Hosts Kevin and Frankie Jonas introduce the 12 celebrity relatives who will be living under one roof and concealing their identity and lineage in the quest for the coveted $100,000 prize.
John Fleenor/ABC
After a lifetime of living in the shadows of their celebrity kin, 12 individuals are finally ready to establish their own identities with ABC’s new summer unscripted series Claim to Fame.
Hailing from Kinetic Content, the production company behind such shows as Married at First Sight and Little Women, Claim to Fame debuts July 11 after The Bachelorette. Adding elements of pop culture and mystery to a format that will be familiar to fans of Big Brother, the series focuses on a house of a dozen people who each have a famous relative; the contestants attempt to guess who everyone else is related to and avoid weekly eliminations to win the $100,000 prize.
The series is co-hosted by Kevin Jonas, who rose to fame at a young age as part of his family’s band The Jonas Brothers, and Frankie Jonas, who isn’t in the band but has more recently found a following on TikTok. Trailers have revealed that the participants’ relatives include Zendaya, Simone Biles and Whoopi Goldberg.
“They’re such great hosts,” Kinetic founder Chris Coelen, an executive producer on the series, tells The Hollywood Reporter about the Jonases. “I guess you would expect this, but they have amazing chemistry. They just really relished the game and the fun of it. Some of it’s kismet, right? They fit with the conceit of the show for obvious reasons.”
Coelen’s company has had recent success with streaming shows, including Netflix’s Love Is Blind and The Ultimatum, but he sees this one as right for broadcast, although he feels it has binge-worthy elements as well. “Love Is Blind or The Ultimatum have gigantic stakes for these people who participate, in a very meaningful, real way, but there’s a ton of humor and fun and joy to those shows at the same time,” he says. “Claim to Fame is a show where the stakes really aren’t as high, and people are just kicking back and enjoying themselves. But at the same time, there’s a lot of compelling stuff for people to sink their teeth into as audience members, and I love that.”
The premiere episode’s biggest surprise comes toward the end, when a contestant is suddenly booted from the show after production learns that the person broke the rules by surreptitiously using their phone in the house. “That was a complete, out-of-left-field shock that that happened,” Coelen admits. “It was an on-the-fly decision. I got a call that’s like, ‘What do we do?’ And I was like, ‘Look, the rules are the rules, at the end of the day.’”
Ultimately, the show is an addictive summer confection that also manages to have something to say about influencer culture, what makes someone relevant and the nature of identity. “Some people do feel like they’re obscured by somebody who they are connected to that’s more accomplished than they are, and other people find a way to use that to their advantage — and for other people, it’s irrelevant,” Coelen says. “That is one of the things that’s really fun about the show, is it does reflect back to us what’s going on in our culture.”
Claim to Fame premieres Monday at 10 p.m. on ABC.