Will Smith is guide and guest at the centre of Welcome to Earth, Disney+’s six-episode special event docuseries about the hidden wonders of our blue and green planet.
The world-recognized movie star is also a part-time guinea pig, as National Geographic explorers shepherd him to the bottom of the sea, beyond the Arctic Circle to the North Pole, up an active volcano and across the green hills of Africa as part of a larger mission to explain to Smith — and by extension viewers looking on through their mobile screens and watching from home — such big-picture concepts as how we see colour, and the nature of fear and how it conditions some of us to be risk averse and others to constantly push the boundaries of what’s possible and discover the unknown. Explorers, in other words.
And it was National Geographic explorers Eric Weihenmayer, mountaineer; engineer Albert Lin, expeditionist Dwayne Fields and marine biologist Diva Amon who seized the spotlight during a recent teleconference to promote Welcome to Earth’s streaming debut this week on Disney+. It was the explorers themselves who in many ways had the most interesting stories to tell, about how they became latter-day adventurers in the New Age of Exploration, and where they see themselves going from here — as scientists, adventurers and everyday human beings confronted by the big-picture issues that confront humankind in the age of Covid, climate change and looming species extinction.
Weihenmayer, an athlete, adventurer and activist who became the first blind person to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, on May 25, 2001, was humbled to even be asked to participate in the series, by series producer Jane Root — a former BBC executive instrumental in shepherding many of David Attenborough’s natural history series to fruition — and Academy Award-nominated film director Darren Aronofsky.
“I was excited to be invited to be one of the explorers, not being able to see, because I think it’s a real celebration that we experience the world and discover things not just with our eyes but with our sense of touch, our hearing, and our sense of smell. For me, it was a beautiful experience to go in and be the vehicle to understanding the world in a non-visual way, even though I know the show is insanely visual.”
Lin, a research scientist at the University of California San Diego and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in the field of technology-enabled exploration, concurred.
“The things we take for granted in this world are just beyond our view. This journey allowed us to experience concepts as fundamental as time, patterns, the kind of things we see around us in the natural world but perhaps don’t know much about. We were able to pull them apart in these unbelievably epic ways and see things we didn’t even realize were there. For me, as a technologist who’s applied that to different aspects of my own world, applying these things made me realize that this world of ours is so much more incredible than I ever realized. And so connected. The different dots of how it all works are connected. We’re in this beautiful, wonderful, blue dot, floating across the universe in a kind of a magical way.”
Amon, a marine biologist from Trinidad who takes centre-stage in Welcome to Earth’s premiere episode, as she accompanies Smith on a deep-sea dive, a voyage literally to the bottom of the sea, was delighted to show off her private world to the actor who appeared in I Am Legend and was Oscar-nominated for Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness.
“Welcome to Earth” was Smith’s most memorable lines in the Hollywood blockbuster Independence Day, and producer Jane Root said the choice was a natural fit for the docuseries.
Amon is also a Marie Sklodowska Curie Research Fellow at London’s Natural History Museum, and remarks in the program that few marine explorers are people of colour like herself. She hails from Trinidad originally, and says it’s one of her regrets that as an island nation, Trinidad has been unable to afford marine research in its own territorial waters, a situation she has devoted her career to addressing.
“Welcome to Earth inspires us all to take stock and remind us to reconnect with nature,” she said, “and inspires us to be better stewards of this incredible planet.”
Dwayne Fields, a presenter of the BBC program Countryfile and the first Black person from Britain to reach the North Pole, said for his part that it was inspiring to be part of program dedicated to showcasing the beauty of the world around us.
“In doing so I’m hoping it will spark some, I don’t know, passion which will encourage everyone to want to get out there and see it, and experience it for themselves — whether that’s the same way as Erik, for example, by feeling, smelling, touching, or just immersing yourself in it.
“That’s the great thing about how this was shot and the people who shot it. They were the best people in the world using some of the best tech that was designed purely for this. It’’s such an immersive experience, and I feel it’s going to encourage more and more people to go out there and feel it for themselves.”
Welcome to Earth involved 92 film shoots in 34 countries, Root added.
“It’s all about these hidden worlds that are all around us. It’s about being filled with awe for this planet.”
“I love the outdoors,” Weihenmayer explained. “First and foremost, I love it! I love the experience, the sensory view of it through my hands, through my ears. I also realize there’s a side-benefit, how it’s motivational when a blind guy climbs big, tall mountains and kayaks rivers. There’s a wonderful, broader message there.
“We went to Vanuatu, which is this island chain, and we hiked up to this very active volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. We had a good safety crew around us, so we felt pretty safe. For sure, though, it was wild because we were walking up this active volcano, with these giant magma bombs that were shooting half a mile into the sky. We repelled down into that volcano to study the soundscape of the volcano, and it was definitely, let’s say, counterintuitive to be walking into the volcano versus running away from it.
“Will was totally awesome about it. He’s a gamer. He was fine.”
The Jamaican-born Fields t found himself shepherding Smith through the cold, Frozen Planet-style.
“It was cold,” Fields admitted. “When you’re born on a sunny Caribbean island like Jamaica, it’s not the natural thing to say, ‘I’m going to get up and walk to the North Pole.’ As with anyone else, I wanted more out of life, though. All of us here wanted to do more, see more, and be more. I wanted that experience, and I saw that exact same thing in Will on this shoot. He wanted the experience. I think that’s exactly what the outdoors gives you.
“For me, the North Pole was completely abstract to everything I grew up seeing and being around. It was a great way to reinvent myself.”
The world doesn’t begin and end with Welcome to Earth.
“My checklist is a mile long,” Weihenmayer said, when asked to talk about his bucket list. “If you have maybe an hour, we can sit here over a beer and I’ll tell you all the things I still want to do with my life.
“Climb the north face of the Eiger; explore beautiful, huge rock faces and glaciers throughout Canada; go to Patagonia. I mean, for sure, I’ll run out of cartilage before I run out of things to do and things to explore.”
“For me, I think it’d have to be ice diving,” Amon said. “There’s just so much life down there, and yet on top of it it’s freezing cold. I just feel it would be challenging in every sense.”
“I’m taking a group to Antarctica next year,” Fields said. “A group of young people to Antarctica. You’re one of the young people. Wicked, wicked.
“I think it has to be somewhere where there are very few people, but there are some people. So I’m thinking the Gobi Desert. Like Albert, having watched the show, I’d probably say Vanuatu, or somewhere in Namibia. I can’t decide. That’s an unfair question.”
Welcome to Earth is streaming now, on Disney+.
