One week Matt Cavanaugh could be making candy and selling it on the street. Another day, he might milk cows before leading them out to pasture. It’s all part of the job. That is, his job is to host the TV show Living Vietnam in a Day, in which foreigners attempt a typically Vietnamese vocation, often in remote locales. “I get to go to a lot of places tourists wouldn’t think to go to,” says Cavanaugh, 26. The communications major from Fergus Falls, Minnesota didn’t exactly move to Vietnam with dreams of making it big on the small screen. Amid the economic malaise in the United States, Cavanaugh relocated here in 2011 thinking he might take a typically expat vocation, teaching English. One day, a friend had to pull out of her guest spot on a Vietnamese TV program on VTC 10 and asked Cavanaugh to replace her. 22 asialife HCMC
He agreed, shooting the episode in a northern pottery village where he tried his hand at the local craft. Cavanaugh was still new to Vietnam at that point, so cramming into a van with strangers, venturing out into the countryside, and then diving into the art of clay was intense and a little disorienting. But he was surprised by how much he liked seeing the final product. “Actually watching it was good because it made me realise they weren’t making fun of me, they’re laughing with me,” he says, referring to Vietnamese crew and onlookers. “The way they edited it didn’t make me look like an idiot, but like I was having fun.” What’s more, producers later invited him back, not as a guest but as the host. Back in Minnesota, Cavanaugh had had some public speaking experience. As a marketing intern for a baseball team, he spent some game
Photo by Nguyen Ngoc Duy
The TV Show Host
intermissions entertaining the crowd. But he says hosting his own TV program was a whole other ball game, especially the first day. “Oh I was horribly nervous,” he says, adding, “You could see I was not remembering my lines or not knowing what to say. But it got easier, I got more comfortable with the cameras there and having people watch you. I kind of block it out and try to act normal.” In the cow episode, he alternates between reading a script and shooting the breeze with his non-English speaking guides, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes making for light moments in the 30-minute spot. Cavanaugh shovels bovine waste, connects udders to milking machines, and does his best not to get kicked. It’s all a little odd, from the communication barriers to the sight of a white foreigner copying a Vietnamese farmer. And that’s the point.