INTERVIEW: What it takes to film the ‘World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji’
Photo: Team Aussie Rescue from Australia (team members Samantha Gash, Morgan Coull, Mark Wales, Jarrod Mitchell and Joshua Lynott) compete in the 2019 Eco-Challenge adventure race in Fiji on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019. Photo courtesy of Krystle Wright / Amazon / Provided by press site with permission.
World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji, hosted by Bear Grylls and executive produced by Mark Burnett and Lisa Hennessy, recently premiered on Amazon Prime Video. The series showcases the adrenaline-pumping adventures of 66 teams from 30 countries competing in an 11-day journey that never stops. They must endure an untold number of obstacles, environments and dangers, all against the backdrop of Fiji, a South Pacific country that is perhaps the best example of paradise on this planet.
“What those athletes do is absolutely extraordinary,” Hennessy said in a recent phone interview. “They are just extraordinary humans.”
Hennessy has been working alongside Burnett ever since the very first Eco-Challenge in April of 1995, when the racers in the inaugural contest headed into the deserts of Utah. What drives her to keep documenting these incredible races are the athletes themselves.
“I absolutely love the people that are crazy enough to race in this race,” she said. “It makes me want to work harder when I see someone doing such an extraordinary feat. Our team just loves putting on this incredible race for them. It’s a global group of people — all backgrounds, all ages. They’re just incredible people. That’s what keeps me so excited and makes me work as hard. It’s really a hard race to produce, and I will do it any day in order to do it for those athletes.”
Hennessy, as showrunner, must strike a balance between intimately documenting these 66 teams and also trying to stay out of their way. She called Eco-Challenge an “expedition with a stopwatch,” and her most important goal is not to affect the race for any team.
“In Fiji, we had 12 embedded camera crew,” Hennessy said. “There was a mutual respect. The racers knew that they were racing with an athletic cameraperson covering their story. The cameraperson never affected their race but had a respect in terms of covering their story, and I think it was a really fine balance. But it worked out really well. The camera crew, in some instances, almost became a sixth member of the team in terms of telling their story.”
Hennessy counts herself as a global citizen of the world, and she loves how each and every Eco-Challenge has traveled to faraway places beautiful in both scale and scope. For her, Fiji is a dramatic location and perfect to lens because of its color and texture.
“You have the blue, blue ocean, and then you have the green thick jungle,” she said. “And you have this incredible canyon and peaks for the teams to cross over and then these beautiful wind-swept plains on the other side of the island. … So from a cinematic point of view, it’s just incredible to film there.”
Filming such a rugged race takes its toll on Hennessy and her team. They need to forego many sleeping hours and head out into the terrain themselves, so it’s important that they practice self-care along the way.
“I try my best to get sleep because I need to be a very good leader, and leaders need sleep,” the executive producer said. “There’s a funny moment because I direct the GSS, the aerial helicopter, and there was a point when I was in the helicopter. And I told the pilot, he’s a New Zealander, I’m like, ‘I need to take a power nap.’ … A real nap is like hanging out at the beach and sleeping for three hours. I just need 15 minutes in order to get my battery to a place where I could function. Like the athletes, we’re all living off adrenaline.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji, hosted by Bear Grylls and executive produced by Mark Burnett and Lisa Hennessy, is now available on Amazon Prime Video. Click here for more information.
