When NBC announced its series order for The Americas in January 2020, the network’s sister streaming service, Peacock, did not yet exist. The head of NBC’s entertainment division has changed multiple times since then —but The Americas stayed on course throughout the changes at NBC.
The nature documentary series, which wrapped its season with a making-of episode on April 20, made it to air five years after that initial announcement. It has proven worth the wait: The show, produced by BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit (Planet Earth, Prehistoric Planet) and Universal Television Alternative Studio, and narrated by Tom Hanks, has drawn solid ratings both in the U.S. and internationally. It averages 5.5 million viewers on NBC (including delayed viewing), making it the most watched nature documentary on linear TV in 15 years. NBCUniversal says some 56 million people worldwide have watched at least a few minutes of The Americas.
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With that success, two of the executives who have shepherded The Americas from the start —Universal Television Alternative Studio president Toby Gorman and Shelby Shaftel, senior vp alternative programming and development for NBCUniversal Entertainment — are both taking a well-earned victory lap after the five-year production paid off and looking ahead to what else NBCU can do in the natural history world.
“You know that you have something special when you start getting texts from all kinds of different people in your lives,” Shaftel tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m in a phase where a lot of my friends have little kids. … They’re watching with their whole families, and that’s really special. That’s what we do this for, and to know people are watching and connecting with it, it’s the best.”
Shaftel and Gorman spoke with THR about seeing The Americas through, approaching Hanks to narrate the series and what might come next.
Shelby, since you were at NBC for the very start of this project, what can you recall of the early conversations about whether this was something that NBC wanted to do? This is obviously not typical unscripted programming for a broadcast network.
SHELBY SHAFTEL There was a lot of foresight. It was knowing that we had a streamer in the works. We knew this [type of programming] does very well on broadcast in the U.K., and we know that people here are used to seeing [these shows] on streaming, and we’re one of the few places you can have both. So we thought, let’s greenlight it for broadcast. But since we’re global, it could work for all these different territories — and UTAS has had so much success distributing it — and then we also could have it as a property for our future streamer, which is what happened.
Toby, you joined NBCU right as this was about to be greenlit, correct?
TOBY GORMAN It was really just a couple of weeks after I joined. Shelby was involved in the preliminary conversations before I got here. It’s been a journey like no other for me personally — it’s such a unique project.
I’ll never forget when I first visited the team in Bristol [England], where the production team was based, and they screened some early material for me. I knew what I was going to see, and I was excited about what I was going to see, but I was not prepared for how jaw-dropping it would be. As soon as I screened a couple of scenes, very early, strung-together stuff, I called Pearlena Igbokwe, who’s our chairman, and said “You need to come and see this.” A few weeks later, we came back, and I actually sat sideways and watched her jaw drop as we were watching it on the screen. It’s been incredible to be a part of something this expansive, this prolific, and to see it just get better and better and better throughout, with Tom [Hanks] coming on, or the score being added, even going to see the orchestra score it — Shelby and I visited the stage. It’s a dream come true.
Were there ever any times where you were thinking, “Can we hurry this up,” or “Is this going to work?”
SHAFTEL It takes so long, and we knew that. The first map that they laid out for us was about a year of planning in terms of story pitches and carving up the map of where we wanted to cover, which was really fun. We would literally pull up a map, and were kind of circling [places] and trying to figure out what we can cover and where the best stories are. They applied that to the research, and then came back to us. And of course, they’d never had to work with affiliates before, so we were thinking, “Oh, these are really good spots for NBC viewers,” and they were taking everything into account, cross-sectioned with where the great big stories and science were. And of course, the pandemic made it [take] slightly longer. But once we saw how special it was, we honestly didn’t want it to end at a certain point. I’m just so happy that people received it like we hoped they would.
You zeroed in on Tom Hanks as your preferred narrator pretty early on in the process. Did it take much persuasion to get him to sign on?
GORMAN We knew he had never done anything like this before, so it was really about, would it speak to him? We had already started to see some material, and it was becoming what we had hoped it would become. I spoke directly to his reps, and I shared everything with them. We then brought Mike Gunton [The Americas exec producer and creative director of the BBC Natural History Unit] into the conversation, who obviously is an expert. Mike is formidable in this space, and we built a little deck that just explained what the show is and the ambition behind it. I don’t think we were able to send him any clips at that point, so it was all on paper. I think it was two days later — we did not anticipate to hear back quite so quickly —and they said, he loves it. He’s super interested. It was actually quite straightforward, and it was because [the material] spoke to him. He agreed this project would be everything we wanted it to be.
Do you know if he had seen any of those BBC natural history documentaries, like Planet Earth or Blue Planet?
GORMAN He had, which helped a lot. And once he and Mike spoke, we knew there would be an instant friendship there. And there really was. They had so much fun in the booth.
SHAFTEL We have a whole digital series with the two of them together just talking about the show. As soon as we heard he might be interested, we’re like, somebody just needs to get him in a room with Mike. They’re going to be best friends and have the best dinner parties.
GORMAN And we were right.
SHAFTEL [Hanks] said it was bucket list for him, which was pretty cool.
I wanted to ask about the writing of the narration. You have to present what’s happening and what these animals and these environments are factually, but there’s also some humor, and there’s drama in the way the film is edited and put together. Did you have much input in shaping that?
GORMAN That that was one of the things we really spent time getting right. We wanted it to feel like it was in Tom’s voice. We wanted it to feel conversational and entertainment first. Of course, you’re learning throughout, but you shouldn’t just feel like that. I would say it’s probably one of the key differences between something like Planet Earth and The Americas, is the tone and the delivery of our writing.
SHAFTEL I think it’s everything for a show like this. That’s why we wanted to make sure we had the right narrator, because the story is being told by the voiceover and the narration. We really zoned in on [the idea that] we want people to feel like they’re traveling somewhere with this show, which is very different than Planet Earth. We want to learn a lot about the place we’re going, and we want to learn how the animals and the place interact with each other and impact each other. We knew that the way to connect people’s hearts was through storytelling, which is what we do on all of our shows. Mike always said, “I’m not trying to get you to care about all bears. I’m trying to get you to get you to care about this bear.” That’s how your brain can actually focus on it.
I have to assume that after five years of production and post-production, seeing the show do well must be very satisfying for you.
GORMAN It’s done so well internationally. It’s in about 180 territories, and I have family back home [in the U.K.] that are watching it on BBC on Sunday nights. I’m getting texts from my parents and my extended family saying how much they love it. It is just the best feeling. I have a 7-year-old son who the other day was like, Can we watch another episode? He doesn’t say that about many of our shows [laughs]. So yeah, everyone is engaged, from grandparents to young children and everything in between.
SHAFTEL [My kids] watched the cuts with me when they thought it was just this thing that we had in our house, like mommy’s animal show. They’ve quite literally grown up with this. I have a 7-year-old as well, who was two when I was assigned this, and now their friends at school are talking about it.
Can you see doing more of this type of programming?
GORMAN We’re definitely discussing it internally. It’s early days. I think it’s fair to say [The Americas] is exceeding all of our expectations, and we are absolutely starting to think about what a second season would look and feel like. It’s another long endeavor. It’s years in the making, so if we’re lucky enough to go again, it’s not something people would see for a few years. But there certainly seems to be an encouraging narrative as to why we would do it again. We truly didn’t know — this was a giant experiment, but it’s worked out.
In 2022, you announced a show called Surviving Earth — is that still in the pipeline?
GORMAN It is. We’re in the final stages of post-production on it. It’s a very different proposition — all CGI. It’s on the history of the planet, on cataclysms that have wiped out species, and about how those very few species have survived and thrived and become who we are today. It’s very much a look into the past, but it’s coming together well, and it’s another big, exciting swing for us.
Is that maybe the way forward, where you start something every few years so you can have a steadier stream of shows like this?
SHAFTEL In a perfect world, we would have a pipeline for something like that. NBC has always been a co-viewing network, but especially in unscripted, we’ve always prioritized things that you can watch on the couch with multiple generations. So whether it’s like a long-term project like these, or The Voice or America’s Got Talent, that’s something we’re always developing. We just never had natural history as a bucket in that category, but it’s turned out that it really can be another genre within our arsenal to target that audience and serve them.
