Not long into the current season of “The Race for a Million” (Keshet 12), the new host Yehuda Levy realized what he had gotten himself into. It happened at the end of the second day of filming, when the realization dawned on him that the project he had committed to was going to be much more challenging and exhausting, as well as exciting and rewarding, than he could have imagined.
“I thought I was going for a walk in the park. That was mistake number one,” he says on the eve of the season finale broadcast today (Wednesday). “Very quickly I realized that Vala, this is not a walk in the park. As I was thrown into Iceland, I saw the intensity of the production. 100 people and luggage, and you have to hurry and get going, and I’m being rushed. I didn’t understand where I was going.
The final three pairs. Who will take the million?, Photo: Regev Zarka
“I remember looking at the ceiling in the hotel room in the place of Shakh-El in Iceland on the second day, and I said: Why did I do this thing to myself? I really had some kind of shin, everything was terribly new. But slowly you start to turn the wheel, and it gets fat and starts to drive “There were a lot of difficult moments. It wasn’t just fun and beautiful – everything was very intense.”
Viewers of the show may think that it is easy for the presenter, but even quickly getting used to different time zones is not an easy thing. “You are in each country for two days, getting on and off the plane, changing topics and weather and hours. When everything is shown on television in a centralized way it seems simple, but what you see from there you don’t see from here. It’s jet lag, you don’t have Friday or Saturday, you have five weeks of running. I myself was in a race, as if they were chasing me. In short, leave it – it’s like a relay race on steroids.”
This is also the first time you have hosted a reality show. Why hasn’t this happened until now? Was it a matter of perception?
“I went through the entire range of concerns and emotions. Until that moment, I refused all the offers of guidance that came to me over the years, and a moment of such perfection with myself really came. I won’t say that it was a departure from the comfort zone, because as an actor you have to renew yourself every time, but here I really went out from a familiar scene.
“It was a matter of perception and many things, and I realized that when my perceptions are too fixed – things don’t move and I can’t develop. Jumping into things that I fear and changing a perception is a good and blessed thing in my eyes, otherwise it creates stagnation. And it’s better to develop flexibility than stagnation in this life.” .
The ending season of the “Race”, like everything this year, came at a strange time. When it was filmed, the world, especially for Israelis and in terms of tourism, was a completely different place than it became with the rise of the series. Although the events of October 7 are not present in it – but it seems that this season, the goal of the “Race to the Million” was to provide escapism for an audience that needed it more than ever.
“It was unequivocally strange to me,” Levy says about watching his more innocent self, from before the day when everything changed. “I didn’t travel abroad too much after October, so I don’t know what the ratio and differences are. But yes, we were in a different time, before this ax of death. We lived in a completely different energetic consciousness.
“I believe in our inner strength as human beings, and that despite this great pain that has entered our conscious space, we can do a second season and laugh, be happy, be moved and cry. And maybe even more than once, because another very difficult factor enters the equation. We have to continue, but In good taste, and I think it is a program in good taste, and it has truth and honesty and authenticity. There is no disgust in it.”
Yehuda Levy and Dana Frieder on vacation, photo: Instagram
This is also an unusual period in Levy’s personal life, who finds himself surrounded by rumors about the pregnancy of his partner of the past year and a half, actress Dana Frieder. “There is no pregnancy. When there is a pregnancy it will of course be something,” he says. “(The picture that was published; p.
Another deviation from the routine happened a few weeks ago, when Levy deviated from his custom and urged his online followers to go to the streets and join the fight for the return of the abductees held by Hamas.
Until now, you have also made sure not to come out with strong political statements.
“I’m really not a political person, not politically oriented. It’s not my field, place or profession. I don’t even think I was political in what I said. I said one word, because I wanted there to be a big screaming voice that would be able to influence the return of the abductees, our poor sisters and brothers. I really think it is a supreme value of our DNA, that we are first and foremost committed to bringing them home. And so that future generations of our soldiers will know that there is a country behind them. I don’t know how complex it is, all in all both the right and the left want to return the kidnapped. It’s a very specific issue, and I just shouted my shout.”
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