Lego Masters 2021: meet the cast

Lego Masters Australia returns to Nine for its third season on Monday as eight teams compete for the chance to win $100,000.

Host Hamish Blake introduces challenges with wild new twists while judge Ryan McNaught (aka Brickman) advises contestants on taking their creativity to new heights.

This season introduces two new bricks into the mix: The Platinum Brick will help teams gain an advantage and comes with its own twist, and the freshly minted Brick of Doom will will come with a ‘curse’ …

By the Grand Final.episode the last three surviving pairs will work on an epic final build, with a room full of Lego fans choosing the winning team.

This year get set for exciting new challenges, such as the tricky race where our teams must create a Lego vehicle that can run on a purpose-built track, with a difference – there are no wheels in the Brick Pit! We introduce a Marvel challenge where teams are asked to build a moment of impact set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Plus, our teams create out-of-this-world castles only to see them destroyed by a hurling bowling ball.

The Brick Pit is the ultimate Lego dream room. This year we have a whopping 3.2 million bricks for the teams to rip apart in making their dazzling builds. There is a brick, plate, tile and Minifigure for every challenge thrown at them.

Lego Masters comes from producers Endemol Shine Australia. The series is adapted from an original UK format from Tuesday’s Child Productions and The Lego Group.

Anthony (20) and Jess (30)
Queensland
Hotel concierge Anthony and science communicator Jess plan to combine their skills to make Lego sculptures unlike anything you’ve ever seen. They will be creating builds that showcase their love of playing with textures, and using different bricks in weird and wonderful ways. A lifelong lover of Lego, Anthony has enthusiasm in spades which extends to his greatest passion. He specialises in replicas and always ensures that his builds are authentic. Given the chance, he would have nailed the DeLorean car featured in Lego Masters Series One. He has an extensive knowledge of bricks and their correct names, and his favourite is either the 2×4 brick or the 1×2 plate, as he has used both in every build he’s ever done. Jess is bubbly, bright, passionate, and keen to see what she can make out of the Lego Masters never-ending Brick Pit. She says her build style usually involves challenging the norm, and she loves to build upside down or on strange angles. She thinks outside the box and manages to find weird and wacky ways to replicate what she envisions in her mind. Her strong problem-solving skills help in making her visions come to life.

Atlanta (26) and Jeff (28)
South Australia
Atlanta and Jeff met a Supanova convention in Sydney. They love to create together, whether it be through art, board games, video games or Lego. They spend hours upon hours building, and although they have different visions of how their builds should go, they always turn out perfectly because of the way these two work together. Atlanta is a luxury dice consultant who went through a Lego “dark age” for about 10 years, losing interest in the little bricks. But watching Lego Masters last year with Jeff revitalised her passion and Lego is now a great source of joy for her. A self-confessed enthusiastic geek, Jeff says Lego is the ultimate creative tool and challenge. He loves the opportunity to build entire fantasy worlds from virtually nothing, and his favourite brick is the 2×4, as even though it is the most basic one it’s the most versatile.

David (41) and Gus (36)
Victoria
David and Gus are ready to show Australia their great love of Lego and excited to transform bricks into any creation they can dream up. Project manager David says confidently that when he is building with Lego he can focus solely on the bricks, giving him the ability to produce an unlimited array of transformations. Gus, an engineer, applied for Lego Masters because he knew it was the perfect opportunity to challenge his creativity, as he loves to draw and sculpt but needed another outlet to bring his passions to life. When it comes to Lego building styles, Gus’s preference is structural and realist, and he tends to build things that represent real-life objects.

Amy (33) and Dawei (34)
Victoria
With a love of the weird and wacky, Dawei, an auditor, is no stranger to pushing his mind to the limit and confident that Lego Masters is the perfect place to bring his childhood passion to fruition. He met 33 year old Content Creator Amy online at the end of 2019 and together they have created YouTube channel ‘Foxy Bloxie’ where they review Lego together. Dawei has spent tens of thousands of dollars on Lego since getting back into it in a big way just a year ago. Out of his thousands of bricks, he says that his favourite is the BURP (big ugly rock piece) as he loves how it can rapidly increase the size of any model and provide a lot of context to a model as part of the terrain and scenery. When Dawei was a child his family couldn’t afford much Lego, so he would purchase instruction manuals for 50 cents to read over and over, cover to cover. He’s come a long way since then as an avid collector, yet he doesn’t consider himself a real AFOL (adult fan of Lego).

Michael (25) and Harrison (26)
NSW/ACT
Harrison and Michael have known each other since they were teenagers at the same high school in Canberra, but it wasn’t until years later when they played on the same university touch footy team that they realised they shared a passion for Lego. Harrison is a PhD candidate in chemistry and Michael is a physiotherapist. Although these two mates have a love of all things science, this doesn’t mean they don’t excel in the world of Lego. Harrison describes himself as an extroverted nerd who loves Lego and says, “It’s amazing how you can start with a seemingly random array of pieces and somehow, following the perfect sequence, form an amazing piece of art.” Michael is witty and easygoing. He digs Lego so much that he even incorporates it into the therapy he does with his patients. Michael sees Lego helping with fine motor skills, with the bonus of bringing out the creative side in people. “I have seen firsthand the excitement and joy that Lego can bring into people’s lives,” he says.

Owen (26) and Scott (26)
Western Australia
Best friends since high school, Owen and Scott will bring their love of Lego to the creation of whole towns, scenarios and worlds out of nothing. Although these two have very different minds on a creative level, they complement each other perfectly as Scott looks at the bigger picture while Owen is detail-oriented. Barely able to put the way they cherish Lego into words, these mates will push each other to new heights, both metaphorically and literally, while they create huge models. As an engineer, Owen is no stranger to building something out of nothing and says that his work is almost like “playing with giant Lego that is made out of steel”. He says his strengths are his intelligence and problem-solving skills, and he’ll be using these to lead them to success on Lego Masters. His proudest build would have to be the first one he completed after coming out of his own Lego “dark age” that lasted almost a decade. He created a medieval village which pushed him to utilise the skills and styles he had picked up from other hobbies. These external skills brought a realism to his builds that he had never achieved as a child and reinspired him to jump right back into the world of Lego.

Ryan (42) and Gabby (39)
Victoria
Primary school teacher Ryan and occupational therapist Gabby may have different Lego backgrounds but are keen to meld their love of the bricks by putting put their imaginations and skills to the biggest test on Lego Masters. Both creatives at heart, Ryan is an avid musician and Gabby trained in theatre arts and stage management. Ryan enjoys building with Lego because he finds it enjoyable, relaxing, exciting, fun and surprising, all at the same time. The most unusual thing he has ever created was a “mini me” ventriloquist-style replica doll of himself. A longtime fan of Lego, Ryan was always interested in seeing what he could pull out of his imagination and create, but like most AFOLs he too had a “dark age”. He came back to Lego around 2008, but really threw himself into the deep end again four years later. Now he is fully immersed in the Lego community as part of a broad range of activities, being a member of LUGs (Lego User Groups) that have made him well known in the world of Lego devotees. On the other hand, Gabby played with Lego as a kid with her brothers but never owned her own sets, as “back then Lego wasn’t really aimed at girls”. Today she incorporates Lego into her work as an occupational therapist, and she was part of a course that used Lego play to help adults with mental health issues communicate with her. This course proved to be so important that she bought a Lego set for her son (although admitting it was for her) and the rest is history.

Fleur (43) and Sarah (47)
Victoria
Sarah and Fleur are two mums both confident that they have what it takes to win Lego Masters. Larger-than-life Sarah has been building with Lego her entire life and says she loves it so much because it makes her feel creative and relaxed. Fleur, on the other hand, has had a 32-year “dark age” – since childhood in fact – but knows that this extraordinarily long time-out will be no disadvantage to her in the competition. Sarah considers her Lego style to be colourful and creative, as she loves to work on builds that others would never think of. Fleur has more of an organic style: she likes to start a build without planning and let it come alive. Fleur’s favourite Lego brick is the 2×2 modified plate with octagonal bar frame because it is perfect for both cupcakes and flowers, two of her favourite things to build. Speaking of cupcakes and flowers, Fleur’s most unusual build has been a cake stand and a high tea setting. Sarah’s favourite brick is anything technic, as she has formed a great relationship with these elements.

Lego Masters Australia Series 3 Facts

• 3.2 million pieces of Lego live in the Brick Pit.
• An additional 500 unique parts have been introduced.
• There are 5,000 unique Lego elements in the Brick Pit and 9,000 Minifigures.
• 150 base plates were used to skin/cover/dress the challenges in this series. That’s the equivalent of 345,600 Lego studs.
• We’ve introduced a new way to power Lego models and make them move using Bluetooth.
• Each team has a sorter to break down their model after the episode.
• To ensure COVID safety measures, each dismantled build is then washed before being returned to the Brick Pit.
• The money value of Lego in the Brick Pit is estimated at $1.2 million (consumer value).
• 5,100 additional Lego pieces, specifically requested by the last three surviving teams, are brought in for the Grand Final.

7:30pm Monday on Nine.