Secret Celebrity Renovation is returning in the 2023 TV season for the third round of episodes, and there should be just as many feel-good moments from famous faces this time around as in the previous two seasons. Rob Mariano – better known to Survivor and The Amazing Race fans as "Boston Rob" – is back as the home improvement contractor who helps the celebrities help those who are most important to them. Season 3 kicks off on August 4 with two back-to-back episodes on CBS, which will reunite Mariano with The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan and team up him with Fire Country star Max Thieriot.
Boston Rob Mariano, who was originally a guest on the show in Season 1, spoke with CinemaBlend ahead of Secret Celebrity Renovation's third season, and he opened up about working with the two celebs!
Boston Rob was a familiar face on CBS even before he joined Secret Celebrity Renovation as a contractor for Season 2, as he is a Survivor legend after several seasons of that show and appeared in two seasons of The Amazing Race. Fans can see him reunite with Phil Keoghan on a very different show with the Season 3 premiere. When I spoke with Mariano about what's in store, he previewed what it was like to work with Keoghan and who the Amazing Race host wanted to help:
It was awesome. Phil and I really didn't have much of a relationship outside of The Amazing Race from doing it two times, but I always respected Phil from watching the way he conducted himself as a host of the race. I look up to him, and then seeing what he's done with Tough as Nails. He has that adventure and that spirit that I feel I relate to a lot. So getting to work with him back in a place where he grew up on the island of Antigua and to spend the time getting our hands dirty and doing the work, you really get to see these celebrities [and] what they're really made of, and I gotta tell you, Phil is the guy that just goes above and beyond all the time.
Plenty of people get their hands dirty on The Amazing Race, but Secret Celebrity Renovation is the show that will get Phil Keoghan in action instead of hosting. Boston Rob only had praise for the television personality, as Season 3 gave them the opportunity to join forces in a way that they never could when he was competing on Keoghan's show. Mariano went on to describe what the Amazing Race icon wanted to do with his chance to help somebody:
He is a genuine, heartfelt good dude, and he did the renovation for his neighbor Lotte who lived in Antigua when he was a boy next to him, and what was cool about that renovation was that it wasn't a personal renovation just for her. She was a volunteer at the local hospice, so when Phil approached her and told her they want to do something for her, immediately she says 'Not for me. Let's do it for the community at large.' And we ended up renovating the hospice in Antigua, so that it's gonna help all these other people that are going through this really difficult part of life. It's just awesome to see someone like Phil, and in the people that he associates with giving back in this kind of way. So it was an honor to get to work with him again.
Not only did Phil Keoghan go back to his roots in Antigua with the resources of Secret Celebrity Renovation, but the team will renovate a hospice for a volunteer. Talk about a feel-good way to start a season! As any fans who watched earlier episodes on CBS or streamed via Paramount+ subscription know, this show has a knack for tugging on the heartstrings. Boston Rob Mariano went on to share that he and Keoghan have "hung out a few times" since working the renovation, including playing tennis and working out.
The second episode of the back-to-back premiere event moves on from a CBS reality host to a CBS scripted star, with Max Thieriot – formerly of SEAL Team before moving on to star in and executive produce Fire Country – choosing his own friend to help with Secret Celebrity Renovation. According to Rob Mariano, Thieriot decided to help the man who actually inspired the story of Fire Country. The contractor shared:
Max was great. He's great on Fire Country, but we actually went to Northern California up by Occidental near Bodega Bay, just north of San Francisco, and a friend of his that he grew up with, Josh, is an actual firefighter... This is the guy that inspired the show, so to get to spend time with Max up there – Josh has a young family, a wife, and he's a fireman, he has a meat-cutting business. He's got a lot going on. So he's handy and he started to, [as] you can tell in the renovation, he started to do all these different projects around this house, but I think he just ran out of time and he needed somebody to help him to finish.
We can only hope that Max Thieriot's friend's life is far less dramatic than what the Fire Country characters go through, even if he is the inspiration for the show! Thieriot's episode of the home renovation show sounds quite different from Phil Keoghan's, but no less heartwarming. Mariano went on to share part of what stood out from the experience with the SEAL Team alum:
What was really cool was Max not only recognized that, but once we got there, we got [Josh] to the finish line so that now he can spend that time with his family and his friends and he doesn't have to always keep working on these side projects.
Fortunately, you don't have too much longer to wait to see how Phil Keoghan and Max Thieriot went the extra mile to help those important to them, with the assistance of Rob Mariano, interior designer Sabrina Soto, and host Nischelle Turner. The two-episode premiere of Secret Celebrity Renovation will begin on Friday, August 4 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS. Following the double dose of renovation on premiere night, one new episode will air per week in the 8 p.m. ET time slot on Fridays.
