INTERVIEW: ‘Big Cats’ deserve their own ‘Tales’
Photo: Big Cat Tales is a five-night event on Animal Planet that follows the wondrous felines of the Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya. Photo courtesy of Animal Planet / Provided by the network’s PR department with permission.
Animal Planet is in the midst of a five-night celebration of all things feline. Big Cat Tales began Monday, Oct. 29 and continues through Friday, Nov. 2, each night airing at 8 p.m. on the network.
As the name suggests, the TV programming will focus on large feline species, such as the lion and cheetah. Audiences can expect cutting-edge cinematography and dramatic storytelling that highlight the beauty, danger and current status of these wondrous creatures.
The action takes place on the world-renowned Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. The hosts are Jonathan Scott, Angela Scott and Jackson Ole Looseyia, and they follow prides of cats around the landscape, detailing their every move and trying to decipher their familial and hunting behavior. In particular, viewers will see the famous Marsh Pride, watching how the cubs grow and face the obstacles of their new world.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Jonathan Scott about the new series. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can audiences expect from Big Cat Tales?
Exciting high octane wildlife photography of the highest order combined with great storytelling. We have nearly 100 years in the field watching big cats between the three of us! The Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya is our backyard – it is like a second home for Angela and myself — and Jackson has his own camp there. Angela and I have a stone cottage at Governor’s Camp.
How long and complicated was the shooting for this special?
We filmed for 10 weeks — two blocks of filming in 2017 (six weeks in February/March and four weeks in August/September) to follow the lives of these enigmatic predators year round — and from year to year — we have watched the Marsh Pride of lions for instance since 1977. We know some of these big cats almost as well as our friends — but always respect them as individuals and as wild creatures.
They are not our friends — they are supremely beautiful and specialised hunters. Because lions and leopards are territorial, and we have followed them for years, we know where to find our star big cats. Spending as much time as we do with them — watching them, following them, photographing them and studying them — we feel at times as if we are able to get inside their minds to predict what they are going to do next. And knowing their behaviour intimately helps us to capture every detail of their extraordinary lives.
Our knowledge of big cat behaviour and wildlife photography (Jonathan and Angie have both won the Overall Award in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition — J in 1987 and A in 2002) made a big difference, and our director, Abraham Joffe, and his team had all the latest technology to help make the shoot look different to when we filmed big cats from 1996-2008 for Big Cat Diary. There is a much more cinematic look to these programs, and the series was shot in 4K. We used drones and Ronin (stabilised camera mounts) to help capture the wonder of the Mara landscape and the distances we travelled in keeping tabs on our star big cats. So 10 weeks + 100 years of experience in following the lives of big cats in Kenya’s Maasai Mara!
How did you determine which prides to follow?
I first started following the group of lions I named the Marsh Lions in 1977 — they were the stars of my first real book (The Marsh Lions) in 1982 and co-authored with the wildlife journalist Brian Jackman. Angela and I have continued to follow that pride every since. In 1985, I wrote The Leopard’s Tale based on my six-year study of a mother leopard.
Leopards were always my obsession — the most beautiful and mysterious of all the big cats. We have followed leopard dynasties all these years — naming each individual we see regularly. So we follow the big cats who live in a radius around Governor’s Camp where we have our stone cottage and where we based the production — an area of 100 square kilometers in the northern Mara and bordered by the Mara River to the west. But there were times when we roamed even further to find cheetahs, the most far ranging of the big cats with females sometimes moving over a home range of more than 400 square kilometers. The beauty of the style of the new series is that because we know so many different lion prides and leopards and cheetahs, we can always find a story of interest. If one of our stars isn’t doing anything we can always focus on another one.
Could you describe this game reserve in Kenya for someone who has never been on safari?
The Masai Mara National Reserve is the best place in the world to film big cats. The landscape is very open — wide rolling savanna grasslands with scattered trees. So great visibility to spot big cats — and easy access to them when you do. There are patches too of acacia woodland — bush country — and areas of forest, particularly the riverine forest bordering the Mara River, which is the lifeblood of the reserve.
There are hills and rocky outcrops too that leopards love (along with the bush country and forests), and the river is the focus of the great migration of wildebeest and zebras that move into the Mara during the dry season (June through October) from the Serengeti National Park in bordering Tanzania. The Mara is truly a kingdom of predators, so finding all the big cats is possible every day — if you know where to look — and we do. A day on safari in the Mara will change your life — guaranteed — not just the big cats, but all the other animals, too — elephants galore, buffalo, antelope, rhinos, hippos and over 500 species of birds including 53 species of birds of prey. It it a garden of Eden — and our favorite place on earth.
When did you first fall in love with big cats?
When I was kid growing up on a farm in Berkshire in England and my favorite outing each year was a visit to my Auntie Florence who lived in London and who took me and my sister to Regent’s Park Zoo. I used to love to see the lions being fed — and hung out around the leopard enclosure hoping for a glimpse of its secret and elusive occupant. Most often it stayed inside its cave — but occasionally it would appear, and I just thought ‘this is it — this is why I have to go to Africa and see these amazing creatures in the wild.’
And then when I was 16/17, I sat in a cinema and watched the movie Born Free — the story of Elsa the lioness and how George and Joy Adamson released her back in to the wild in Kenya. So after a degree in zoology from the Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and a year in the U.S. building houses in New York and then traveling all over in my $300 Comet Mercury — sleeping in the back — I returned to the U.K. and saved up to buy a ticket on an overland truck travelling from London to Johannesburg — 6,000 miles, nearly four months on the road (plus a bout of malaria and dysentery and lots more besides) including a visit to the Mara-Serengeti in Kenya-Tanzania.
I was hooked. I sold my onward ticket from Cape Town to Sydney in Australia, and here we are! My dream of doing something with wild animals in Africa came true — plus I found Angie, the love of my life. We were married in the Mara in 1992 — 1,000 feet above the plains overlooking Marsh Pride territory. How lucky am I?
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Big Cat Tales continues on Animal Planet every night through Friday, Nov. 2. Each night’s broadcast begins at 8 p.m. Click here for more information.
