If you live in the USA, the BBC’s “Planet Earth: Blue Planet II” premiered on U.S. television this past weekend, and one of the documentary series’ producers recently chatted with the hosts of the Strong Female Characters podcast.
During the podcast, Orla Doherty talks about how the filmmakers worked with scientists who gathered “an unbelievable amount of data” while they were filming. Twelve new scientific papers are being written off the back of the filmmakers’ work while the series was being shot.
Doherty also touches on how she got into nature documentary production:
“I was a television producer and then I learned to scuba dive when I was 30, it was my birthday present to myself, and that moment changed everything for me, and I then wanted to just live underwater, and be a fish on the coral reef. I can’t actually do that, but I spent nine years living in the Pacific Ocean studying coral reefs on a research vessel and then I came back to England and I went back into television and then a few years later Blue Planet II was starting to gather momentum and I was kind of right time, right place and next thing I knew I was part of the team helping flesh out what that might look like.”
Check out the full podcast here.
“Blue Planet II,” narrated by Sir Richard Attenborough, is currently airing on Saturdays on BBC America.
