Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Stay warm by running, or stop and build a fire?
Eat gorse flowers for energy, or snack on some raw bird eggs?
Do a front flip or a back flip off of a helicopter into a frigid lake?
How long did it take to shoot these eight episodes?It was months and months of pre-production.
Basically, Bear would send us to places he thought would be interesting for adventures.
And then we shot for about five days per episode.
Theres a couple two-parters in there, but they were each five days per part.
It was a lot of improvisation.
Ive worked with Bear for five years now, and thats his thing.
You give him a sandbox and then launch him.
The way this show works, Bear has to do different versions of the same thing.
So theres a sandbox, but then you also have to intervene to do multiple versions, right?
What are two ways you could do that?
We were straddling the unscripted and scripted worlds in a way Ive never done before.
So then wed say, Okay, that worked, so this moves us on to the next obstacle.
Or, Shoot, that really screwed up.
This is a dead end for the viewer.
There are some circumstances where both options work.
You always get funneled onto the frozen lake, for instance.
Bear was like, If you crawled, youd be alright, but I wouldnt walk across it.
And we were like, In this case, Bear, the viewer is making a mistake.
So he walked across it and eventually, sure enough, he fell through.
Because on the show, he hauls himself out of the lake and the episode ends.
He was really in that lake, wasnt he?
How dangerous is that?
Do producers swarm him and warm him up as soon as he gets out?Bears tough.
So yeah, he fell in the ice.
He pulled himself up out of there.
Sorry, the immediate aftermath is him naked and rolling in the snow?Correct.
And it was for Netflix Kids, so I didnt know how theyd feel about naked Bear Grylls.
The medic would come over with a blanket and give him some hot water and things.
Because the fact is, youre out there too long, youre gonna get hypothermia.
Obviously the dog wasnt really stranded.
We created that sandbox for Bear to play in.
Its much easier for him to improvise if there is some uncertainty.
For example, the doctor in Panama isnt really a doctor, shes essentially an actress for this.
But the goal was to give you an idea of, What would Bear Grylls do?
What about the parts where he has to choose between two things to eat?
He seems to actually eat the bad mushroom, and also the raw bird eggs.
Did he find those and say, Should I eat these?
How did that work?Those raw eggs are everywhere in the terrain.
But yeah, hed really eat them.
A lot of times that will make you sick.
So he, I would say, demonstrated what would happen if you got sick.
From ingesting stuff like those eggs?From various things, yeah.
And this is over the course of working with him for five years.
I venture to keep him within the guardrails as best I can.
He will improvise, he will go off script, and sometimes it backfires on him.
Weve had to shut down production because of it.
Hes been sick and vomiting from stuff hes done to demonstrate survival things.
Were not gonna…
You cant torture the lead of the show on purpose.Right.
But that being said, its a simulation.
So we do want to simulate what would happen if you touched that milky substance.
It did not look good.Correct.
Youre out there for five days shooting one of these stories.
Frankly, were not as good in the wild as Bear is.
Youre not Bear Grylls.Exactly.
Theyre all ex-military, some of them have submitted Everest several times.
So they verify the crew doesnt get hurt.
The crew is very small.
We have two camera guys, a sound guy, a drone operator, and myself.
And a couple safety people as needed sometimes the safety team to crew member ratio is one-to-one.
I wondered about the scenes with animals the wolf, the jaguar, the memorable bit with a sheep.
Running into a crocodile in Panama is like running into a squirrel in Central Park.
Bear seems to helicopter out before anything truly terrible happens.
You could kill the host if you wanted to.
We just had to draw that line.
Also, with Netflix, we didnt want to depict Bear failing mortally.
We didnt want to scare kids.
So rescue by helicopter was always an option.
And wed say, cool, lets film a rescue sequence.
Thats an even bigger issue onRunning Wild, when were taking celebrities out.
Do you want to make more episodes of this show?
As you were filming it, were you thinking about other scenarios to try?Totally.
That being said, I really liked the challenge and Id love to do more.
There are so many places in the world were we could take Bear.
Did Bear end up liking the multiple versions?
Will Bear be out in the wilderness doing stuff like this when hes 70?I dont know.
Am I going to be doing this when Im 70?
Are you going to be doing this when youre 70?
Well, my job doesnt involve falling into a frozen lake.Thats true.
Its probably like pro sports, right?
The fans and the stats will tell you when youre too old for this shit.
I dont see him evernotdoing it until its just not an option for him.
He loves it so much.
You get him out in the wild, he just comes alive.
