New mini-series featuring Mike Rowe filming in Dewey

Local businesses will serve as the backdrop for another major film project — this time, a mini-series hosted by Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch, among other things.

In the new TV show, The Way I Heard It — based on a podcast of the same name — Rowe tells true short stories. The show’s crew is spending four days filming two episodes locally, one at the Dewey Hotel, 801 N Deleware St., and another at Prairie Song, 402621 W 1600 Rd.

Produced by Tulsa-based Impact Productions, filming for the show is being done throughout Oklahoma. Director Jonathan Coussens said the state lends itself to the show’s needs.

“Oklahoma has a lot of variety of topographic regions that really lend to 1800s, early turn of the century, wild west kind of stuff. We’re shooting a variety of those types of episodes this season,” Coussens said.

At the Dewey Hotel, the show will shoot an episode about Abraham Lincoln and at Prairie Song, an episode about Annie Oakley and Frank Butler.

The episodes will be part of the show’s third season. The first season began airing in May.

Rowe’s podcast now has more than 200 episodes and ranks in the top 20 of Apple’s Society and Culture genre. Each episode features stories about pop culture, politics, history and other topics and is described in a press release as “a mystery and true-ish tale about someone you know, filled with facts that you don’t.”

Rowe said in the release he tries to make each episode as accurate as possible, but he understands there are conflicting accounts of history, so audiences may hear a contradiction.

“If so, feel free to bring any discrepancy to my attention. Just remember – I’m not wrong. It’s just the way I heard it,” Rowe said in the release.

Next week, the show will film in Gutherie and Kingfisher, Coussens said.

A Tulsa native, Coussens said that between The Way I Heard it and other productions, like Killers of the Flower Moon, Oklahoma businesses and state legislature are realizing it can be a profitable industry for the state.

“For a long time the coasts have discounted the middle of the country, but not anymore. We are consistently proving Oklahoma and Oklahomans know how to make feature and episodic content,” Coussens said in the release. “Producing episodic content like this, shows off our state for the industry and is one of the reasons the Oklahoma film industry is booming and bouncing back even stronger than before.”

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Mini-series featuring Mike Rowe filming in Dewey