play out? And what strategies will people use in order to be successful at this show?
 
John Betancourt: I must say that I was super impressed with how anonymity was preserved. What kinds of challenges did all you run into in assembling a show this ambitious and that had this much potential for someone to leak information?
 
Stephen Yemoh: I mean, we put a lot of things in place, so leaks didn't get out. We made sure that players didn't have any access to phones or laptops or anything like that, so if somebody did leave the game, they couldn't send a message to the rest of the players or anything like that. Um, and generally, we had a really cooperative cast who really enjoyed playing this game. I think, as you said, it's a new, unique concept, and they really enjoyed playing it, and so they bought into the game that they were playing, and they knew that not leaking it would be beneficial to the viewers, because they wanted everyone to see how much of an interesting game this was.
 
John Betancourt: This show also boasts quite the group of competitors, with faces we know and don’t know. How did you all select such a broad group of competitors?
 
Stephen Yemoh: I think for the good of reality TV. Reality TV audiences are becoming more broad. I think we've gone through an age where we saw just sort of hot, beautiful people playing these shows. (Laughter) But I think actually life… it's not like that, you see so many different people in your offices or in your zooms now, people are working remotely, that we just want to reflect them. We know that different people from different backgrounds have so much to offer, and we like to give the opportunity for as many people as possible to see a version of them in the shows that we make. And I think that brings a richness to any show when you've got various different people that are bringing something different to it and I think it makes it interesting for the players that play as well. If you're just playing with loads of people that are exactly the same as you, that's quite boring. I think this game takes you out of your comfort zone, and the people that are in it should also take you out of your comfort zone as well. They should test your social skills, test your perception, and your deception, by having people that you don't you sort of do these types of things with on a daily basis. So, we just wanted to get a nice, broad and warm, and root-able cast. And I think we managed to do that.
 
John Betancourt: That leads me right to my next question. Because, as you said there too, the audience is definitely engaged in a very unique way here. I think that's why I appreciate this show, because the format almost adds a little commentary on our world. And I'm very curious what it means to you to offer up a show that is not only engaging and entertaining and fun, but also kind of adds a little poignancy and a little bit of tasking of the audience too.
 
Stephen Yemoh: I just think people relate well to things that are in their world. I think if you can bring something that’s like,” Oh, I can sort of see how that relates to my world,” it becomes immediately more interesting. You know, I think there's a lot of people out there who have, sort of have two different profiles for their social media, you know, it might be they say different things on LinkedIn to what they say in their real life. So, I think that sort of living in the social media world is part of most of people's everyday life now. So, I thought that we could bring that in and gamify it, was really interesting to us. And I think it helped the players, because, because they sort of had an idea of how to speak in a group chat. You know, we've all got our group chats with people, and how do you speak in a group chat, and what makes that interesting? But also, how do you use that and use the power of anonymity in order to, you know, improve your game and enhance your position within the game.
 
John Betancourt: I do have to ask, because I think this is something that's going to be, you know, discussed very heavily and analyzed very heavily, and rightfully so, because it's such a cool idea. But under on a more intimate level, what do you kind of hope audiences take away personally from a messaging standpoint? Because I do think there's something we can learn from a show of this caliber.
 
Stephen Yemoh: I think you can learn that you can have fun online and not be mean. I think one of the things that we wanted to make sure this show wasn't, is just like trolling online. It wasn't just a load of people hiding behind a screen and saying whatever they want, meanly about certain players. I don't think it ever got to that stage. And I think if you know, I don't know how deep people read into shows, but you don't have to be mean online. Just because your true persona isn't necessarily out there for the people to see doesn't mean you have to be mean, but you can still have fun with it. I think the players all played hard, and they played with strategy, and they, you know, all played for themselves, but they weren't mean at any time, and we were really happy with that, and that's also kind of why we chose the cast that we did, because we knew it wouldn't ever get to that.
 
John Betancourt: Yeah, that's a really good point. So, as a follow up to that, would you say that perhaps this show could teach us about how to strategically use social media in a much more impactful and helpful manner.
 
Stephen Yemoh: Yeah and look that does happen. There's loads of great social media accounts out there which I use on a daily basis, which improve my life, and they enhance my life, and they are great. They give me comedy; they give me life skills. They give me just a bit of like light relief, or they give me some things to think about, poignantly. And, you know, I think that’s the great part of social media, right? You must use it every day in your world. The root of it is brilliant, and it has so many brilliant uses in everyday life and but unfortunately, sometimes that that doesn't quite work, but look the show isn't a commentary on social media at all. It is just, we've used the positives of social media and try to gamify it a little bit in order to see, you know, how people will play strategically. Like, I mean, people, you know, people use different types of social media to enhance their businesses or their lives in certain way. And I think that this show kind of does this as well.
 
John Betancourt: As a producer, what did you enjoy the most about assembling the show and watching it come together?
 
Stephen Yemoh: I'm sure you've spoken to many producers over your time, but I just love the fact that you can have an idea, put it on paper, and then through lots of conversations and working together and development, you can take it and you can find a cast, and you can create a world and a game, and then you take it back to the edit, and you put it all together, and you have somebody go, “this is fun, this is like, cool” when it's really different. I think this show feels familiar enough to be comfortable, but different enough to feel fresh. And I think that's really important for us at Studio Lambert, whenever we make shows, we're just trying to make it so, you know, audiences that like this type of show will go, “Yeah, I can give that a go,” but when they watch it, go, “Oh, this feels a bit different to everything else that I've watched.” And I don't know what you felt, but I felt like we got that when we were watching it play out and once, we sort of put the show together.
 
John Betancourt: I did feel that. It really is quite different but easy to be comfortable with. The last question that I have for you today, now that we're so close to it, what are you most excited for audiences to experience when they settle in to watch this three-episode premiere and beyond?
 
Stephen Yemoh: Um, I'm really excited for the audience to sort of see a new game, a new format, which is, you know, quite interesting. There's so many brilliant reality shows, competition reality shows, out there. But this feels new and feels fresh and like I said before, it speaks to people's daily lives, but I'm really excited for everyone to see this cast as well. I think the cast are really, really warm, really root-able. They got the game very quickly. You know, I think some of the great shows over the years, they keep being great because people have watched it for years, and then they know how to play it. This show, they've never seen it before. They are fresh into it. They're the debut cast, but they got the game really quickly, and they played the game really well, and with good heart, they were funny with it. And, you know, I just love the way that they all bought into this world and bought into DANI and the idea of trying to be The Anonymous, and that's what makes it a really fun watch, for me.
 
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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