‘Queens’ turns cameras on females in animal kingdom

Move over males. It is time for the females to have their time in the National Geographic spotlight. The cable channel’s new series, “Queens” is the story of the matriarchies and female leaders in the animal kingdom.

Executive producer and writer Chloe Sarosh wanted to look at animals from the tiniest ant to the biggest elephant.

“We spent probably the first year of production really diving into the science behind these stories and how we might interpret them, how we might go out and film them in the field,” Sarosh says. “We wrote storyboards about what we hoped we might film when we go out and either we’re lucky and it happened, or something completely different happened, or it doesn’t happen at all, and we flip.”

Their four-year efforts resulted in a seven-part series that begins at 8 p.m. March 4 with “African Queens.” Crews captured how in the towering walls of Tanzania’s Ngorongoro crater, the sisters of a lion pride clash with a hyena clan ruled by an all-powerful queen.

Angela Bassett narrates the tales of how these “Queens” aren’t always kind or gentle, letting nothing come between them and the success and safety of their families. The production brings the natural world into focus through the female lens for the very first time.

Executive producer Vanessa Berlowitz brought 30 years of filming wildlife to the project. The one thing that hasn’t changed through all those years is that it all starts with a great new story.

“That’s why we were so lucky when we chose to basically feature female leaders in the natural world for the first time. We just found this kind of wealth of new revelation. Every time we went out to the field, there was new stuff coming back,” Berlowitz says. “That gave us a foundation on which we built newness at every level.

“We brought it into the writing style with Chloe bringing her fantastic new storytelling head into the process. But we also brought it into the music working with Morgan [Kibby] who’s a fantastic, dramatic narrative composer who never worked in the genre before, but she brought something special and new.”

One thing Berlowitz noticed during her years on the job was the lack of females. She was determined that “Queens” would not only be the story of females but would be produced by female-led production teams around the world.

The final episode of the series celebrates the women who went to the ends of the Earth and dedicated their lives to documenting and protecting animal queens.

Sarosh recalls how that approach got negative feedback.

“Someone in our industry said, ‘Oh, “Queens,” that series the girls are making,’ and, obviously, all our hackles went up,” Sarosh says. “Vanessa and I knew at that moment that not only did we have to make a great series, we had to make something that was better.”

The determination to use as many females in the crews as possible opened the door for Faith Musembi, a Kenyan who struggled to find work in the nature photography world. She ended up as a producer and director on the project.

Musembi says, “One of the unique things about this genre is it has typically and traditionally been done by British white men because they started out doing this however many years ago.  Kenya doesn’t have a shortage of wildlife content that’s filmed in our country, but the crazy thing is me, as a Kenyan, up until ‘Queens,’ there were no inroads for me to work in the industry because everything is staffed out of England or other western countries.

“Through a series of things that happened, I had the opportunity to work on this premium wildlife show.”

The series goes to the wildest places on the planet to look at female leaders. The plan was to make each episode as different from the others as possible so the audience would be surprised by each episode.

One example is how the real ruler of the pride is the female. They not only give birth to the next generation but will fight to the death to protect the young from lions and hyenas.

Sarosh adds, “It’s politics and power play and manipulation.  That amazing scene in the first episode where we filmed first, which was the infanticide of the baby hyena, which was incredibly hard to watch in the cutting room, and I think you’ll probably be quite pleased that you don’t get to see half of the footage that actually came back from that day.

“But to have a ringside seat to see that complex power play, that complex politics at work, and how far that hyena would go to take her sister’s crown, I think we were all absolutely blown away by that moment.”

The other six episodes include “Rainforest Queens,” “Tiny Jungle Queens,” “Savanna Queens,” “Mountain Queens,” “Costal Queens” and “Behind the Queens.” Episodes will be available on Disney+ and Hulu the day after they air on Nat Geo.

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