'Reluctant Traveler' host Eugene Levy: Behind the scenes of Season 2

28.02.2024 - 16:33 / travelweekly.com

When it comes to helming a successful travel show, Emmy Award-winning actor Eugene Levy has one thing most hosts don't: a serious lack of wanderlust.

Levy's aversion to adventure, however, helps set apart his Apple TV+ series, "The Reluctant Traveler," from similar shows, with much of its appeal centered around seeing Levy go way, way out of his comfort zone.

The series, which made its debut last year, is back for a second season this spring; new episodes premiere March 8. While the show's inaugural season highlighted destinations across several continents, the new batch of episodes takes Levy, who also is an executive producer of the program, on a grand tour of Europe.

Hotels editor Christina Jelski interviewed Levy and fellow executive producer David Brindley to talk about how destinations are chosen, Levy's "reluctant" approach to travel, set-jetting -- and whether Levy uses a travel advisor for his own trips.

Christina Jelski: Eugene, with one season of "The Reluctant Traveler" under your belt, would you say you're as reluctant as ever?

Eugene Levy: I'm considerably less reluctant. I'm loving doing the show. I really am. I'm actually loving doing the traveling, [but] I think there are probably two things that will always kind of keep me in that kind of "reluctant" bubble, which is a lack of curiosity and basically no sense of adventure. But that's me. And I don't think that's ever going to change.

C.J.: Who's in charge of choosing destinations, hotels and itineraries? And Eugene, how much of each trip is a surprise?

E.L.: A lot of it is a surprise. I mean, I know where I'm going when I'm on the plane, but [David] is really the guy responsible for figuring out where we're going and what would be interesting.

David Brindley: We have a big, amazing production team that sort of put together a lot of ideas, and once we landed on a big, overarching [theme], which was Europe, then we started to drill into that.

We were very keen that it [not be] the Europe that everybody immediately would have thought to visit. We're not going to London, we're not going to Paris, we're not going to Rome. We're actually starting in the northernmost reaches of Sweden, in a very rural area, and we end up at the most southerly point of Spain in Tarifa. And that adds to that layer of surprise, I think.

E.L.: It's kind of a behind-the-scenes look at Europe.

C.J.: Last season, you featured some pretty notable hotels and resorts. Are there any unique or over-the-top properties that were particularly memorable this season?

E.L.: There are a lot of