It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload, the podcast Last Weep Their Life. Welcome back to TV Reload. My name is Benjamin Norris and this is your podcast to get all the inside goss on the popular TV shows you may be watching from around the world. Undeniably, our TV sets are a major part of our home entertainment, and yet very little is known
about how our favorite shows get made. So each episode I find guests that want to dive just that little bit deeper into the shows they're currently making, so that you can hear all their exclusive stories and gain access to the biggest names in Australian television. I want to thank you for downloading or subscribing to this podcast. I love hearing your feedback, so make sure you leave a
comment on your chosen podcast platform. On today's podcast, I Have Riema, I heard the executive producer of the captivating new ITV series Alone, which starts this week on SBS. The show has been made all over the world, but this time ten Australian survivalists will be dropped into the remote wilds of western Tasmania, completely isolated from the outside world and each other, stripped of modern possessions, contact and comforts to self document their experience, where the last one
standing wins two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Challenged by the force of nature, hunger, and perhaps the toughest challenge of all, loneliness, you won't want to turn away until the last person is left standing. The first episode of this highly anticipated survival series drops on Wednesday, the twenty ninth of March, which is tonight, and will no doubt captivate its audience. As the show goes well beyond any other show made in Australia, we will find out if
these conditions could kill the alone participants. Rema will also share her greatest fears making the show and what kept her awake at night. I'll also find out how they found the right people for the show and what exactly they were looking for. Plus we'll get plenty of exclusives from behind the scenes of a loan. Anyway, let's bring Rima into the podcast. I love Reema and I really hope you enjoy this episode.
Hirima, Hi Ben, I'm great.
I feel so excited to be having this chat with you finally, because we've finally found a project that we can unpack together.
I know it's been a long time in the making. I feel like a loan's brought you and I together finally.
You know, I had people writing to me, people that listened to the podcast, but also people that you'd collaborated with over the years, saying, You've got to get Rima on the show. I can't wait to hear per episode. So I kind of had to stalk you a little bit.
You did. I liked being stalked. It made me feel pretty special. It's the first time I haven't felt alone in a really long time.
Case in point, so we're talking alone for people that listen to the podcast, and this show is so exciting. Obviously, people know about it because it is a global phenomenon. I don't think that there's anyone that owns a television that's not seen a few seconds of this show.
It's one of those shows it's really hard to explain why its reach is so broad, but it's the most random people who will tell you that they love this show. And it sounds on paper or in pitch, it sounds like something that should have a niche audience, doesn't it. I mean, you think that it would be a really hard core sort of bear grill survivally kind of audience that would come to it. But it's none of the shows that we're used to, and it's just the most
random people. You know, it's your hairdresser. It's often the people that say they don't watch television, but they do watch alone. I think it's one of those shows that it just grips you. You don't know that you're going to like it. You're not sure it's your kind of thing. You come to it, and one episode in you find yourself sat there still having watched five series by the end of the week and missed out on some work. There's something about it that is really compelling viewing.
I love the quote. I mean, I don't know if you were aware of that Stephen King quote, but I love the quote. You know, there is no harm in hoping for the best as long as you prepare for the worst. Were you familiar with that quote before working on this series.
No, So that was one. You know, we spent some time looking at the quotes that we put in, but it's the perfect quote for this and that's the perfect quote to launch the series, isn't it. And it's so true. It epitomizes everything about what it means to to go into this.
Is that an accurate quote for the contestants that are taking part on the show or was that also an appropriate quote for the content creators behind the scenes.
I think it was probably more for us than them, to be honest, it's rare that you work on a series where the cast actually know more about what they're heading into than you do. They were prepared for the wilderness.
They knew what they were doing. We were hoping. We knew what we were doing as far as the wilderness went, but they were terrified about the documentary part of it, and we sent them into the wilderness becoming, you know, with cameras, asking them to shoot an entire series for us, and some of them had never picked one up before.
Did you reach out to other executive producers from around the world that had been making this series? I mean, how did you start doing how did you even start to approach this project?
Honestly, I have no idea how the first series was made and how that EP survived the experience. The first thing that we did was to speak to the EPs of the Scandinavian and the US version. We couldn't have done it without them. All the questions that you have sitting on the couch watching this show, multiply that by ten, and that's what we had, at least as producers going into it, going how do we do this? How is
this done? And it seems simple from the outside when you go, oh, we're going to produce this series that just gives ten wilderness people ten cameras and ask them to go out and survive. Surely they can't be much in the production of a show like that. You just get them ready, you find the land, you put them on it, and off they go and then they bring back the footage. Simple. But it's not. No, it's really not.
There's such a process that goes into every aspect of it, from finding the location to setting up your safety systems to mapping the whole thing, to be knowing exactly how you're going to respond in an emergency and in all the various response options that can pop their heads up as far as how they tap that red button. You just have to be prepared for absolutely everything going wrong, and not from a television point of view. TV takes a back seat. You're preparing for it from a very
real survival p you. We have to make sure they stay alive, and we have to be prepared for worst case scenarios, and worst case scenarios are quite serious worst case scenarios here, so you start from that and then you work backwards into the TV. So we're all out of our comfort zone making this series.
I was approached to do a series it's very similar to this. I can't say what it is because I signed an NDA, but you know, something very similar and I read the contract, and the contract blew my mind because you know that they're not going to kill you, but you could very easily be in a lot of danger.
Well, we probably could kill you. I mean, it's the real deal. And I think that that's why I was a super fan. I'm pretty sure that's why most people are super fans of this show, because when you come to it and you fall in love with it, it's that touching, the void element of it. You know, you know how you watch a jackass going They're not going to do that? Are they are going to do it? They've done it. It's I think it's that same sort
of thing. I've described it previously as jackass for intellectuals. There's something about it that is terrifying because you know that they actually could die. There's dead fall, there's wildlife that can attack you, there's hypothermia, there's starvation. All of these elements are very very real.
Where does this type of a show for you fit into the realm of television? Is this docoreality? Like, how are you describing its genre?
It really is a factual series, and the only thing that brings it over into reality, I think is the fact that there's prize money. So because there's that prize money that's awarded to the person who lasts the longest, it turns it into a reality series in some ways. But in reality, there is no sense of competition for anybody who's actually in it. The participants have no sense whatsoever of who's in the competition, who's left, how they're going,
how they're faring in relation to anybody else. So all of that information, all of that data that would normally feed into strategizing or helping you last one more day or deciding whether or not to tap out, none of that information is available to you. It's one of those weird things because everything about the series is factual. You've got ten people shooting ten documentaries, about an experiment that
they've signed up for. Essentially, that's what it is, and we stitch it together into ten episode or eleven episodes in this case, that ties them all together. But there's
this prize money that confuses things. So as much as everyone wants to call it a reality series, it's factual or it's reality in the very first incarnations of reality television, back in the days when it was genuinely just observational documentary with no producers prodding and probing and doing double takes or setting scenes up or sometimes frank and grabbing, grabbing everything everything together.
Yeah, well, I think it's really interesting because people fell in love with reality television for the very fact of, you know, they wanted to see reality.
You know.
Now audiences want things faster and packaged up, so yes, we are getting things, you know, edited with an inch of their lives. But I still feel like the essence of reality television is exactly what a lot and capsulate do you want?
I one hundred percent agree, and I think that's a I think that's the big draw card again, it's the fact that it's so raw and it's so immediate. I mean, I look back to Big Brother and that was really my introduction to reality television, and I fell in love with it and I was watching I was watching people sleep on an old NOCKI or I think it was when you could, you know, subscribe to optis just I think I even changed providers just so that I could
watch that unfiltered reality television. And that's what this feels like in many ways, because there's nothing in between the person sitting on the couch and the person who's going through that experience in the wilderness. There's no narrator, there's no producer pulling them off to the side to ask them questions. It's just you and them. It's you and the participants, and it's as raw as it gets. And you know that because it's a warts and all series.
You get to see all the mistakes they make. You get to see them fluff up the camera angles or you know, fall over. All the mistakes that they make are there, and all of the winds you're right there with them. So it's there's some kind of immediacy and intimacy to these series that we all love about reality TV.
Obviously, reality TV contestants say that they didn't go back and watch their series I obviously did and watched it, and so I could see that the parts that really resonated over that series with the times where the camera was really left on me the longest to say the most, without any chance of really frank and grabbing, and that was where I was. It's a dawned on me that people love reality television when it feels like they're there.
I think you've nailed it. It's so true, isn't it. It's the camera not moving. I don't think I realized that until you just verbalized it. Then You've articulated something that I've known but haven't been able to actually grab before.
Well, it's the currency you're sitting there on the couch and you think I'd do that better, or why are they doing that? You know what I mean? Like, there's this currency of feeling like you're a part of their experience because you can really recognize as real.
I think we've all asked ourselves the question, more so since the pandemic and interesting we all sit on the couch with an opinion about what we'd do first. I mean, I remember screaming at someone who was building a chair as their first thing in one of the US series just going build a shelter, build your shelter. And we've all got, you know, we've all got our opinions on what we would do first, or what we'd prioritize. And I think, I don't know, I think there's it's so relatable.
I have to ask you. I'm getting ahead of myself. But you know, if you were going into this experience knowing what you know now, and you're allowed to take these items in there, what items is a must as far as you were concerned.
I really couldn't do it, Ben, I really couldn't do it.
That goes against the whole thing of you know, what do they say, you know, if you're a really good manager, you know, never get your staff to do something you wouldn't do yourself. Well, obviously that rule has been thrown.
Right out the window. I'm so in awe of all ten of them. But I'll tell you what. I would definitely take a sleeping bag. And I can tell you that all but one participant took a sleeping bag. And almost in every series that you see, people take sleeping bags. And I should do some research to find out if it's the world first. But we did have one who chose not to.
And do you try and change or offer any suggestions to maybe you need a sleeping bag. I mean, do you just have to let these people make these mistakes?
Honestly, you have to let them make the mistakes. But I do believe I asked several times, are you sure? No, I can't. There is no chance I could do it. I don't think I could even do a night.
You know, the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is obviously luring people into it. You're collaborating with the delightful Ben on this project. What's your relationship been like with him previously? Because I believe you'd work on you'd have worked on quite a lot of shows with him at ITV studios.
Yeah. Absolutely, I think Ben and I have worked on almost everything I think together at ITV. I'm pretty sure we have. We've done I'm a Celebrity right from the start, So from the very first series all the way through to now Love Island. We've done Factul together. We've done Keeping Australia Safe, Keeping Australia Alive. We've done The Chase together, we launched that together. I think I've always worked with Ben. Now that I come with.
He was one of the people that slipped into my DMS and said to me, I think I screen grabbed that to you on Facebook. So you felt obliged to do the podcast. But Ben actually wrote to me and was like, you've got to get remitted to do this. You've got to get it to do the podcast is alone?
You know? Is that a bigger challenge to some of the other shows because you before mentioned all these other shows that you've worked on, and some of them are really glossy shows, you know, and then you're coming back to something very stripped back. Are you still able to access all the things that you've learned from some of those other shows or are you kind of throwing things out?
Bit of column, a bit of Colin b. Well. I borrowed heavily from reality in terms of how I prepare for a series and in terms of how we prepare participants for a series. There's there's a lot of principles that are one oh one, you know, making sure that everyone understands what they're getting themselves into, making sure that everyone's prepared, background checks and casting that process and shooting backstories that all borrows heavily from reality and heavily from
the experience that I've had. But we go from working on a show that has a show like I'm Mielebrity, where we have about five hundred crew members down to a show like a Loan where they're about twenty. The job going into series is enormous, and there's so much adrenaline and so much pressure in the leader to getting
them ready to go in. And that's from finding the locations and getting all of your stakeholders on board to ground truthing where we actually have to comb all the area and make sure that it's all good and we've checked it all. We know that it's all safe, we know what it looks like. There's prepping participants and checking their gear lists and checking their ten items, and putting them through medical and psych and survival workshops to make
sure that they're fitting ready in every possible aspect. So all of that borrows from reality until you get to actually making the series and you go through boot camp, and that's a week of intense preparation. It's this huge pressure cooker where we're teaching all the participants about what they can and can't do on the land, all the parameters. We're teaching them how to use a camera, how to use multiple cameras, how to work with cards, and how to file your data, how to connect your mic and
sync it with your vision, all of those things. It's a massive crash course which all of those things borrow from all of the experience that you've had before, but nothing prepares you for that moment where you've dropped them all off and then everything stops, and then you sort of go, actually, I don't know what, what do we do now? So you drop them all off and you come back to the office and everyone's sitting there going, oh, that's the point where you normally where everything fires up.
You've got your cameras on, you can actually see what they're doing. In this scenario, it's the opposite. As soon as the series begins, it all goes very very quiet, and then you just sit there and you wait. You wait for someone to tap out, and you wait for the footage.
And do you only get access to that footage once they've tapped out?
No, we do. So they have drop boxes where they leave their things at a certain point and we will go out every few days or however, God.
You'd ask to check in with me and I'd have had my lens cap on for the whole thing, and fuck you, Ben Norris, You've ruined our entire production.
You know. Oh, there were some doozies. We've had some good laughs about various mistakes that they've made, including one participant who blessed gave us a sink clap and went, oh, that's for a couple of days ago when I forgot to give you one.
Oh oh, and then what do you do? Do you bring your therapist? Do you have a panetole? Like I don't understand this. This show seems very high stress.
If you ask me, it is massively high stress. I don't think I slept well for the entire time that we were out there, and I had my satellite phone literally on my pillow every night, just waiting for a call in the middle of the night to go out there. So it's high stress for everyone involved. The editor systs would go crazy if they didn't get a sink clap, because you can imagine trying to tee up cameras and audio cards that don't have any kind of common denominator
to tie them together. But you know, you're scared. You're scared that they're going to be okay. You're scared that they might die. You're scared that they will have forgotten to record. You're scared that they won't have recorded enough. You're scared that nothing is happening out there so there is nothing to record. You're scared that they'll all tap out too soon. You're scared that they'll go for too long. You're scared that there won't be enough content for ten episodes.
Everything about it is absolutely terrifying. Honestly, it's just can you imagine pitching a show like this?
Well, I mean, it's one thing to come up with a show like this, it's another to actually convince people to get it. Could be really hard to convince people to want to do this. But you've managed to get a very interesting cast, which I have to segue into I think this show wouldn't work if we didn't somewhat like these people. Is that a part of the process of picking someone is that they've got a very high watchability.
Definitely, we start with trying to make sure that they can all They all have a competency level that allows us to sort of sleep at night. You need to know that they can stay live. But more importantly, we want good communicators, we want storytellers, We want people who know themselves in a comfortable being themselves. But it's really
important that they're engaging. If you're going to watch someone, as we spoke about before, if you're going to watch someone potentially sit there and not say much for a while, you need to connect to them. You need to connect to who they are, and you need to be able to sit with them in silence in the same way that you know you can sit with your bestie or you can sit with your partner in silent and that's
okay because you sort of know what they're thinking. We needed people that we could do that with, and I think we get that with all ten of them. They're very very different people. They're very authentic humans. They know who they are, and I can really hand on heart say that they weren't doing it for the money. These are all ten people who were genuinely invested in this experiment, genuinely doing it for the purpose of pushing themselves for
whatever their personal motivation was. But they all wanted to see how far they could go, regardless of prize money. They really were invested in the experiment, and they were all willing to be open and raw and honest, and that was really really important in finding them. But where we're really lucky is that we got ten people who could do all those things, but they were markedly different, all ten of them. I don't know about you, but when I watch the American series sometimes I'd be like, Oh,
which one's this? Is this that one? Because once you've got a beanie on and he next dumper and a khaki jacket, people start to look the same. But with all ten of these, I think they're really stamped. They really stamped themselves as ten distinct individuals. All of the people that made it into the final series were people
who walked into the room. First of all, with their casting video, we ask everyone to give a thirty second introduction, so there was something obviously that grabs us in that. But then they all walked into the room when we did our casting one on ones, and there was something about each of them and it's the same thing. Some of them were instant. There was an energy about them as they walked in where we went, Okay, we're in
the presence of someone pretty amazing here. And some of them walked in quite unassuming, and some of them even walked in, not necessarily in the final few actually, but some could sometimes walk in a little bit cocky or a little bit more arrogant, but and slowly you warmed to them or there was something about that that really grabbed you and drew you in. So there was that X factor. All of them had it, but it wasn't in your face all of them.
How rough was Tasmania. Is Tasmania as rough as some of the other conditions that we've seen in some of the other series around the world.
Absolutely, Yeah, it was really important that we chose that we made this a real challenge, and so we deliberately set out for Tazzy, and we deliberately set out for West coast Tazzy. I don't know if you know too much about the geographical differences between east and west, but there's a significant difference in the terrain and the weather. On the West coast. You've got the roaring forties winds coming in. You've got crazy amounts of precipitation, so the
rain's just coming in constantly. The ground is wet, the days are short, the ground is It's really tough. Wilderness genuinely is. And it was the most equalizing landscape and the most equalizing wilderness we could think of in all of Australia for a tough winter that could take ten participants from completely different areas and have them all be challenged. And it definitely did that.
I could see that, but I think it was an immediacy of when I first tuned into the show, I was like, Oh no, I don't think this is going to be as terrible, and then as it goes on, like as you go from for people listening to this, as you go from episode one to episode two, there seems to be a very big transition from the conditions into oh, yeah, this is going to be pretty hectic.
There's something really magical about that landscape in that it does transform. And I don't want to say too much, but the difference in the way that it looks and it feels and the way it invites you in when the sun's out as opposed to when she's angry and raining and windy and gray, it's remarkable. It's and I don't think I've seen a landscape transform as much as I've seen that one transform, and maybe I've never looked at one for long enough to know what it does.
But there's really it's it becomes this magical wonderland and it turns itself around. And I think that's the pushbull that the participants play with. You know, there's times where it's just awful and she's look trowitory saying get out, I don't want you here, and then other days and as soon as you go, okay, that's it, I'm done, she goes, hang on a second, let me just turn up the heat for a sec. And the light comes out and it just looks like this magical wonderland and
suddenly she draws you back in again. And the transformation, that flip flopping of weather and you know, sunlight versus your great I mean, you see the character development come in and out with the weather and their connectedness to the weather, and the land becomes this crazy thing where you just where they are. You know, they get so tied in together that you can that you know that they can just hang in there for a bit longer. The sun will come out again.
You know. I was talking to a super fan while I was doing some research today before talking to you, and some un pointed This person pointed out to me that they came across the show because it helped them with grief. And I know this might sound strange to you to hear, but you know what an interesting thing that this show draws people in who you know are suffering from grief they and that it does something really quite powerful and helpful for them.
I've heard that a lot from our participants going in. A lot of them told us that nature was a healer for them, and a lot of them feel safer or healthier, or clearer or straighter when they're in nature. And it sounds like a cliche, doesn't it, But it does.
It feel uncomfortable to say it, but I still think it's a huge part of the currency of the show. I mean, you know, it sounds horrific to put these people into these situations, but you know, look they do it, and that there's something quite hopeful for the viewer, something quite magical.
I really think there is. And there's there's something about nature that reminds you of your place in the world that's really humbling, and I think as crew, we've walked away with something with some really valuable lessons. It's changed us in ways that again sound a bit cliched and uncomfortable to say, but this show has a profound effect
on people. You hear lots of cases in the US that where this show has actually influenced sustainable living culture in ways that is unprecedented, and it's directly related to watching this series. People want to get back to nature. People are leaving and we're already in that mindset anyway. I think again, the pandemic has taught us that we can we can work remotely, and we can get back to nature. And I think that this is just feeding into that, and the two are feeding off each other.
But there's some really strong healing messages about what nature can do for you. Well.
I hope people listening to this right now are drawn to watching this show because I think this show really does deserve to have a lot of eyeballs on it, because it's an amazing show that you should be really proud of.
Oh I'm so super It was a privilege to be the EP of this series. Genuinely say that. I mean, how often do you get to make a show that you're a massive fan of. But it's a privilege to just work in a format that is just so honest and authentic and that puts people in the spotlight that we don't normally see they're really genuinely ten wonderful, wonderful human beings, and you don't. You won't and see, you
won't want to see any of them tap out. You'll love every single one of them, and they'll just get under your skin.
But did you have to choose between like did David Mott? Did Marty say to you, now you're not doing I'm a celebrity next year? You know you're going to be doing alone? Did you have to become Did you have to make a decision with some of these projects? There's some of these staples that you work on every year, Like well, I.
Had to make the decision as to what to do with celebrity. But there was a no brainer. I as soon as I heard that we were that we had alone, I went straight to the top. I went straight to Madi and Bepon said I have to work on this. I have to work on this. I may have threatened I just had to. I just knew I had to. And I was lucky enough that they said, okay, here.
You go, do it rightfully. So that He's given you such an interesting and challenging project for you to utilize your skills on Oh.
Look, honestly, I don't think I'm prouder of anything then alone, it was just and the team that works on it as much as I mean, you can imagine, it's a small team, a team of about twenty to twenty five, just depending on which part of the series we're talking about, but a small team of people who are also living extremely remotely under not great circumstances, with not great coffee or food options, who are away from their families and
living you know, this incredible journey with these incredible people. But there's a separate, alone series that happens behind the scenes as well, with all these people who are working for you but don't have an end date. None of us know when it's going to end. So you say goodbye to your families and they you know, and your friends. You can't tell them where you're going, and you can't tell them how long it's for. So there's an incredible sacrifice on behalf of this incredible team that I got
to work with. So I'm so I'm proud of every single person that was part of it from behind the scenes two on screen, it's just what a show like it.
I was so lucky for you, Like you know, to be able to sink your teeth into something like that. Everyone who joins the podcast that I asked them this question, what is something from behind the scenes, something that we won't see, that might be a bit of an interesting story or a funny story from you know, your particular experience of making this series of a Loon.
I'm going to tell you about the fact that we were all that we were literally in a log cabin where we had to chop wood to keep ourselves warm. As producers. We had electricity connected, but it wasn't connected very well, So we lived on a diet of anything that could be made in a microwave, a toaster, or through boiling a kettle. But you couldn't use either of the three at the same time because if you tried to plug in two at the same time, the whole building shut down.
All does it make you get does it make you get to know the other producers better? Like? Do you walk away with a better relationship them or a worse relationship with them?
Oh? We are bonded through Is it Stockholm syndrome? Yep? I think we're all. Our DNA has fused. We've been down there that long and lived that Groundhog Day for such a long period of time eating that. How long were you there for?
That?
All up? Like all up?
How long were you there for?
I can't tell you that without giving away how long it went for. I can tell you that it was for more than one hundred and twenty days for me.
Okay, you can tell me that you're not okay and you've been in therapy since I'm not okay.
I came back, haven't stopped being, haven't stopped eating? Because how good's flavor when you're not having a white bread sandwich on noodles? And so yeah, look it's it's I'm a little bit broken, but I'm humpty dumpty now, so all good.
It's so funny. Some of these experiences can really rupture where you are in your life, and when you return to the real people in your real world, they're kind of a little bit like, oh, you're broken, can I send you back?
I think I should have been sent back. I came out of there and went to Hobart and suddenly there were too many people. It was really hard to adjust. And it was Hobart, you know, it wasn't Sydney yet. So I'm really glad. I had about a week and a half in Hobart before I flew home to Sydney because it was a massive culture shock. I really wanted to just go straight back to the cabin. That's when you know you're broken.
Yeah, that's definitely but you had the red wine at Salamanca and that basically you've eased you back into the real world. Can I just say I've had you for much longer than I anticipated, and I'm so grateful for your generosity with your time. I knew that this was going to be a fun episode for me, and you were hilarious, so well spoken, and I just really appreciate you sharing the behind the scenes of a loon.
I really love talking to you. I've been wanting to talk to you for such a long time.