Mike Roweis always up for a challenge.
“Dirty Jobs” is back, baby!
Truthfully, there’s never been a better time for it.
[Laughs]
[Laughs] No, not really.
“Dirty Jobs” was the granddaddy of essential working shows.
What is this season going to look like compared to what we were seeing almost a decade ago?
I can’t believe it’s been that long.
Well, the show itself hasn’t changed.
It’s still a transparent look at an honest day’s work through the eyes of an apprentice.
We still do almost no pre-production, very little scouting.
There’s no acting.
There’s no scripts.
There’s no writers.
We don’t do second takes.
The host is older than he’s ever been, so things hurt a little more.
But you know what?
So do the fans, people who have been with that show for the last 20 years.
I think they get it.
We’re all in a different place.
That’s really the biggest thing.
Our country has changed.
Our relationship with work is different.
And 11 million open opportunities, 11 million open jobs, that’s new.
$1.7 trillion in student loans, that’s new.
It’s still a show, first and foremost.
Its job is to entertain and to have fun.
It’s not a lecture or a polemic or anything like that.
What happens off camera on Dirty Jobs?
You said there’s very little pre-production.
What do you do to prepare for an episode of the show?
[Laughs] I mean, really, that’s the beauty of this show.
It’s the genius, and it’s the upside and the downside.
The upside is I don’t have to prepare at all.
I just think that’s important.
That means I don’t have to waste any time prepping.
On the downside, it means we basically shoot from sunup to sundown.
What you see is what really happens.
Like you said, you spend a whole day on a job site.
What we’re seeing in an episode is only part of the job.
What kind of moments are viewers missing that you wish were included in an episode?
Well, it’s still TV.
That is the bulk of the work.
I even wrote a song, you know?
It’s “The Rock Sucker Song.”
That happens this season more than once.
Well, there’s typically There’s the dangerous column, the exhausting column, and the disgusting column.
We got most of the disgusting stuff out of the way early in the run.
Feces from every species, exploding toilets, right?
Misadventures in animal husbandry.
I’ve violated every barnyard animal I think there is.
It’s a team of construction workers that are really iron workers that only do one thing.
These guys, physically, they’re just monsters.
They work all day long busting rods, as they call it.
They’re really very beautiful.
Are there any dirty jobs that Mike Rowe wouldn’t want to tackle?
A lot of these jobs that you do are not even to be dramatic life or death situations.
Are there any jobs over the years that you’ve been hesitant to take on?
[Laughs] Well, yeah.
All of them, maybe.
There’s a lot.
I mean, that’s the other thing about the show.
He’s a you know, he’s a stunt junkie.
He’s an adrenaline guy."
No, I’m not.
I only point that out because I’m not comfortable for a lot of the time.
[Laughs] I’m not necessarily scared.
So I’m often uncomfortable or not quite in my element.
But the truth is I’m not paid on this show to get it right.
I’m paid to try, so I never say no.
I’ll attempt whatever the job is.
A lot of those positions are dirty jobs.
Well, when we started, I had a list of about 20 that I wanted to do.
“Dirty Jobs” was this real simple tribute to my granddad.
It was supposed to be three one-hour specials, and it got out of control.
People saw those early episodes, and they wrote to me.
Wait until you see what they do."
That’s when I realized, you know what?
This is a very personal show.
You program the show, you know?
It’s always been that way.
That’s really special.
Is there any job that hasn’t been profiled on the show yet that you would like to try?
The truth is “Dirty Jobs” was never really about the dirt or about the job.
It was about the people.
You’ll run out of jobs eventually.
You’ll certainly run out of industries.
The first time I went in a coal mine, it was amazing.
We learned a bunch of stuff.
It was a bituminous coal mine in Pennsylvania.
And then a couple months later, I thought, “You know what?
That was so good.
Let’s go into an anthracite coal mine.
Let’s see the difference.”
And then that was so good.
I thought, “Well, let’s go into a bauxite mine.
Now let’s go into a borax mine.
Let’s go into a copper mine.
Let’s go into a gold mine.
Let’s go into an opal mine.”
So we wind up doing nine shows on mining.
The same thing happened with fish boats.
The crab boat was exciting.
I bet a lobster boat would be fun.
How about a haddock boat?
Suddenly, we started doing a lot of similar jobs that had important differences.
But mostly, it was the people.
Anyway, no, I don’t have a list of jobs somewhere that I’m dying to try.
But I’m still standing by to hear about sponge divers.
I mean, somebody said, “What about sponge diving?”
I said, “Where do we go?”
They said, “Tarpon Springs, Florida.”
I said, “Okay.
I’m there.”
Two weeks later, we’re free diving for sponges.
I’m sure there are other jobs like that out there I just haven’t heard about.
I’m just not looking for them.
I’m just waiting to see if somebody brings them and if the internet says, “All right.
Go do it.”
I would always ask, “Where should I go now?”
They would always have suggestions.
I would never do that in my life."
Meanwhile, the opal miners are saying, “You’re out there on that crab boat.
Are you out of your mind?
I would never do anything like that.”
That’s kind of cool, too.
It really is a mosaic.
Mike Rowe shares his scariest experience on the show
People get injured doing these jobs, too.
I know that you have broken bones and you’ve gotten stitches from doing them.
What’s the worst injury that you’ve had on “Dirty Jobs”?
I think the thing that scared me the most actually happened back late in Season 2.
I was with a farrier, a blacksmith, out in the middle of a field somewhere.
We were making horseshoes and shoeing horses out in the field.
He had this little blast furnace about the size of an oversized toaster oven, made out of iron.
It got very, very hot inside, and that’s what you’d use to forge the steel.
I thought, “Oh, you know what?
It’ll be cool to get one of those artistic shots.”
I had my cameraman on one side, filming very, very tight through this little slit.
So it’s one of those cool, high-speed shots that I thought would just be fun to get.
More gas built up inside this thing than [it] should’ve.
And it singes my eyebrows, burns off my eyelashes, and fused my contact lenses to my eyes.
I wasn’t sure what happened.
All I knew was when I blinked, it made a sound that it normally doesn’t make.
[Laughs] So I’m like, “Okay.”
I ran over to the truck.
I got in front of the mirror, and I just picked these little pieces of plastic out.
The doctor said later, “It’s a good thing you were wearing them.
They actually protected your eye.”
So I was fine.
You’re making TV, which makes you stupid.
Study after study shows making TV will make you stupid.
They’re all around you, too.
We have many, many stories of minor calamities that plagued us during the course of the show.
Thankfully, nothing truly tragic.
Well, I have contacts, too.
That makes my stomach just flip.
I mean, the honest answer is a 300-page book I can’t get around to finishing.
But the truth for me is the show is very, very personal.
He could build a house without a blueprint.
This show was a tribute to him.
I grew up right next to him.
I was his apprentice when I was a kid, and I thought I’d follow in his footsteps.
But the truth is that handy gene is recessive.
[Laughs] And I just didn’t get it.
So, upon his advice, I got a different toolbox.
I got into the entertainment business not because I loved it.
Frankly, I wasn’t interested in it at all.
I wanted to do what he did, but I couldn’t.
By the way, you’re able to’t sing.
[Laughs] So figure something else out."
That’s what entertainment was for me.
I went to a community college.
I had probably 300 jobs before “Dirty Jobs.”
I went right across the bay here in San Francisco.
I went into the sewer with a cameraman the next day and profiled a sewer inspector.
What I really learned from that, to answer your question, that’s when my education actually started.
That’s when I stopped impersonating a host and started being a guest.
That’s when I started letting the viewer see me try and fail.
I figured, “Look, if it happened to me, it can happen to you.”
It can happen to anybody.
Sorry, that’s a long answer, but that’s the truth of it.
And I think, to some extent, the lockdowns reminded people, too, right?
All those jobs suddenly become important.
Don’t forget about him."
Things we usually take for granted.
I didn’t even know a lot of these jobs existed, but they have to.
They’ve always been there.
This year I’ve had to figure out technology, like Zoom.
I’m not a technology person, but someone is.
They made the computer.
Like you were saying, it’s just things you don’t usually think about.
I didn’t know what Zoom was a year and a half ago.
I thought it was a verb, right?
It was “After the Catch,” the captains from “Deadliest Catch.”
We did nine of those things.
And then my Facebook show, “Returning the Favor,” we did 18 of those long distance.
It forced a lot of people to pivot or perish, really.
I mean, here we are.
We’re still figuring it out.
Will there be more seasons of Dirty Jobs to come?
Are we going to be able to see more of “Dirty Jobs” after this new season?
Well, I doubt that the data pipe is ever going to stop airing them.
Are we going to do more than the six that we just shot?
I’m open to it.
To be honest, I swore I’d never do another one after 2012.
Yeah, because I had made my point.
We shot in every state multiple times, and I felt like that was good.
We had a great run.
I certainly didn’t anticipate it, so it’s rare to have an opportunity.
I’m doing a show on Fox Business called “How America Works.”
I’m doing “Dirty Jobs” on Discovery.
I’m running themikeroweWORKS Foundationin between.
It’s not about that.
It’s just about saying, “All of this stuff suddenly feels connected.
Maybe it’ll be useful, helpful maybe, to somebody.”
