BYU senior Miranda Maynard competed on season 3 of reality TV competition LEGO Masters with her brother Drew.
Miranda Maynard said her brother started building LEGO at an early age, but that she got into LEGO in middle school. “I really got into it more in middle school and early high school because that’s when some sets that I really liked started coming out,” she said.
The siblings said they love building LEGO together and Drew Maynard has a YouTube channel dedicated to LEGO building.
“When Drew and I are working together, he’ll usually create skyscrapers,” Miranda Maynard said. “I love to furnish things and add little details.” She said she loves to tease and joke with her brother through their builds by making all of his mini figures look funny.
According to Miranda Maynard, LEGO Masters later reached out to them to participate on the show. “We actually got it through an Instagram DM, and we looked at it and were like, ‘this isn’t real, right?'” she said.
LEGO Masters season three features 24 contestants competing in pairs to earn a $100,000 cash prize, a LEGO trophy and the ultimate title of LEGO MASTER.
Maynard said she and her brother agreed to go and left Provo to film the competition in Georgia. She also said her husband, Josh Bauer, stayed behind. “I mostly sat here at home, just eating some Walmart off-the-shelf pie all by myself,” Bauer said.
The two have been married since May 1 of this year, and according to Miranda, doing the show was the first time since then they’d spent any time apart from each other. “We got to FaceTime once a day after she finished her filming for the day,” Bauer said.
Maynard said the whole experience was fantastic. “We were so nervous but mostly just excited to be there,” Maynard said.
In the first episode of the season, which premiered on Wednesday, Sept. 21 on FOX, contestants had to build a spaceship that represented their team. Maynard and her brother built a bottle rocket featuring activities that their family loves to do in their small Idaho hometown.
Maynard said filming was stressful at the beginning since they did not know what it would be like, but that feeling did not last too long.
“We were both really surprised to find how easy it was to sometimes forget the cameras were there,” Maynard said. “At some point it was just like, ‘oh, this is just what we’re normally doing.'”
Bauer said building LEGO is a normal thing for the Maynard family. “Miranda’s dad is always buying the new LEGO sets, and they usually put me on building them,” Bauer said.
The couple said they play LEGO Star Wars on the Nintendo Switch together, and Bauer loves seeing the cool new builds his wife comes up with.
He mentioned one she built during an interview with FOX News. “She built this little face with crazy hair that was maybe a little inspired by mine,” Bauer said. “I just thought it was really smart, a really clever piece of LEGO building there.”
BYU student Tommy Hale also loves LEGO and LEGO Masters. He said he loves building with his three brothers. “LEGO, that’s something I’ve done my whole life,” Hale said.
Hale’s little brother introduced him to the LEGO Masters show. “When we first saw it, we were like, ‘This is the coolest thing that ever exists! Who thought of it? It’s genius!'” Hale said.
Hale said the time crunch on the show is incredible. “I never imagined people could just make something like that off the top of their head in ten hours,” Hale said.
Luckily, according to Maynard, being a contestant was not high-stress all the time.
“You’re not going at it for fourteen hours a day,” Maynard said. “Thankfully they’re a bit nicer about that. There’s some time in between so you can have your lunch, get a break.”
Maynard said it took two days to film the single NASA-inspired challenge in the first episode of the third season.
Although Maynard and her brother are finished with filming LEGO Masters, she said they still keep in touch with the other contestants.
“There’s definitely a big LEGO Masters group chat, and there’s a lot of updates there pretty regularly,” Maynard said.
When asked what her favorite thing was about the entire experience, Maynard said her answer was cheesy, but true. “It was just being there with my brother,” Maynard said.
She said she was so happy the two of them were able to have this experience together because they are now closer in a way they were not before.
“We’re best friends. It’s the dream!” Maynard said.
