Taskmasters Alex Horne and Greg Davies are no strangers to discomfort. In fact, they’ve made quite a career creating scenarios, or tasks, placing the funniest people in the world in the most uncomfortable situations to create hilarious television. Horne and Davies recently sat down with Mashable Executive Producer, Mark Stetson, to dive deep into Series 21: the pranks, Kumail Nanjiani being brave sharing his internet history, and defining once and for all the true definition of a worm.
The premiere episode of Taskmaster Series 21 kicked off with a task challenging the contestants to find a worm and bring it to Alex Horne for points. This task sparked much online debate as to whether or not some of the contestants actually found an acceptable worm. Amy Gledhill and Kumail found mealworms while Joel Dommett presented the Taskmaster with a gummy word he procured from the kitchen. Finally, Armando Iannucci made the case that his being “a bookworm” would suffice. Davies “caught a lot of flack online” due to his decision to accept all of these as “worms.” His response, probably won’t surprise any fans of the show:
“What those people don’t realize is that every bit of flack makes me more powerful. It’s absolutely what keeps me going. I’m actually 150 years of age, and it’s purely because every time I make a call that might not be accurate and people get cross about it, I’m fueled. I take the game very seriously. But we’re we’re not dealing with life or death here. And the definition of a worm will not haunt me.”
Davies and Horne also reminisced about bringing back the crowd-favorite, Prank Task, with Joel Dommett this series. Tasking Joel with keeping an egg with Greg’s face on it safe for the entirety of the series, Joel was unaware that he was the only one given that task until the studio tapings. “You’ll notice he was in no way aggrieved,” mused Greg. “And I found that remarkable because, you know, my feeling was if it had been done to me, I would be incandescent at the reveal. But he’s like, ‘Okay, I guess that’s life.’ Adorable.” It wasn’t until the final taping, that the other contestants joined in as well. “He really didn’t know the others had their eggs, so he was so touched by that.”
When asked what moment from Series 21 was most surprising, the Horne’s answer was very clear: “It was Kumail being brave.” Kumail shocked the Taskmaster community by voluntarily allowing Horne to see his online browsing history. A search that revealed such patterns as, “Ghostbusters, watch porn, and Bluesky,” sent gasps throughout the studio.
“I was one of the gaspers,” disclosed Davies.
The entire Taskmaster Series 21 is now live on the Taskmaster YouTube Channel.
