'Let's Make a Deal' host Wayne Brady on how to win his attention

Want a chance for Wayne Brady to sing a song about all the ways he could love you while playing for a cash prize? Get in line.

Let’s Make a Deal, the reboot of the classic game show, will return to CBS on Monday, Sept. 22. Now that he’s a couple years into hosting the show, Brady says he’s finally playing with the “big boys”—especially considering the fact that the show won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Original Song.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, I guess you’re around for a while and it means something,'” Brady told EW on the show’s set. “The show is getting respect with these Emmy nominations and win now.”

The Emmy — for a song with show musician Cat Gray called “30,000 Reasons to Love Me” — marked the first time a game show had ever won the award, which Brady says showcases what Let’s Make a Deal does best. “This isn’t an ordinary game show. I don’t feel the game show grind. I’m not just a guy with a microphone saying ‘Jay, tell them what they won!’ cause that would be a waste of what I do.”

But back to what you really want to know: How does someone get the chance to make a deal with Brady on TV? Here are some tips directly from the source.

Your pre-show interview with producers is the only opportunity you’ll get to show your personality one-on-one, but don’t show too much. Producers are looking for honesty, not comedy. Except for that whole costume part. Brady advises not to think too much about your costume, but you do want it to identify you from the crowd.

“When I started out, I thought it was just a bunch of freaks dressed in costume,” Brady said. “They wait in line and all they want is money and that’s all they care about and that’s the show and that’s great. But it isn’t, it’s so much more… I really didn’t watch Let’s Make a Deal coming up. I think my mom did, but it didn’t interest the child me. I saw the costume and thought, ‘Um okay, these are weird people.’ If I saw that guy dressed up as a banana on the street, I’d yell stranger danger.”

And if you do make it to the set, you’ll get some quality time with Brady. “When I’m doing a sitcom, you’re not going to hang out on set with us,” he says. “There’s a distance in show business which I know I’ve embraced…. But now the new model is you entertain, but you can touch the person who is entertaining you and be touched by them, which is really cool cause it invests the viewer a lot more in you. So that lady watching at home knows she can sign up online and then come wait here and potentially be on the show and be on the thing that they’re watching. It ups the stakes. They are so rabid and ready and not everybody on TV gets an opportunity like that.”

Where else can you see a guy dressed up as an elephant win a car anyway?