Yahoo News Ant & Dec share challenges hosting Saturday Night Takeaway from home
Saturday Night Takeaway made a major change for the most recent show, as Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly hosted live from their own homes amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The episode went smoothly, with the duo introducing classic highlights from previous years, but that didn't mean there weren't any challenges to overcome.
Speaking to Dermot O'Leary on BBC Radio 2 this morning (April 3), Ant & Dec shared some of the fresh difficulties they faced – including worrying about tech, hosting without an audience, and... figuring out the best shot of their living rooms.
"It just got to the point where we couldn't carry on bringing that number of crew into the studio," Dec said. "And it was impossible then to maintain social distancing and to do the show. Ant and I stand next to each other, but then to stand next to each other two metres apart, we couldn't do it anymore.
"We bought a couple of new mobile phones and had them broadcasting to the nation.
"It's very different... I've got [Ant] on a video conferencing line, just out of shot, and I'm doing it there and you're just praying that all the technicals hold up.
"You're trying your best, and you want it to feel like it's free and easy and 'you're welcome in my home', but actually there's a huge amount of nerves because you think, 'Is all this going to hold up? Is my Wi-Fi going to hold up? Everybody, off the Wi-Fi!'"
Related: Saturday Night Takeaway receives complaints over "infect the humans" joke in Men in Brown sketch
Ant added: "It's true. It looks kind of dead easy... but it's not. There's a lot more going into it than that.
"And you try to [show] the best part of your house, the best kind of corner to show – [which] you don't want to show too much of but – you want to say, you know, I want it to look good on the telly."
And discussing the lack of live audience, Dec described the experience as "pretty nerve-wracking".
"For us, doing those items, so much of our show relies on the audience and we feed off the audience," he explained. "So going live without them was pretty nerve-wracking for us, and we've just wanted to bring the best show that we could in those circumstances."
Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway next airs on April 4 at 7pm on ITV.
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