Making of ‘Queens’ roundtable with showrunner, exec. producer, cinematographer
National Geographic’s “Queens” made history earlier this year when it became the first wildlife documentary to focus exclusively on animal matriarchs and to be told from the perspective of female artisans. For Gold Derby’s “Making of ‘Queens'” roundtable panel, we welcome showrunner/writer Chloe Sarosh, executive producer Vanessa Berlowitz and cinematographer Sophie Darlington, all of whom are eligible at the upcoming 2024 Emmy Awards. Watch the exclusive video interviews above.
The original concept for “Queens” was spawned from a “single idea” that involved “filming matriarchal species,” recalls Berlowitz. “I think we should do a one-off where we look at hyenas battling with lions in [Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater], and why don’t we also feature the two matriarchs behind the camera who are famous for filming these two species and give them some profile as well?” Soon, the production team realized a female-centric nature series “had never been done,” so they started brainstorming “which other matriarchal species” they could feature, and “the rest is history.”
Speaking about the amount of time that went into the project as a whole, Sarosh details, “We spent about a year researching, working with the scientists, working on how we’re going to film it. We took a long time working out how best to go about tackling and telling these stories, especially stories that hadn’t been told, of which ‘Queens’ was the case. So we spent about a year in prep, two and a half to three years filming, of which Covid was a year — we lost time there. So I think four years in total, beginning to end.” The showrunner adds, “Every episode is completely different. Each theme is totally different. The characters are totally different, whether that’s a coming-of-age story or the story of an aging matriarch passing onto the next generation.”
Berlowitz mentions how the significance of “Queens” is more than what is just seen on TV. “We wanted to elevate other female talent,” she explains, “and kind of looked around and realized there just isn’t much in our genre of women who’ve had this opportunity. So I quickly enlisted Sophie and Justine [Evans]‘ support to try and manage this kind of bigger legacy piece where we’d use the whole series to not only shoot new content, but also to grow new female talent.”
For her part, Darlington declares, “I think it’s been the best thing I have ever done” because it was such a “collaborative and team effort.” The cinematographer later praises narrator/producer Angela Bassett, whose voice enhances all of her beautiful images on screen. “It was electric hearing this voice that you’ve heard in so many movies that you’ve gone to that you’ve loved. And there she is talking about the lions and the hyenas in that incredible sort of heavyweight boxing match,” Darlington notes. “It takes it to the next level, I think. It really does. It gives it the sort of feel that we had all hoped it was going to have.”
Also in our exclusive video interview, the artisans speak in depth about each of the locations they visited and animals they documented throughout the six episodes: “African Queens,” “Rainforest Queens,” “Tiny Jungle Queens,” “Savanna Queens,” “Mountain Queens” and “Coastal Queens.” And we discuss the follow-up hour, “Behind the Queens,” which celebrates all of the women who documented the trailblazing series. “Queens” is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
