David “The Golden God” Genat is ready to return to reality, but this time? He’s on the other side of the competition. Having won “Australian Survivor: All Stars” in 2020 and competed on “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2021 on behalf of the Garvan Institute, David is ready for a new challenge. Or… a “Rush”, perhaps?
Chatting to POPSUGAR Australia over the phone ahead of the “Rush Australia” premiere on Sunday, July 2, David gave us the scoop on what to expect from Nine’s latest reality competition series, what attracted him to the hosting gig, and what makes “Rush” unmissable television.
What Viewers Can Expect from “Rush Australia”
“I like my reality TV aspirational, I like adventure, I want something people can relate to or be inspired by, and that’s what ‘Rush’ is,” David said.
“Rush Australia” isn’t, David noted “just the race happening in the country”. Rather, the appeal of “Rush Australia” is that it also takes viewers into the heart of each country.
“We’re putting people in these really immersive cultural experiences,” David said. “We wanted to make that feel real, and to show the people at home like, ‘you could do this! You can get out, you can be in this situation!’, and I think that’s what we’ve achieved.”
David said that one of the main draws of “Rush” is that “everything [the contestants] do is a part of the fabric of that country”.
“It’s not like ‘oh, here’s scaffolding you have to climb and jump off’,” he explained. “It’s like ‘no, you’re gonna go to Brazil, you’re gonna be in Carnivale’. It was all really culturally appropriate stuff, so we wanted to bring that to Australians and be like ‘Hey! This is out there, go try it!’”
“Rush Australia” Will Give You Travel FOMO
As the borders reopened after years of COVID-induced travel restrictions, David said that he “was really tentative to start travelling again”.
“Twenty years of my career was travel,” David said. “But once you start travelling again, you break the seal, and then it’s like ‘oh man, we’re on! Let’s get into it, send me places!’” he said.
Calling it a “really, really incredible” experience, David said that “Rush Australia” is the reminder people need “to be like, ‘this is out there'”.
“Australians have always been huge travel bugs,” he said. “Everywhere I’ve been throughout the world, you’ll find Aussies! So this is a good reminder of that. Aussies love travel, they love adventure, and they’re gonna love ‘Rush’!”
How David Genat Became the Host of “Rush Australia”
In 2022, David auditioned “for a couple of shows”, but none of them were “quite the right fit”.
“It’s hard sometimes to not be disappointed by losing out on things”, David said. “But sometimes you just kind of know when stuff isn’t for you”.
Cut to the start of this year, David said that he received a phone call from “Rush Australia” production company Endemol Shine, telling him about the show.
“They were like ‘listen, we’ve got this show that we think you’d be perfect for’,” he recalled, “and when they told me it was like, travel, adventure, I was like ‘oh man, I think I was born for this one!’”
He continued: “It was such a good fit that I’m not sure really who else could’ve done it.”
Not only did things work out in the end, but David said that it was a good reminder that when things don’t work out, it’s sometimes because “something better is around the corner”.
In fact, when it comes to David’s journey to hosting “Rush Australia”, he said that there had “been some interesting synchronicity” along the way, as well.
After losing his father last year, David and his family were having “kind of a hard time going through all that”.
“He was great, we were close,” David said. “We used to book a family vacation every year, and we took it anyway in his honour, and on the last day of vacation, Tara from Endemol called me and said, ‘hey, don’t get too excited but we think this show might be all right for you’, and then they launched on his birthday, which was April 26, so there was some really cool synchronicity around that.”
“Rush Australia” Is a Show for Everyone
One of the joys of working on “Rush Australia”, David said, is that “it’s just a great show for a number of reasons”.
“It’s a really diverse cast, they’re all super interesting in their own way, and it will be people going ‘that would be me if I had to go to Carnivale in Brazil and make my way through the country’,” he said. “We’ve got a great cast, and casting is everything.”
Aside from the cast, David said that it’s also a show to watch with the whole family.
“It’s something you can watch with your kids and get them excited about travelling and what’s out in the world,” he said. “We just wanted to bring a unique travelling experience to the viewer at home, to show them that the fun little things about travel that are off the beaten path. The stuff that’s not on those big travel guides.”
Having spent so much of his career travelling around the world, David said that for him, “it’s about finding those unique moments when you travel”, and that’s what they’ve done with “Rush”. Now, he hopes it will inspire Aussies to travel again, too.
“Aussies have always been huge travellers and travel is back!” he added, “so get out there, and experience it for yourself!”
“Rush Australia” premieres at 7pm on Sunday, July 2, on 9 and 9Now. Miss an episode? Catch up on 9Now.
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