Chloë Sarosh (‘Queens’) explains how an idea for a one-off show became a series celebrating female leadership in nature [Exclusive Video Interview]

The idea for making “Queens” into a docuseries as opposed to one stand-alone program came when Chloë Sarosh went to National Geographic to pitch a one-off about female lions and hyenas. “Janet Han Vissering said, ‘This is great, but let’s make a series. Let’s make it all about female leadership,” Sarosh tells Gold Derby during our recent Meet the Experts: TV Documentary panel (watch the exclusive video interview above). When they realized that such a docuseries hadn’t been done, Sarosh jumped at the chance to make the series into a reality. “It took off from there. It took four years to make, a year of research, three years in the field filming over 1,700 filming days. So, it’s been a labor of love but we’re all incredibly proud of what it’s achieved.”

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“Queens,” which aired on National Geographic but can now be streamed on Disney+, explores how several species of animals have powerful female leaders who show tenacity in how they protect their families from outside danger. Among the animals that are examined throughout the docuseries are lions, hyenas, bonobos, mountain lions, elephants, bears and orcas. All of the episodes are narrated by Angela Bassett.

It may not be a surprise to some that the overwhelming majority of those working on the project were women, but it was a very conscious choice that the producers on the project made. “In our industry for decades, there have been very little women working in this space. So when we decided to make a series about female leadership in the natural world, we knew it had to have the authenticity of being made by a female-led team.” It did require some creative thinking considering, for instance, that the number of female nature cinematographers is low. “We literally had to rip up the rule book of how natural history is made and start again. It was messy sometimes and we didn’t always get it right, but we’re really proud of the legacy we’ve created.”