Richmonders David Levine, left, and grandson Ben Edlavitch compete on the latest season of ‘Lego Masters.’ (Fox image)
When David Levine gave his then-4-year-old grandson Ben Edlavitch his first Lego set, the local real estate developer couldn’t have imagined that, 16 years later, he’d be joining him as his teammate on a Lego-building competition TV show.
The pair are one of a dozen teams competing tonight on the Season 4 premiere episode of Fox’s Lego Masters, the Will Arnett-hosted, reality TV-style show in which two-person teams compete in Lego building challenges and vie for a $100,000 grand prize.
Edlavitch, a junior at the University of Virginia, where he is enrolled in the School of Architecture, credits that first Lego set from his grandfather for laying the foundation – building bricks, if you will – for a lifelong hobby that helped lead him to study architecture.
As such, when a casting producer invited him to audition for the show, Edlavitch said he could think of no better teammate than Levine, known in their family – and on the show – as “Poppy.”
In addition to their Lego link, the two have also been tinkering together for years on Levine’s restoration of a 1929 Model A Ford, which Levine now displays as president of the Old Dominion Model A Ford Club. With Levine’s penchant for gears and Edlavitch’s eye for aesthetics, the grandfather and grandson said they made a dynamic duo on the show.
“It was a blast,” Levine said. “I never would have been on if Ben hadn’t had all the talent.
“I probably had the least Lego experience (on the show), probably a year or two,” he said. “But then, with my knowledge of gears and stuff, we had this division of responsibility, so I’d build all the machines and most of the motorized things, and Ben would fit them into our builds.”
“What’s cool about the Model A,” Edlavitch added, “is it’s so analog that really it’s not that different from a very complicated Lego set,” referring to the more advanced Lego Technic sets – often of cars – that involve gearboxes, steering systems and other moving parts.
“At that point, it’s only some grease and gasoline away from being a Model A,” he said.
Grandson and grandpa with the Model A Ford they’ve restored together. (Fox video screenshot)
To prepare for the show, the pair also leaned on Levine’s real estate background, modeling their practice builds after some of the Richmond buildings that Levine helped develop over 30 years in the industry.
One was the Lucky Whale restaurant-anchored mixed-use building at 2028 W. Cary St., at the corner of Cary and Rowland Street, that Levine’s Plus Properties renovated several years ago with A.J. Shriar and Ronnie Shriner. The rehab won a GRACRE award in 2018 for best mixed-use/infill – and provided a practice run for the team.
Levine’s mixed-use building at 2028 W. Cary St. that inspired one of their practice builds, below.
Edlavitch said it was his Richmond-inspired builds that he’d post on his Instagram account that got the attention of the show’s casting producers, who he said reached out via direct messaging a couple months ago – as they had previously done a few years earlier.
“It was a little suspicious at first. It’s this very low-profile account that sends you a DM, and the message is essentially like, ‘Hey kid, do you want to be on television?’” he said, laughing.
“I knew it was legit, because a couple of years ago in high school I’d been reached out to by another casting producer from the show. I followed up the messages and got as far as I could go at the time, because you’ve got to be 18 to film the show.”
The Douglas Freeman High grad said his social media posts also got the attention of local muralist Nils Westergard, who asked if he could superimpose one of his murals – the one at Main Street and Allen Avenue of a woman covering her face – onto one of his Richmond-inspired builds.
Edlavitch’s build with a Nils Westergard mural superimposed on it. (Images courtesy Ben Edlavitch)
“That first got me some notoriety on social media and might’ve gotten their attention,” he said.
As the first grandson-grandparent pairing in the show’s history, Edlavitch and Levine also laid claim to the show’s largest-ever age gap – 20 to 74 – as well as the youngest and oldest contestants on this season.
“We played that to such an advantage, because all of our builds juxtapose the new and the old, the old and the new,” Levine said. “That’s a theme that runs through everything, and we were pretty true to that. That inspired us immediately. Some teams couldn’t think of what to build for hours. We were like, boom, and we were off to the races.”
‘We’re Team Poppy and Ben,’ Bricks & Minifigs Richmond says on its Facebook page. (Fox image)
While they’re sworn to secrecy on the outcome of the show, Levine and Edlavitch were able to give a teaser of tonight’s episode, which airs at 9 p.m. on Fox and can be streamed afterward on Hulu. Called “Brick Lake,” the episode challenges the teams to build “the ultimate motorized party boat,” according to a show-approved blurb.
They’ll have a local cheering section rooting them on at Bricks & Minifigs, the new-and-used Lego retailer near Innsbrook where Edlavitch worked – of course – over the summer. He said his boss there is throwing a watch party this evening – adding to a bit of Lego-mania that has swept over Richmond since the Danish toy company announced it is building a $1 billion factory in Chesterfield County.
Edlavitch said committing to the show, which required them to be sequestered during filming, meant having to take off a semester at UVA, pushing back his scheduled graduation date. But he said it was worth it.
“It’s extremely intense,” he said of architecture school, “but I think that gives us a little bit of a benefit in the reality TV show ring. A lot of the skills that we used on the show are the same skills that I used in architecture school, the same skills that I learned growing up using Legos. There’s a lot of aesthetic design choices.”
One of Edlavitch’s builds of recognizable Richmond landmarks.
For one, Edlavitch said, use of color is among the show’s judging criteria – an obstacle in itself for him and Levine, who are both colorblind. The hereditary condition is known to skip a generation, providing granddad and grandson another link – and a challenge.
“Colorblind doesn’t mean you can’t necessarily tell a yellow from a blue. It’s degrees,” Levine clarified. “There’s certain reds that I can’t distinguish from another red or even another green. I think Ben’s a little better than me at it. It was a little bit of a disadvantage we had to overcome.”
Granddad and grandson said they learned a lot about themselves from being on the show.
“I think Ben and I took home a lot of interpersonal skill. It’s reality TV, but it’s still a challenge,” Levine said. “You don’t have a watch on the set, you don’t have a phone, you cannot use any sort of study guide or instructions; you’re totally on your own. All you know is you have five hours left before Will Arnett comes blaring on: ‘You have five minutes.’
Grandson and grandfather formed their team years ago.
“I think Ben learned a lot about: it’s a marathon, not a sprint. You don’t have time to obsess or worry if this is right; you just have to keep plunging forward or you’re going to be thrown off,” he said. “I think Ben learned a lot about that. I did too. I’ve never even had a job where I was on the clock to finish something.”
Added Edlavitch: “Our tagline when we were on the show is, ‘We bring wisdom and energy; I bring the wisdom and he brings the energy.’
“It can be a very stressful environment. Reality TV show – it seems kind of inherently silly, but when you’re there and you’re sequestered for so long, it starts to get so intense it feels like life or death,” he said. “Poppy’s a good neutralizing force, good moral support. I wouldn’t have gone with anybody else.”
Richmonders David Levine, left, and grandson Ben Edlavitch compete on the latest season of ‘Lego Masters.’ (Fox image)
When David Levine gave his then-4-year-old grandson Ben Edlavitch his first Lego set, the local real estate developer couldn’t have imagined that, 16 years later, he’d be joining him as his teammate on a Lego-building competition TV show.
The pair are one of a dozen teams competing tonight on the Season 4 premiere episode of Fox’s Lego Masters, the Will Arnett-hosted, reality TV-style show in which two-person teams compete in Lego building challenges and vie for a $100,000 grand prize.
Edlavitch, a junior at the University of Virginia, where he is enrolled in the School of Architecture, credits that first Lego set from his grandfather for laying the foundation – building bricks, if you will – for a lifelong hobby that helped lead him to study architecture.
As such, when a casting producer invited him to audition for the show, Edlavitch said he could think of no better teammate than Levine, known in their family – and on the show – as “Poppy.”
In addition to their Lego link, the two have also been tinkering together for years on Levine’s restoration of a 1929 Model A Ford, which Levine now displays as president of the Old Dominion Model A Ford Club. With Levine’s penchant for gears and Edlavitch’s eye for aesthetics, the grandfather and grandson said they made a dynamic duo on the show.
“It was a blast,” Levine said. “I never would have been on if Ben hadn’t had all the talent.
“I probably had the least Lego experience (on the show), probably a year or two,” he said. “But then, with my knowledge of gears and stuff, we had this division of responsibility, so I’d build all the machines and most of the motorized things, and Ben would fit them into our builds.”
“What’s cool about the Model A,” Edlavitch added, “is it’s so analog that really it’s not that different from a very complicated Lego set,” referring to the more advanced Lego Technic sets – often of cars – that involve gearboxes, steering systems and other moving parts.
“At that point, it’s only some grease and gasoline away from being a Model A,” he said.
Grandson and grandpa with the Model A Ford they’ve restored together. (Fox video screenshot)
To prepare for the show, the pair also leaned on Levine’s real estate background, modeling their practice builds after some of the Richmond buildings that Levine helped develop over 30 years in the industry.
One was the Lucky Whale restaurant-anchored mixed-use building at 2028 W. Cary St., at the corner of Cary and Rowland Street, that Levine’s Plus Properties renovated several years ago with A.J. Shriar and Ronnie Shriner. The rehab won a GRACRE award in 2018 for best mixed-use/infill – and provided a practice run for the team.
Levine’s mixed-use building at 2028 W. Cary St. that inspired one of their practice builds, below.
Edlavitch said it was his Richmond-inspired builds that he’d post on his Instagram account that got the attention of the show’s casting producers, who he said reached out via direct messaging a couple months ago – as they had previously done a few years earlier.
“It was a little suspicious at first. It’s this very low-profile account that sends you a DM, and the message is essentially like, ‘Hey kid, do you want to be on television?’” he said, laughing.
“I knew it was legit, because a couple of years ago in high school I’d been reached out to by another casting producer from the show. I followed up the messages and got as far as I could go at the time, because you’ve got to be 18 to film the show.”
The Douglas Freeman High grad said his social media posts also got the attention of local muralist Nils Westergard, who asked if he could superimpose one of his murals – the one at Main Street and Allen Avenue of a woman covering her face – onto one of his Richmond-inspired builds.
Edlavitch’s build with a Nils Westergard mural superimposed on it. (Images courtesy Ben Edlavitch)
“That first got me some notoriety on social media and might’ve gotten their attention,” he said.
As the first grandson-grandparent pairing in the show’s history, Edlavitch and Levine also laid claim to the show’s largest-ever age gap – 20 to 74 – as well as the youngest and oldest contestants on this season.
“We played that to such an advantage, because all of our builds juxtapose the new and the old, the old and the new,” Levine said. “That’s a theme that runs through everything, and we were pretty true to that. That inspired us immediately. Some teams couldn’t think of what to build for hours. We were like, boom, and we were off to the races.”
‘We’re Team Poppy and Ben,’ Bricks & Minifigs Richmond says on its Facebook page. (Fox image)
While they’re sworn to secrecy on the outcome of the show, Levine and Edlavitch were able to give a teaser of tonight’s episode, which airs at 9 p.m. on Fox and can be streamed afterward on Hulu. Called “Brick Lake,” the episode challenges the teams to build “the ultimate motorized party boat,” according to a show-approved blurb.
They’ll have a local cheering section rooting them on at Bricks & Minifigs, the new-and-used Lego retailer near Innsbrook where Edlavitch worked – of course – over the summer. He said his boss there is throwing a watch party this evening – adding to a bit of Lego-mania that has swept over Richmond since the Danish toy company announced it is building a $1 billion factory in Chesterfield County.
Edlavitch said committing to the show, which required them to be sequestered during filming, meant having to take off a semester at UVA, pushing back his scheduled graduation date. But he said it was worth it.
“It’s extremely intense,” he said of architecture school, “but I think that gives us a little bit of a benefit in the reality TV show ring. A lot of the skills that we used on the show are the same skills that I used in architecture school, the same skills that I learned growing up using Legos. There’s a lot of aesthetic design choices.”
One of Edlavitch’s builds of recognizable Richmond landmarks.
For one, Edlavitch said, use of color is among the show’s judging criteria – an obstacle in itself for him and Levine, who are both colorblind. The hereditary condition is known to skip a generation, providing granddad and grandson another link – and a challenge.
“Colorblind doesn’t mean you can’t necessarily tell a yellow from a blue. It’s degrees,” Levine clarified. “There’s certain reds that I can’t distinguish from another red or even another green. I think Ben’s a little better than me at it. It was a little bit of a disadvantage we had to overcome.”
Granddad and grandson said they learned a lot about themselves from being on the show.
“I think Ben and I took home a lot of interpersonal skill. It’s reality TV, but it’s still a challenge,” Levine said. “You don’t have a watch on the set, you don’t have a phone, you cannot use any sort of study guide or instructions; you’re totally on your own. All you know is you have five hours left before Will Arnett comes blaring on: ‘You have five minutes.’
Grandson and grandfather formed their team years ago.
“I think Ben learned a lot about: it’s a marathon, not a sprint. You don’t have time to obsess or worry if this is right; you just have to keep plunging forward or you’re going to be thrown off,” he said. “I think Ben learned a lot about that. I did too. I’ve never even had a job where I was on the clock to finish something.”
Added Edlavitch: “Our tagline when we were on the show is, ‘We bring wisdom and energy; I bring the wisdom and he brings the energy.’
“It can be a very stressful environment. Reality TV show – it seems kind of inherently silly, but when you’re there and you’re sequestered for so long, it starts to get so intense it feels like life or death,” he said. “Poppy’s a good neutralizing force, good moral support. I wouldn’t have gone with anybody else.”
This is very cool! Sounds fun and they seem to make a great team. I’ll have to tune in to this. Loving the Lego boom in Richmond. Can’t think of a more timeless “toy.”
An amazing experience for the both of you that adds to your family’s history in RVA. Good luck!
Too bad what Levine develops doesn’t fit in with the surrounding buildings.