Netflix is Rebooting 2000s Reality Show 'The Mole' – will Anderson Cooper Return to Host?

After adding the early 2000s reality show "The Mole" to its library last year, Netflix is rebooting the series that was once hosted by Anderson Cooper, Variety reported.

The new version of the ABC reality show, which is expected to be released this fall, will have 10 episodes and feature 12 players working together on challenges that earn money that goes into a pot that one contestant will take home at the end of the show. Among the group is the Mole – a player who has been secretly selected to sabotage the challenges and prevent the team from earning money. At the end of each episode players take a quiz on the identity of the Mole and the contestant with the most incorrect answers is sent home.

The original U.S. version of "The Mole" ran for five seasons on ABC between 2001 and 2009. The first two seasons were hosted by Anderson Cooper. Seasons 3 and 4, which featured celebrities, was hosted by Ahmad Rashād. Season 5 was a return to civilian players format, and was hosted by Jon Kelley.

It's unclear who is hosting Netflix's version of "The Mole" but Cooper has been vocal in the past about his decision to hang up his hosting duties for a role at CNN back in 2001. In 2006 he said: "I was really tired and wanted a change. I wanted to clear my head and get out of news a bit and I was really interested in reality TV...Two seasons was enough, and 9/11 happened, and I thought I needed to be getting back to news."

In 2015, Cooper talked about the show in an interview with Reality Blurred, calling it a confusing show that "was a relatively complex idea," adding, "I enjoyed it; I'm glad I did it. It was not something I would do again."

"It's just intense in [a] way that's - when you're with people that are playing a game for 30 days, after a while, you want to have one meal when they're not scheming against each other and trying to figure out if I know who The Mole is," he went on to say. "And no matter how many times I said, 'I don't know who the mole is, so it doesn't matter who I'm looking at more, you can't read anything into it.' Because I didn't know who the mole was."

"But it was fun," Cooper added. "It was really in the early days of reality TV, and at the time, I was really interested in seeing how reality TV is produced and how it's edited, and so, to be involved in all aspects of the production, I found it really eye opening. It was really interesting."

Then in 2018, Cooper poked fun at his "Mole" hosting gig when talking to Andy Cohen about the evolution of reality TV. Again, Cooper said the show was too confusing.

"Noble try, too confusing," Cohen said. "I tried but it was too confusing...if you're the host of 'The Mole' and you don't understand it, then that's problematic."