In LEGO Masters Jr., the children are getting their turn at competing to be crowned the best brick builder – and Brickmasters Amy and Boone are on hand to coach them through it, then judge their creations. In this exclusive interview, they talk about what it’s like to work with young creatives.
LEGO Senior Design Manager Amy Corbett has served as a Brickmaster across five US seasons of the competitive building show, plus several holiday specials – and in LEGO Masters Jr. she is joined by LEGO Model Designer Boone Langston, who previously competed in the series so knows better than most how it feels to create against the clock.
In the first episode of LEGO Masters Jr., the teams – including the celebrities helping the children – were tasked with building a world inspired by Disney. Over the next three weeks (Mondays on Fox at 8.00pm ET/PT), they will have to construct epic stunts, Harry Potter influenced common rooms and imaginative NINJAGO dragons. As Brickmasters, it’s up to Amy and Boone to help nudge the teams towards their goals, then ultimately judge their creations and select the winners.
“The kids are so talented,” says Amy. “There are such great builds. There’s so much magic. It was so wholesome. It just made Boone and I smile the whole time and beam with pride at what these kids could create. I’m sure it’s going to inspire so many more kids to want to be on the show as well.”
The duo took some time out of their busy schedule designing LEGO models and supervising television contests to talk about their experience being on set with children instead of the typical adult builders.
Blocks: Boone, what was it like moving from a contestant on LEGO Masters and having the pressure of building to overseeing everything and keeping an eye on everybody?
Boone: It was a wild experience seeing it from the other side. I built with my teammate Mark on Season 1. I came back for the holiday special after Season 3 and built with Robin [Thicke]. It’s a different kind of intensity I would say, because as a builder, you have this pressure of the clock –from the time the clock starts until it’s done you really can’t stop thinking, you can’t stop moving. You have to communicate well with your partner. It feels like the only thing that exists in the world is getting to the end of that build.
Being a Brickmaster is also a lot of pressure, because the decision ultimately is down to what Amy and I point at and identify and agree on and say like, ‘we can stand by these decisions.’ Then we have to be able to be comfortable standing by those decisions forever, because they will go out there to national television, they will go out there to the streaming platforms and that’s a lot of pressure in a very different way.
Both are the most fun I’ve ever had, right? It’s just two different versions of this insane, wild, fun thing.
Blocks: Amy, what is it like having young builders in the room instead of adults? What kind of energy do they bring to the to the table?
Amy: The energy they bring is absolutely amazing. As soon as they came in, the awe from seeing what they normally sit on the sofa and watch on TV, to being in the studio, seeing all the bricks… seeing Boone – the cheer when Boone came in was amazing, all of these kids that had been sitting at home, cheering him and Mark on [and now he was there].
It made me see everything in a fresh way through a child’s eyes, with this new magic and excitement and that that was really, really special, especially since we’ve filmed five seasons, we’re on Season 6 now. That refreshing way of seeing the kids’ excitement was really nice for me.
But it’s also a bit wild having kids in the studio. They say things you’re not expecting or when we’re doing the check ins and going around, everything goes in a totally different direction than the plan. You try and do judging, you try and do a formula, then things just go totally in a different direction. But I think that’s what made it so fun as well.
Boone: And sometimes they want to just tell you about something that has nothing to do with the challenge. But for a lot of adults, the distance between idea and execution is quite a long distance. But for kids, that distance is nothing – they can literally imagine and build at the same time, it’s pretty special to watch.
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Blocks: I’ve already always had the theory that the gap between children building with LEGO bricks and adults doing it isn’t whether you’re a child or an adult, it’s how much experience you have with the bricks. What’s your take having seen them up close and competing in these challenges?
Amy: The kids blew us away with their LEGO building skills, their knowledge of the System, their creative confidence and I think that is the biggest thing they had that adults often lose. They would not spend like an hour planning. At the beginning, they were like, ‘great, we’ve got a challenge. It’s Disney. I’ve got this character. I’m going to start building an ice palace right away.’
They would run to the brick pit, they would start building, then they would find something that wasn’t working and they would just solve it right away. I think there was this creative confidence that propelled them forward, that often is a roadblock to adult builders. I would say there’s some things they had that that is far superior to what we see with the adults.
Blocks: It felt like some of the children were literally teaching their celebrity helper how to use the LEGO System. What were your reflections on those interactions?
Boone: In a lot of cases, yeah, the celebrity assistants or celebrity teammates were learning. The kids were the experts in the LEGO System. And I think the kids were the experts in imagination. And a lot of the adults became the experts in keeping the kids on track in a timed challenge. Keeping the kids at the table and focused on what they were building. I know Allie Sweeney in particular filled this very mom like role to the kids that were on her team. It was interesting to see those adults in the room adjust to how they could be that role in their team.
Blocks: Of the challenges that you set on LEGO Master Jr., which ones were your favourites? Which ones did you find the most interesting to see the kids participate in?
I’m a huge Disney fan, so I was really excited for the first challenge, bringing those Disney worlds to life. The kids knew the movies so well, but they interpreted them maybe in a different way than I would and I loved seeing their the Disney magic come to life there.
Boone: It’s really hard for me to pick because they were all so much fun. But I’ll say NINJAGO, because we had some teams building huge dragons really fast with so much imagination and almost this like reckless abandon, which is what allows them to accomplish so much building in a short amount of time.
Blocks: Thinking about the day to day design roles that you guys do at the LEGO Group, how are those similar or different to what you do on LEGO Masters?
Amy: I run a design team every day, so I’m very used to giving feedback and coaching my team and setting a design brief. So those are similar, but I think the pace at which we move on LEGO Masters is faster. I have to make much faster decisions as well. I don’t have overnight to sleep on it. I’ve got to look at a build right away and say, ‘this is working,’ ‘this is not working.’
I don’t have to send my team home and eliminate them. Obviously my day to day team come back every morning and build something again. Unlike LEGO Masters, where I have to do the eliminations and, especially with the kids, that was an extremely tough thing to do.
Boone: Since Amy manages a team at work, she’s probably giving feedback a lot more often than I do, but as a model designer, I work very collaboratively with the other designers around me and we practice giving feedback to each other. And that’s certainly something that helps in the role as a Brickmaster on LEGO Masters.
Then I would also say, just having that knowledge of the System and having that knowledge of techniques and things that work and don’t work using the LEGO building System, those things are certainly skills and pieces of knowledge that translate between both spaces.
In LEGO design we have development calendars for products, there are certain milestones that happen, every week, then there are milestones that happen every three months, so it’s much longer processes that we go through to see these products come to life. But on LEGO Masters, it’s literally hours. Every brief is either achieved or not achieved in a manner in a matter of six hours, eight hours, ten hours, whatever the length of the build is, then suddenly, before you know it, the season is over and it felt like this whirlwind of energy that just sort of swept through my life for a little while.
Blocks: Do you have any advice for young builders at home who one day want to be on LEGO Masters or maybe even want to work for the LEGO Group in the future?
Amy: I would say just build or be creative in any form you can at whatever opportunity you have. I think imagination is like a skill that you’ve got to practice doing, you’ve got to exercise it, you’ve got to use it a lot. Kids have the best imaginations, they just have to keep using them any way they can so that they can keep their imaginations alive and grow them. For me, it’s that creativity that’s really at the heart of every LEGO designer and that’s really the magic.
Boone: I would say just the knowledge that the builders you see on LEGO Masters and the people you might have heard of who work in LEGO design are real human beings that started out as kids, just like you – so it certainly is a thing that exists and is possible.
Another piece of advice that I always give is start find a way to take nice pictures of all of your original ideas that you turn into LEGO models, then save them and watch your progress over time and push yourself, then you can inspire yourself. But don’t throw away the ones that you look back on and maybe think aren’t good enough, because you can show yourself the growth you’re making as a builder. And if you save all those pictures, someday you can pick the best ones and use them as examples of the things you can build if you want to apply for LEGO Masters or if you want to create a portfolio for applying for a LEGO design job.
Blocks: Apparently the adults are getting back in the LEGO Masters world… what can you tease about what fans can expect from Season 6 of LEGO Masters?
Amy: It’s going to be our wildest season ever, with twists and turns at every corner. And you can guarantee there are going to be some incredible builds. And I really mean incredible builds, right Boone?
Boone: She’s not just saying that, Amy’s right, it is going to be pretty, pretty, pretty out there with the amount of talent and wild ideas that that play out.
Blocks: Given your celebrity status as Brickmasters on LEGO Masters, if you could be celebrity helpers on another television competition show, what would you want to go and help out on?
Amy: Do you have some connections that are going to get us on these shows? I think Bake Off. If there was a Bake Off edition with kids I could be a helper. I think that would be a lot of fun, because I like baking, but I’m not the best at it, so I think some kids could probably teach me a thing or two about baking and I could be a good assistant.
Boone: I would say the Great Pottery Throwdown. That’s one I have been really liking lately. I don’t know anything about pottery, but I think maybe there would be some crossover in the type of creativity you need, from the LEGO building world to the pottery world. And I love Rich on that show, because he started out in Season 1 as the kiln tech, then after a couple of seasons, became one of the judges. So I identify with that story, I think it would be fun to meet him.
If you want to read more about LEGO Masters Jr., then check out the Blocks review and recap of episode 1 and an exclusive interview with Will and Crosby.
LEGO Masters Jr. airs every Monday on Fox, then is available from Tuesday on Hulu.
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