Comedian Joel McHale is returning to E! The entertainment network has announced its slate of original programming for 2023, and McHale popped up in an upcoming reality show. The former host of E!’s The Soup is set to executive produce and host Celebrity Beef, a cooking competition that will debut this summer and pit two celebrities against each other in a “good old-fashioned beef-squashing cook-off.”
According to the show’s description, “Each week, two celebrities will go head-to-head in a light-hearted face-off, knives in hand and spices on the rack, ready to cook the best dish this side of the Hollywood Hills. Joel acts as prosecutor, judge, and jury, ultimately crowning one celebrity the winner of the cook-off and helping the celebrities squash their beef once and for all.”
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The Community star also hosts, and executive produces another food-centric show, Fox’s Crime Scene Kitchen. Bakers in each episode are tasked with identifying the type of dessert prepared in a kitchen using only crumbs, flour trails, and a few clues. They then must recreate the desserts, from scratch, for the judges. Each episode is divided into two rounds: the first round winners receive an extra hint in the second round. The team with the worst performance in the second round is eliminated from the competition.
After the series premiered in May 2021, it was announced on May 16 that it was renewed for a second season. In January, McHale revealed to Mashed how shows like Crime Scene Kitchen finally allow him to express his love of food. “Baking is a world that I wasn’t really a part of,” he said. “I just enjoyed it. And then after hosting [Crime Scene Kitchen], I’m like, it is a science, and it is so difficult to do it right. And the judges — Curtis Stone and Yolanda Gampp, who’s the queen of cakes — talk like they are at jet propulsion labs, and it’s pretty incredible.”
“But the way the show is different than regular baking shows is that there’s this kitchen they set up, and the bakers have two minutes to go into this kitchen, and there is evidence left behind of something that has been baked, like five to 10 things…and they have to figure out what was baked there.”
“And you would be amazed at how close people get and amazed at how far people miss,” McHale continued. “So there’s definitely, like, an unboxing sort of vibe to it and a mystery thing to it. So that’s really what I think sets it apart. I had so much fun doing it. And of course, ingesting 9,000 calories a day, which I’m still working off, which is cool, but it was, boy, it was a blast.”
McHale has appeared in movies and TV shows such as Community, The Great Indoors, and Stargirl. He last appeared on E! in 2020 alongside his wife, Sarah Williams, on the Kevin Hart game show Celebrity Game Face.
