The Floor questions, answered: how the Fox game show is produced

Fox’s The Floor has become a staple in my house, a game show I love watching and playing along with. With fast-paced duels, the game moves quickly. And even as it’s added bonuses like the Time Boost and Territory Freeze, it’s held on to the core game: two players, going back and forth, trying to identify an image as quickly as possible.

Because I’ve me, and I love learning about how shows work behind the scenes, I’ve been gathering a list in my head about how things on The Floor work. How are the categories and images selected? Who judges players’ answers in real time? How much study time do the players get?

I reached out to showrunner Anthony Carbone, and he was willing to answer all my questions. We had a great conversation, and I’ve broken that down by question below.

Season six (Fox, Wednesdays at 8) has added another bonus: the Power Shot, which allows its holder to select a challenger rather than let the Randomizer do it.

Carbone teased that, in season seven—which already filmed—”added a game element twist that really just like shakes up the whole world.” But don’t worry about it becoming overloaded: he told me “we’ll probably lose one [of the advantages] at some point … because I think three is your max.”

Speaking of worry, I was a little concerned that the players this season are all champions—including Big Brother winner Xavier Prather, American Ninja Warrior winner Katie Bone, and Amazing Race winner Ricky Rotandi.

But most of the players are unknowns, at least to me, and it’s not turning the show into The Traitors. My anxiety was assuaged when I read Marisa Roffman’s great interview with Anthony about how that casting twist emerged organically.

When—and how—are players assigned categories?

An entire season is filmed in less than a week, in May, but producers start working on the show in January, including casting and creative.

Each season has 100 categories and 100 players, and unlike other game shows, The Floor’s players are told the categories in advance.

“The way it works is people apply, and they ask for certain categories,” Carbone told me. “Frankly, it’s impossible—we cannot cast a show of a hundred people with every category they want. Sometimes, you can’t get the rights to [a category].” (He shared that “my white whale is Pokemon; I’m still asking Nintendo constantly for Pokemon. I’m like, Please let us use Pokemon! And they’re just a brick wall.”)

During the casting process, the challenge team is writing categories. That’s when “we started assigning,” Carbone said. “We’re like, Okay, Andy writes about reality TV shows; reality TV shows is what his category is gonna be. This person wanted Beyoncé, but he’s a fisherman, so maybe [the category is] fisherman. And we call them, too. We’re like, Hey, how do you feel about this, this, this, this?”

Despite those conversations, players don’t know what category they’re assigned until “a few days before” filming begins. But they know all 100 categories before that.

“About a week ahead of time, they get all the categories—the entire list of every single category that is going to be on the floor,” Carbone said. “But they don’t know what their category is at that point. They might have an inkling.”

The list is not just the category name. Instead, players know the exact description that host Rob Lowe will give. While the way the category plays out might be surprising to us, it’s not to the players.   

Why are players allowed to study?

“Season one, we decided the philosophy of: let them study as much as possible. The game will be better,” Carbone told me. “If two people are great at a category, it’s fun, right? If two people know The Real Housewives and they’re going back and forth, it’s a great time.”

The players do not know their assigned position on the floor—and thus the categories they may face—until they walk out for the first episode of filming.

But after that, they can study away. “Any downtime we have—lunch breaks, whatever—they have free rein. Phones, whatever they need, study away, we’ll allow it,” Carbone said. “People will sit, crowd, study, do whatever they want. Some people, at night, they study—and then other people go out drinking and they usually lose, but they have a great time.”

Where do the photos come from?

When I’m watching The Floor, I’ll often laugh at and/or decry the photos of celebrities, as they’re often pretty awkward.

The Floor’s producers don’t intentionally choose bad photos, but they also have to pay for most images—unless the topic of a category has provided them in exchange for publicity.

“We have a bunch of libraries that we can pull from,” Carbone told me. “We have to pay for every photo.” One person, Dawn, handles clearances, and lets other producers know how much photos cost—which can be upward of $500 per photo.

“They all have different price points,” Carbone said. “Some are cheap as hell and some are given to us. We go to Monopoly and they’re like, Yeah, here you go. There’s either a small cost or they do it for free or whatever.”

Producers ultimately choose all the images that will be part of the game. “Things get thrown out because the photo’s not good. And sometimes it’s like, well, that’s what we have that’s best,” he said. For people or celebrities, “we try our best to be two eyes, face on. But yeah, sometimes we don’t have the greatest photos that we can choose from, just because the cost is so high.”

The quality of photos, he said, is something “we’ve tried to improve upon. Let’s make sure the photos are better. And hopefully, little by little, we’ve improved that.”

How do producers create—and test—categories?

Interestingly, the categories are written first, with all possible answers, and only then do producers find photos to match. Then showrunner Anthony Carbone and others play the game over Zoom to test the categories.

“Felicia Aaron runs our content team—the team that does all the trivia and all the pictures,” Carbone said. “She’s really creative. She’s always pitching ideas: What if we did this? And what if we did this? And it’s really neat.”

“There’s a whole team of people. We pick a category, they write a category,” he said. “They’re always pitching us stuff and coming up with creative ways to make unique duels.”

I asked about some of those more creative categories, such as in season six’s premiere, where the measurements category used pictures like the singer Jewel for “joule,” and an image of the car rental company for the unit “hertz.”

“We’re just trying to figure out ways to have fun,” Carbone said. “They pitch us things all the time. Sometimes they work. And sometimes I’m like, No. Last year was Fraggle Rock. They were like, What about Fraggle Rock? People love Fraggle Rock.”

That’s when Carbone put himself in a contestant’s position. “Let me study the Fraggle Rock thing as I would if it was on the show. And I’ll play Fraggle Rock.” He did, and decided “this is never gonna fly because it’s just so hard.” The opposite happened with the phonetic alphabet, e.g. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, which he thought wouldn’t work util he studied. “Once you flashcard this stuff, you realize, oh, easy.”

As to their Zoom games, Anthony told me “I play every category,” and sometimes his opponent is Fox VP of alternative entertainment Olivia Gomez. “She’s really super smart. [We] go back and forth on books very well.”

How many photos are there per category, and how are they arranged?

About 50 per category. The images are pre-arranged by producers, but not in any particular order; it’s not, say, 1) easy 2) easy 3) hard 4) hard, because a player might skip a question and that would throw off any attempt to balance the questions.

“We play every category and we go, That photo was weird and make sure it’s stacked late—let’s throw that to the back end or whatever,” Carbone said. “Because once that stack is set and that category plays, that’s the category.”

They previously aimed for about 55 photos per category, but that’s not always possible depending on the category and the photos available.

That happened “once we started progressing in seasons because we wanted categories that are a little more niche,” he said. “Or, a year ago, we had Lord of the Rings as a category,” and the film’s rights holders only offered 40 photos.

What if players make it through all photos?

“Whoever has the most time on their clock wins,” Carbone revealed. “That’s only happened once.”

What will broaden what we can choose from is if we do stuff that has less content. This season, we have NBA, WNBA teams. There’s only so many NBA, WNBA teams. And we’re okay with that, knowing that we may hit an end,” he said.

Why do players forget it’s their turn?

Some of the most shocking moments come when a player passes on a question, and then stands there silently, unbothered—because they think it’s the other person’s turn. Oh no!

Our point of view is from a camera that shows each player in profile, but players not looking at the big screen like we are. Instead, they look over their opponent’s shoulder at a screen, and when it’s not their turn, a giant X appears, as you can see in the image from Fox above.

When a correct answer is given, “they both hear the ding, and now the answer pops up,” Carbone told me. “And their clock is also on their screen as well. You can see them getting tighter as it goes, because they can tell where they’re at.”

Who judges players’ answers?

“It’s one person,” Carbone told me. “It’s one person and his finger is on a button.” We laughed when he said, “It’s a stressful job for that person.”

But that person is working from a predetermined list of answers that the creative team wrote, including any “also accepts,” which are variations.

Interestingly, that button person, Jamie, “only has the list of the answers,” Carbone said. “He knows photo one is Charlie Brown, photo two is Linus. He does not look at the photos.”

That is tested repeatedly. “They play it and play it and play it and they prep. And before the category goes, they look at it again,” he said. “So they try to absorb it as much as possible. But it is on the fly.”

The “also accepts” come from “large discussions,” and the button guy has back-up “support behind him—one guy who’s next to him who will tap his shoulder if it’s okay.”

Carbone shares this detail with players. “It is a human. I always tell the contestants, When you guys speak, speak loud. There’s a human on a button who’s listening for a thing, and he hits the button if it’s correct.”

In the season-six premiere, I was surprised that, in the Sesame Street category, “The Grouch” was allowed for Oscar the Grouch, but “Little Red-Headed Girl” was not okay for the Peanuts character Frieda.

Again, those decisions were made ahead of time—and Carbone said they’re trying to make this tough for players: “It’s us discussing what we would accept and not accept. To be honest, as we’ve progressed, we’ve tried to be a little harder on our acceptance of questions.”

What happens if there’s a mistake?

Game shows sometimes get answers wrong. That happens even on Jeopardy!, where, after a commercial break, Ken Jennings will explain that they’re, say, giving a player $600 because their answer was actually correct.

On The Floor, duels are filmed in real time, so if there is mistake, how does the show make that right? They have a process, and it’s basically: stop and start over with new photos.

“We’ve had user error mistakes,” Carbone said, and shared an example about a category in season five that involved resources like oil and gold.

“The first photo came, and the duel started. Three, two, one, go. Bam! A picture of wheat comes up. And the [contestant’s] saying wheat and nothing. Nothing! What happened was it was a misprint on the sheet. The number-one answer on the sheet was gold. So he’s just waiting for gold. In his head, he’s like, This guy thinks gold looks like wheat! What is going on?”

That’s when producers stepped in. “Okay, there’s a mistake. Stop. We have to stop everything—stop down. Rob goes into his greenroom, and then we had to just rewind, reset everything, throw that photo out. That’s what we would do if there’s any error.”

Thankfully, that’s not a regular occurrence. “We have gotten really good. Season one, that happened way more than I’d like. Again, we had six weeks to prepare for season one—to cast and figure out photos and figure out what it was and figure out the tech and figure out the set and figure out the music. That was crazy. Now we have it so dialed because we practice so much that we don’t have those errors anymore.”

Can the players sit down?

Yes. Each episode is 43 minutes long on TV, but takes about two hours to film, which Carbone said includes “a lot of downtime.”

After players are chosen for a duel, “they walk up, there’s a stop. The challenge team comes out, the content team question team comes out and says, Okay, your category is vegetable. You’re going to see photos of vegetables that are there,” he said. In other words, they’re once again given specific information about how to play the round.

During that time, players hang out on the floor, as you can see above—resting and/or having fun.

Where is The Floor filmed—and why in Ireland?

For its sixth (and upcoming seventh seasons), The Floor moved to Troy Studios in Limerick, after filming its earlier seasons at a studio near Dublin.

Carbone told me that the new studio makes logistics easier. “What’s great about Limerick is everything’s housed in one place,” he said. “My makeup team and my wardrobe team and the contestants are all under one roof. And that’s a much nicer system than the other place, where we had the studio and then we had to go outside.”

Money. Rob Lowe told The Telegraph, “It’s cheaper to bring 100 American people to Ireland than to walk across the lot at Fox, past the sound stages, and do it there.”

Studio-based shows have been fleeing Los Angeles for years now, and that’s because other places offer them incentives. Ireland offers unscripted producers a refund of up to €15 million. Love Island USA and Survivor get a similar tax credit from Fiji.

Does The Floor share its set?

Nope! Though other shows have copied its design. People think that they’re all filmed on the same set because, Carbone told me, “there is a hub of The Floor set that is in Amsterdam—in Hilversum, actually, which is right outside of Amsterdam. And that’s where Talpa built a replica of our set, which is really cool.”

Of the more than 30 countries that have versions of The Floor, “most of them go through that hub in Amsterdam, which is basically our set, our music and stuff like that.”

Fox’s version stayed in Ireland because of their relationship with the production company BiggerStage, which says it produces shows “with the unrivalled efficiencies of Ireland’s renowned production industry.”

Carbone said he went to the Netherlands to help out with the Australian version of The Floor, which is also produced by Eureka Productions, and that’s where he was introduced to a new company that now provides the show’s game engine.

“They’re called Market Graph,” Carbone said. “Season one, two and three, we used a different company. Now we’ve moved over to this new company and they’re brilliant. … It’s literally a guy [on] a laptop half the time, just going beep, beep, beep, beep, and he can run everything and it’s brilliant. And ever since they’ve been integrated with us and the American side, we’ve just run so much smoother.”

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