Rainn Wilson wanted Netflix's We Are the Champions to be like a real-life Best in Show

Variety

Wilson's docuseries showcasing unusual niche sporting competitions from cheese rolling to dog dancing was not made in an attempt to mock its participants. “The real job was to find the people. We didn’t want to laugh at it — we didn’t want you to mock these things — we wanted to find people that cared profoundly about these experiences, and we wanted to find out why," says Martin Desmond Roe, who along with fellow executive producers Wilson, Brian Golden Davis and Nick Frew came up with 130 competitions for We Are the Champions. "If we fell in love with the people, we fell in love with the sport and suddenly we had the arc. The real job was to find the people. We didn’t want to laugh at it — we didn’t want you to mock these things — we wanted to find people that cared profoundly about these experiences, and we wanted to find out why. If we fell in love with the people, we fell in love with the sport and suddenly we had the arc." Wilson adds: “This is like a real life Best in Show where the stakes are as high as you could possibly imagine. When you watch them compete you’re like, ‘This is ridiculous,’ but then you go, ‘This is beautiful.’ You literally go back and forth, and back and forth. That was the one that really got me.”

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