Mark Linfield and Vanessa Berlowitz have spent decades shaping the world of natural history filmmaking through their work on programs like Frozen Planet, Planet Earth, Animals Up Close, and Queens. As co-founders of Wildstar Films, they’ve made a career out of capturing nature’s biggest stars, but with their new project, National Geographic’s Underdogs, the duo seeks to flip the nature documentary genre on its head. Instead of focusing on nature’s usual suspects, Underdogs shines a light on the planet’s most overlooked, unusual, and often misunderstood creatures, and gives them a rare moment in the spotlight.
Narrated by Ryan Reynolds, Underdogs blends educational science with irreverent humor and follows animals like the honey badger, the velvet worm, the glass frog, the aye-aye, the axolotl, the bowerbird, the emerald jewel wasp, and more. In our interview, Linfield and Berlowitz reflect on their inspiration for the series, their close collaboration with Reynolds, and how they’re using humor to reintroduce audiences to the underrepresented side of the animal kingdom.
Nerds and Beyond: Underdogs focuses on animals that often don’t get the spotlight in wildlife films. What inspired you to make a series centered on these overlooked, underrepresented animals?
Mark Linfield, Wildstar Films: We’ve made lots of other series that did the other thing – the tigers and the elephants, and we’ve traveled the world with Planet Earth and those sorts of shows. As we’ve gone, we’ve collected all these stories of just these unsung heroes. Little things living under rocks often have the best, craziest, grossest lives. And whenever you’re telling stories at dinner parties, those are actually the stories that people want to hear about. They’re like, “Lions, yeah, yeah. Ooo, tell me about the thing that lives in the sea cucumber’s butthole! That sounds cool!” So we just wanted to do something really, really different. Soon, we started thinking, well, what about these unsung heroes that on the face of it look gross, but really have incredible lives or amazing superpowers? They’d make a great series. And from that moment on, we thought, well, if it’s about underdogs, we want it to be funny and different. That’s where Ryan [Reynolds’] voice came in.
Vanessa Berlowitz, Wildstar Films: Yeah, he was our dream target voice. So right from day one, we started to write for him. When the pitching process was done, we were praying that we could maybe get him on board. We were very fortunate because our agent was also his company’s agent and they got the sizzle reel in front of him and he loved it from day one. He even voiced our sizzle reel before we even got it commissioned. That really set the tone for a true collaboration. We made this series in a very different way than anything we’ve done before.
Linfield: Yeah, quite often, we’ll have a narrator come in at the end. Everything will be locked and finished and they’ll put a voice on it. This was very much Ryan and his company working with us all the way through, which I think is why it feels like the pictures and the voice go together. It feels quite organic because it was really co-evolved, as Vanessa said.
Nerds and Beyond: Y’all brought up Ryan, so let’s talk about him for a minute. Why did y’all choose him to be the voice of the show?
Berlowitz: Well if you think about Ryan, his brand is kind of the underdog. He plays Deadpool, which is an underdog superhero. He very much identifies with these types of roles and then shows you the hero within. It’s just the most irreverent tone of someone who’s so funny and who clearly reaches huge audiences. So it just felt like he was the perfect person.
Linfield: We very much did want to do the opposite of what we’ve been doing for our careers. There’s very much a format to these natural history shows, so we wanted to make something that was funny, irreverent, broke all the rules, and was also very unformatted, so that every episode was completely different, where you don’t get a sense from watching one episode of what the next one’s going to be like. Whereas in most natural history shows, it’s going to be the same thing but in a different habitat, this one is just crazy and all over the place.
Nerds and Beyond: Was there an animal that you just knew had to be included from the inception, that maybe you had a particular soft spot for? Like I loved frogs when I was little, but didn’t know about the glass frog that turns invisible!
Berlowitz: I think Barry the honey badger.
Linfield: The indestructible honey badger.
Berlowitz: Yeah, because we’ve run into honey badgers a lot when we’ve been out filming in Africa. The honey badger is the one that you will meet on the way back to your tent that you are like –
Linfield: You back off.
Berlowitz: Yeah, you back off. And they’re really hard to film, actually.
Linfield: They’re quite small and diminutive.
Berlowitz: And they scavenge around the outskirts. So you might be filming the elephant or the lion, and there will be a honey badger off doing something strange like eating a scorpion in the distance. We’ve always had a sneaking respect for them. I don’t know if you noticed, but he [Barry] makes some star appearances throughout the series. I just knew we wanted to get him in.
Linfield: And of course, he has his superpower, which is being utterly indestructible.
Berlowitz: Which, in a normal show, how would you show that? But we were very fortunate. That was a real, special moment to capture when the wild dog pack got a hold of him.
Nerds and Beyond: Yes, it made me nervous!
Linfield: They had no chance! It was fine, honestly! [Laughs]
Berlowitz: As you know, they are one of the top predators in Africa, and they will rip an antelope to shreds in seconds. So it was like, “Oh my goodness, we’re finally seeing how special these honey badgers are!” We were very lucky with that sequence.
Linfield: I spent a lot of my youth with my bottom hanging out of a hedge, looking at all the strange, small, creepy crawlies. I’ve always loved invertebrates and things like the velvet worm, those sorts of animals. I just think they’re the most different from us, and therefore the most interesting. They just have all these crazy things that they do, and they’re very rarely talked about. They’re not in natural history shows much. And I think the great thing about having a program that has a lot of those in it means it’s fresh for people who watch [other] natural history [shows] as well. And then hopefully the comedic tone will help bring in a new audience. We’re hoping to satisfy the jaded old natural history audience who think they’ve seen it all, but then also hopefully have something that’s interesting enough for our 16-year-old son, for example, who is very jaded by natural history.
Berlowitz: Yeah, he doesn’t watch what we make. He’s like, “Yeah, yeah whatever.”
Nerds and Beyond: Yeah, old hat.
Berlowitz: Old hat. But he’s actually going to watch this show.
Linfield: He was looking over our shoulder, laughing out loud at some of the sequences we put together. And he loves Ryan as well.
Nerds and Beyond: You were talking about the funny angle. In taking that angle, it makes it feel accessible to kids, like it’s almost a gateway to get them interested in animals like this. But there is definitely adult humor and a whole episode about mating with a viewer discretion warning. How did you navigate the tone throughout the series, and what words of warning, as it were, would you give to parents who may watch with their kids?
Berlowitz: I think it’s a really good point to make. So, obviously, sexual behaviour is a really important part of nature. So it needed to be part of the show. There are fantastically interesting mating behaviors out there – and mating behaviors that are frankly quite bizarre out there, and that haven’t been seen before. Like, take the story of how hyena males will just endlessly follow the female. We felt that it deserved its own program. But we worked very closely with National Geographic and Disney, who were so good in letting us push the boundaries, frankly.
Linfield: We don’t necessarily have the same sensitivities as, for example, an American audience, so we had to rely on Nat Geo’s standards and practices, just to let us know roughly where we should be. But we would let our younger children watch it. But we have to be respectful of other parents. I think that rating is possibly cautious. But that’s by our standards and we have low standards. [Laughs]
Berlowitz: But nothing in there is gratuitous. And you learn extraordinary things as you go. But we are still very proud – it’s probably the first natural history show that has a hyena love story set to a Michael Bolton song.
Linfield: There are certain aspects of sexuality which we won’t get into here, but that probably no other film has done. But it’s very educational because it’s true to nature.
Nerds and Beyond: We’re talking about striking a balance, and I think many viewers are familiar with the grand, sweeping storytelling style of National Geographic documentaries. But this is funnier than traditional National Geographic shows, and more fast-paced. How did you balance such a distinctive style and character-driven focus while still remaining educational?
Berlowitz: A lot of us are scientists and we work with scientists and we work with National Geographic’s scientific fact-checking team. So while a lot of it may sound like it’s just an opportunity for a gag, we were actually very disciplined. In fact, Ryan was, too. Even when he would improvise, which he did. We would develop the stories with his team and with the scientists on board the whole way through, and then he would add extra improvisation and then we would all look at it and go, “Actually, that’s slightly detracting from the amazing science,” and pull back a bit. So you’re right that the guiding light is science through all this. If we weren’t showcasing the animal and how amazing they are – and they are incredible – we changed it. We’d readdress the balance a bit, because it’s not supposed to be a comedic show at animals’ expense. It’s supposed to be celebrating amazing animals, using a comedic tone.
Nerds and Beyond: Another thing that blew me away was some of the close-ups of these animals, like right up to their eyeballs! How did you achieve these particularly intimate shots?
Linfield: That’s a good question. A lot of these animals are quite small, and so to be down on their level to capture everything needs quite unusual equipment and quite an unusual approach. There have been quite a lot of advances in technology with things like miniaturized cameras and robotic arms. So, for example, [the episode titled] “Superzeroes” opens with a scene of a velvet worm and a spider, and it’s all down at their level in their faces. But on a normal, conventional camera, you can’t get the camera that low, and any wobbles that you would introduce with your hands would be huge and would be completely off-putting. So we had these miniaturized cameras on robotic arms, and the robotic arms are super smooth and incredibly finely geared, so we can move around these animals and follow them through the undergrowth. That’s an example of something that wouldn’t have been possible five years ago. And even lighting these animals! We now use these bright lights that are completely cold. When Vanessa and I started, lights that bright would have fried the animal. And now you’ve got these nice bright lights that the animals don’t mind because they’re cool. You can get tiny cameras right up close to them and follow them very smoothly. There are all sorts of advances.
Berlowitz: But you’re right, because we were trying to use comedic and dramatic storytelling, so it was really important to connect to these animals as creatures. You know, they’re not all pretty and fluffy with eyes facing forward. The velvet worm doesn’t even have any eyes! [Laughs] But we really needed to get at its level and really give it a character so you care about it.
Nerds and Beyond: What role do you see Underdogs playing toward conservation, especially through its concentration on animals that aren’t necessarily cute and fuzzy and don’t usually get the spotlight, but are just as worthy or important as non-underdogs?
Linfield: I think it’s firstly about showing people how much diversity there is out in the world that they may not yet know about. But the most important thing is trying to bring a new audience to natural history. There are a lot of people now who are quite disconnected to the environment and to the natural world. They’re living in towns on their cell phones, and they’re just not engaged in the wildlife of the planet. And our big hope is that this taps in to a new audience and brings in new people to engage. Certainly, it’s working for our son anyway. [Laughs] But yeah, we hope it gets people talking about wildlife and gets them interested in wildlife and helps them realize it’s not all about lions or tigers. Half of the animals in this series would be found in a typical American garden under the hedgerose. They’re not all in far-flung places. A lot of them are close to home.
Berlowitz: We’re always looking for new takes. We all care passionately about the environment – that’s why we got into the industry. But we realize as filmmakers, we’ve got to work a bit harder. There are a lot of wildlife shows out there of a certain style, so that’s why we were like, “We’ve got to innovate. We’ve got to find fresh ways to tell stories and use new voices and hopefully reinvigorate those audiences that are familiar, and also find new audiences.”
Nerds and Beyond: To wrap up, I want to know what inspires your creativity and what keeps you telling these stories? And what do you ultimately hope people take away from Underdogs?
Berlowitz: We are passionate wildlife lovers, and that’s why we got into it. We just really love the idea of conveying that passion to huge audiences and trying to keep people connected to nature. So that’s what I hope people come away with: feeling as excited about animals as we still do.
Linfield: That’s right. I think in my lifetime, I’ve watched the average person – if there is such a thing – know less about nature and less about the environment and be more disconnected. And the old shows that we made were mostly watched by people who already loved nature anyway. We really hope this one finds an audience of people who didn’t know about any of this stuff.
Berlowitz: I’d love it if a kid went out and was like, “Oh, that slug in my back garden! I’m actually going to look at that!”
Linfield: “And I know how it mates now and that’s kind of gross!” [Laughs]
Underdogs premieres June 15 on National Geographic and streams the next day on Hulu and Disney+.
