Could the The Great British Baking Show be preparing for its first-ever All-Stars season? According to the show’s longtime creative director and executive producer, Kieran Smith, the team is “very interested” in making it happen.
Despite being in its 15th season and on the air since 2010, The Great British Baking Show has never brought back its past winners for an All-Star season. The concept of seeing former fan favorites facing off against one another has been popular on other cooking-based shows like Hell’s Kitchen, Top Chef, and Chopped.
Speaking to Vulture in a recent interview, Smith said he and his team are “very interested” in a “proper ten-episode” All-Star series in the near future. “I think the vast majority of the bakers would take part in it,” he shared. “People would love to see how their favorite bakers from the past would fare. There’s something fun about crowning the ultimate champion at this point.”
The Great British Baking Show has invited past contestants back previously for one-off holiday and charity specials, but it has never done a fully-fledged All-Star season. Smith believes it wouldn’t take much convincing to entice former champions back to the famous tent.
“Past bakers always love coming back to the tent, that’s the thing I’ll say,” he explained. “Because they tend to think when they finish their series, I’m never coming back. So they get another chance. I don’t think we’d struggle to get them.”
©Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection
Over the years, the Great British Baking Show has crowned many popular winners, including the likes of Nadiya Hussain, Peter Sawkins, Nancy Birtwhistle, Rahul Mandal, Sophie Faldo, and Candice Brown.
Smith revealed that an All-Star season was first proposed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the show created a quarantine environment for contestants to live in while competing in the competition.
“[The idea] had never been floated before then,” Smith recalled. “At the time we were thinking, ‘Is it going to be really hard to get new bakers during this lockdown period? Isn’t it a safer option to get returning contestants?’ It’s something people might really relish, bringing back those winners.”
However, after realizing they could still audition new applicants via Zoom, the decision was made to move ahead with fresh contestants. “Given that there was so little original programming going on at the time, it felt a little bit better to do a series with new faces as opposed to going back to people we’d seen before,” Smith added.
As for who could potentially return, Smith said he thinks most former winners would be up for the challenge, even though “one or two might not want to step back into the limelight again because of nerves.”
Smith pointed to some of the show’s earlier winners as those who might be more wary of returning. “The standard has gotten higher the further into the shows we’ve gone,” he stated. “No disrespect to Ed Kimber, who won season one, but the standard wasn’t as high as winning season ten or fifteen. The things we’ve identified as people’s abilities are much more finely honed the later on in the run.”
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The EP also gave his prediction for who would win an All-Stars season, explaining, “My expectation would be that the ultimate winner, the champion of champions, would be somebody who’s won in the past five or six years. But never say never. A lot of people that won have continued to bake and have publishing careers. They’re keeping their irons in the fire.”
Smith also disagreed with judge Prue Leith, who previously said an All-Star season was unlikely to happen due to past winners fearing they could ruin their reputation.
“It still remains the friendliest competition and the spirit of friendship and camaraderie,” he said. “We have bakers who have their moments. There’s a tiny bit of needling sometimes, but they’re there because they’re doing something they love in that tent. They’re not there to be super famous.”
Would you like to see an All-Star season of The Great British Baking Show? Which contestants would you like to see back? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
The Great British Baking Show, Season 15, Fridays, Netflix
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