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Hamish Blake is looking even more outlandish than he usually does on his hit show Lego Masters Australia. He’s kitted out as DC Comics antihero Lobo, the chains around his waist are clanking, his face is caked in heavy, cracking make-up and, perhaps most striking of all, he’s boasting a pillowy six-pack he’s dubbed “my doona abs”.
“This season it’s all themed, so it’s just dress-ups galore,” Blake says on set. “Today I feel like we work at Movie World, we’re just wandering around dressed up as superheroes.”
Lego Masters Australia judge Ryan “Brickman” McNaught is also in full costume, as Guy Gardner from Green Lantern. “I’m going to busk later in Pitt Street Mall and hopefully get some loose change,” he jokes.
It’s all part of filming for “DC Heroes” week, which will be the second episode on Lego Masters Australia: Bricktacular, the upcoming eighth season of the reality competition series. The new season consists of four special event episodes, each focused on a different franchise. The Lord of the Rings, Bluey (which Blake has a particular soft spot for as he has voiced characters for the animation) and Jurassic World will also get the Lego treatment in the talented hands of returning contestants.
Blake is excited about the concept as he knows from experience how difficult it is to pull together these types of episodes. “It’s really hard to get permission,” he says. “It’s not just a matter of going, ‘Hey, we’re going to do a Star Wars episode’ and then later on, George Lucas goes ‘cool’. It’s months of making sure everything’s OK. So I love that we get to do four of these worlds in a row. It’s two things that we know and love converging: Lego and heavily copyrighted properties!”
A big twist for the upcoming series is that instead of pairs, for the first time it will be teams of three battling it out for the top spot. While on a different reality show dropping another person into an already established duo might be a source of tension, that’s not how it has panned out here. Lego Masters Australia, after all, has become popular family viewing for its gentle, feel-good vibes.
“The competition is high, but the animosity is low,” explains Blake.
“We don’t have too many disagreements to be honest, because we’re a pretty positive sort of show,” says McNaught. “Given they’re all past contestants, they know a good idea when they hear it, so there’s no fight about ‘my way’s better than your way’. We’re asking them to build on a bigger scale, too. Three [people] gives them the power to do that.”
On the set, it is relatively quiet for the day’s eight-hour build except for the melodic tinkle of Lego bricks clinking against one another. Contestants have plenty to choose from: 4 million blocks are available in the Brick Pit. This year’s trophy has just arrived, decorated with miniature figures of the cast and crew which McNaught crafts every year and only finished the week prior. For the 2026 version, he wanted something to reflect that the teams are trios so it breaks into three pieces with a special surprise inside.
“I’ve recreated the studio inside the trophy,” says McNaught. “The running joke is it’s always been in there, just no one’s ever looked.”
As Blake joins McNaught in the make-up room off-camera, the pair share a jokey camaraderie that mirrors their on-screen chemistry, easily interjecting in one another’s answers. Blake, however candidly, admits that when the show started in 2019, he had a few reservations.
“Before I knew Brickman, I was told there’s this guy, Brickman, and he’s a master builder,” says Blake. “In my head – and I wasn’t trying to be insulting to him – I was like, well, odds are this guy’s never done TV, he’s probably not going to be great on camera, so I was thinking of ways to limit how much Brickman talks.” Both he and McNaught break into laughter. “Then we met and got on so well. When Ry got on set, he was just in his element and was a natural. That was a great fluke. Getting to collect a friendship out of the show was also a great bonus.”
Their partnership has had an unexpected benefit for Blake, who has come to rely on the engineering expertise of McNaught for his famous twice-yearly cake nights, on which Blake pulls a whisky-fuelled all-nighter to bake whatever birthday cake his kids ask for – no matter how difficult the feat.
“For 75 per cent of those cakes, my children have requested something that is impossible for a cake to do, and thank God that I’ve got Ryan, who’s amazing,” says Blake. “Had we never met and done this show I think cake nights would have lasted three years. Unfortunately, my strategy for making the cakes is five days out I’ll go, ‘Hey mate, could you make a model of my son as a robot and it has to chop and support its own weight and have a blade on its arm?’ And then Ryan, who’s in the middle of a million different things, will always go, ‘OK.’”
For McNaught, the show has offered an interesting lens on the changing way Lego has been perceived over the years. After quitting a solid job in IT to pursue his passion for Lego, he became a Lego Certified Professional in 2011 – a title that had him frequently pulled over at customs, convincing airport staff it wasn’t a joke.
“I’ve been involved in Lego for a very long time, and it was still just classified as a children’s toy,” says McNaught. “But two cataclysmic events happened that have changed the way Lego bricks are looked at. The first one was The Lego Movie [in 2014]. It made it almost mainstream and brought it into the general consciousness. The second thing was [this] television show. It was pretty game-changing, to make it OK, particularly for adults to go, ‘How cool is it?’
“For me, someone who’s always loved Lego, to see that happen has been awesome.”
Lego Masters Australia: Bricktacular premieres 7pm July 5 on Channel Nine and 9Now.
