Twenty years ago, Ari Shapiro auditioned to be a contestant on the ABC show “The Mole,” hosted by Anderson Cooper. He didn’t make it. He’s finally getting a chance to appear on the show, although not the way he imagined. He was chosen to host the reboot of his favorite game show, now on Netflix.
Shapiro found out he was selected as the host while he was at the theater enjoying “Sweeney Todd.” He wanted to scream out loud with joy, but instead, he whispered it to his husband Michael Gottlieb’s ear. “He asked me if I wanted to leave and I said, ‘No, it’s good, let’s stay,’ said Shapiro. It would be another year until Netflix announced they were reviving “The Mole.”
“I’ve always loved the show,” he said. “It has so many twists and turns. There are elements of puzzle solving and you need to form a strategy and try to guess the identity of the Mole. I’ve been fascinated by this show for years.“
“The Mole” takes 12 players and gives them a series of challenges to add money to a pot that only one of them will win at the end. Among the players is one person who has secretly been designated the Mole: tasked with sabotaging the group’s money-making efforts. In the end, one player will outlast their competition and expose the Mole to win the prize pot.
To host the series, Shapiro had to take a break from hosting his show “All Things Considered” on National Public Radio.
“They were very kind and gracious, and when I told them I needed to take a six-week break, they said this is a great opportunity, take it.”
Next, he picked up the phone and called one of his closest friends and colleagues, Alan Cumming. The two had been collaborating on a successful cabaret show “Och & Oy!,” where they sing songs and tell stories. Or, as their show promotion describes it: “‘Och & Oy!’ reflects on the world through the lens of two extraordinary LGBTQ+ performers.“ “Och,” Shapiro explained, “is a Scottish word which is the equivalent of ‘oy.’ It’s sort of like an exclamation point and a manifestation of our characters.”
Shapiro was born in Fargo, North Dakota, to a Jewish family. ”My family kept kosher and our meat was delivered from Chicago in a freezer once a month, or they pulled into the parking lot of the synagogue,” he said. “In our garage, we had a deep freezer where we kept all the meat for the month, and every Friday night, my mother would make challah and matzah ball soup for Shabbat dinner.”
In Fargo, there were two synagogues, and the family used to shuffle between them.
“On Friday night, we used to go to the Reform one, and on Saturday morning, to the Orthodox one, because my family always wanted to be inclusive,“ Shapiro said. When Shapiro was eight years old, the family moved from Fargo to Portland, Oregon, where there was a larger Jewish community.
He spent time as a White House correspondent for NPR, which is chronicled in his debut book, “The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening,” which includes stories about that time, when as a reporter he followed Syrian refugees fleeing the war and traveled on Air Force One with President Obama. It also describes his many visits to Israel, where he covered two wars.
“I explored the way identity shapes the stories we tell,” he said. “I think it is easy to default to the idea that identity means membership in a marginalized group. I wanted to explore that in the context of my covering the war in Israel in 2015 because I think people look at that and say, ‘Ari Shapiro is such a Jewish name, here’s somebody who’s clearly Jewish who is in Israel reporting on this conflict, how can he do it objectively?‘ But I think as a white person reporting in Zimbabwe or as an American reporting in Iraq, my identity is also relevant there too.“
In 2004, Shapiro — who came out as gay when he was 16 — married his longtime partner, attorney Michael Gottlieb. “We actually got married twice because, in the early days of same-sex marriage, it was complicated,” he said. “We had a civil ceremony in San Francisco and then a year later, his family rabbi and my family rabbi jointly officiated the wedding for the two of us in Napa. I remember our first meeting with each of them. They said, ‘Well, we’ve never done a same-sex wedding before,’ and I said, ‘Well, neither have we, so we can just figure out what we want it to be and build it from the ground up.‘“
“I’m constantly getting spun and lied to by people, so I thought I was pretty good at figuring out if people were lying, but it turns out I’m not as good as I thought.“ – Ari Shapiro
Asked if his experience as a journalist helped him read people better and figure out who the Mole was, he admitted he was surprised on each episode when a contestant was eliminated. “You could see it on my face, how surprised I was,” he said. “They didn’t reveal to me who the Mole was, so I didn’t know up till the end,” he said. “I learned I’m not as good as I thought about trying to tell when somebody’s lying to me or telling the truth. As a journalist, I’m constantly getting spun and lied to by people, so I thought I was pretty good at figuring out if people were lying, but it turns out I’m not as good as I thought.”
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