Why Hollywood A-listers are rushing to star in climate shows
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.7 • 219 Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2023
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How do you turn climate change into compelling TV? What scenarios do you draw on? And how do you make sure a call for climate action isn’t lost to a feeling that a dystopian future is inevitable?
When Extrapolations premiered in March, it became one of the first major TV shows to put climate change at the core of its narrative. Packed with A-list actors like Meryl Streep, Kit Harington and Sienna Miller, Extrapolations begins in a not too distant 2037. The world feels all too familiar, and with each episode the temperature becomes a little bit hotter, and the impacts of climate change a little bit worse. The planet is less hospitable, but humanity remains much the same.
This week on Zero*, host Akshat Rathi interviews Extrapolations writer and executive producer Dorothy Fortenberry about the growing demand for climate stories, how reality is overtaking the premise of the show, and how choices made this decade will impact the next.
(*this interview was recorded before the ongoing Hollywood strike action)
Read more:
- Apple TV’s futuristic climate show is already coming true
- NRDC Rewrite the Future
- Zero’s interviews with Kim Stanley Robinson and Amy Westervelt
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to John Fraher, Meg Szabo and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshit Rati. |
| 0:04.0 | This week, characters, climate and consequences. |
| 0:08.0 | Earlier this year, a new TV show came out that caused quite a stir in the climate world. |
| 0:24.6 | It's called Extrapolations, and it starts in the year 2037, where the chaotic effects of climate change have become embedded into everyday lives. |
| 0:34.6 | Of course, you don't have to go years out into the future to see how climate |
| 0:38.5 | change is affecting the world. Climate change is already part of our story. As one of the executive |
| 0:44.7 | producers of the show, Dorothy Fortonberry points out. You know, people talk about climate fiction |
| 0:50.5 | as though it's this particular genre and they'll ask us, oh, so you're making a |
| 0:56.0 | science fiction show about climate. And I'll always say, well, actually, all of the current shows on |
| 1:01.3 | TV that are taking place right now or in the near future that don't portray climate change, |
| 1:06.9 | like those are the science fiction shows. It is currently happening. We are already living in a 1.1 degree Celsius risen a world. |
| 1:14.4 | Written by Scott Z Burns and featuring almost as many A-Lister's as a West Anderson movie, |
| 1:20.5 | Extrapolations plays out over 40 years. |
| 1:23.6 | In each episode, the temperature is a little bit hotter and the planet a little less hospital. |
| 1:30.9 | And even though the world changes, people largely stay the same. |
| 1:35.7 | If God made humans in his image, why do they suck or did we just evolve into sucking? |
| 1:42.5 | This is from an episode about a girl preparing for her bath mitzwa |
| 1:46.0 | while dealing with two well-worn conflicts, |
| 1:49.0 | that between a teenager and her parents |
| 1:52.0 | and the Atlantic Ocean versus the city of Miami. |
| 1:55.0 | Extrapolations is the first TV show to put climate at the center of the drama. |
| 2:00.0 | Not as dystopia, but as part of our current reality. |
... |
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