Tom Hanks reveals why he joined epic natural history series The Americas 'This is TV at its absolute best'

BBC News

19-02-2025

From BBC Studios Natural History Unit, the creators of the critically acclaimed and multi-Emmy Award-winning Planet Earth and Blue Planet, in association with Universal Television Alternative Studio, comes the epic 10-part tentpole event series The Americas. The tentpole series is narrated by Tom Hanks, executive produced by Mike Gunton (Life, Planet Earth II, Dynasties), with music by Oscar and Grammy Award-winning composer Hans Zimmer.
The Americas showcases the wonders, secrets and fragilities of the world's great supercontinent. For the first time, the Americas stars in its own incomparable series, using cutting-edge technology to uncover never-before-seen behaviour, and highlight the extraordinary, untold wildlife stories that will deeply connect with millions around the world. Five years in the making and filmed over 180 expeditions, this groundbreaking series reveals the spectacular landscapes of Earth's most varied landmass – the only one to stretch between both poles.
The Americas unprecedented scale and ambition delivers remarkable world firsts; new species, new intimate courtship, dramatic deep sea hunting and some of nature's strangest stories – even a frog that seems to defy death every day.
Each episode features a different iconic location across the Americas: The Atlantic Coast, Mexico, The Wild West, The Amazon, The Frozen North, The Gulf Coast, The Andes, The Caribbean, The West Coast and Patagonia.
Watch The Americas from 6:30pm Sunday 2 March on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
EC5
Q&A with Tom Hanks
What was it that made you agree to be a part of this?
When the opportunity arose to be the voice of The Americas, I said: 'I think I've lived for that opportunity.' I knew that I would be learning an awful lot. I wanted to be on the front line. I feel lucky to be a part of this extraordinary project – of capturing something that is so real that is it's irrefutable to anybody who watches it. And it's just glorious to be a part of that.
Mike Gunton said "Tom was the obvious person to do it. And I'll tell you why because, and I think it's been proved now we've done it, is that these shows are not just told. If they work really well, the audience have an experience where they don't lean back on it. They lean forward, they're involved, and the intensity of the stories, if you get them right, they're very visceral.
They're very empathetic. They should get under your skin. And the skill of being able to weave the different emotions that the animals feel and relate to without it being too anthropomorphic. But making it feel relatable is really, really hard. And I just knew Tom would be able to do it, and indeed he did. And it's critical because some of these stories are quite intense, and people kind of need their hands held sometimes. 'It's going to be okay,' or actually, 'this is really weird,' or 'this is really beautiful,' and be able to lead people and to set up the tone because it is dramatic. To be able to tick all those boxes is incredibly hard thing to do. And Tom did it."
In your own words, what is the Americas?
Everything that we see in The Americas is about the great forces that have shaped our planet Earth. The Americas has been about 4 billion years in the making, and it has a cast of billions. It is a cavalcade of wonder. It's an hour of discovery. You will be enthralled, enlightened, educated and - foremost - entertained. This is TV at its absolute best, because - number one - you can't make this stuff up. It's the truth. It's real.
Is there one story or one beautiful shot from the series that has really stuck with you and can you describe it?
There is something extraordinary in watching creatures of all ages playing. That's my favourite part of The Americas – seeing how often all creatures great and small play, occupy their time, keep themselves entertained. Carefree youngsters - cubs, otters, pups, chicks, owls – learning how to do whatever they do for the first time. It seems like all of creation seeks some form of contact, affection, and togetherness that is undeniably a part of their behaviour.
Mike Gunton, Executive Producer
Michael Gunton is the Creative Director of Factual and The Natural History Unit for BBC Studios. Within this role, Mike works as an Executive Producer on many leading titles, acts as an ambassador for BBC Studios internationally, and is responsible for bringing new and pioneering stories about the natural world to global audiences.
Across his career, Mike has worked on many critically acclaimed series such as Galapagos, Yellowstone, Madagascar, Life, Africa, Shark, Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur and Life Story, and speaks internationally at media and scientific gatherings as an ambassador for Natural History filmmaking, the BBC and the natural world.
Mike's series include the record breaking Planet Earth II, (winner of 4 BAFTAs and 2 Emmys, and believed to have been viewed by around 1 billion people), and the ground-breaking animal behaviour series Dynasties. He has been responsible for the brilliantly innovative Emmy nominated series The Green Planet and bringing the world of dinosaurs to life (working in collaboration with Jon Favreau) with Prehistoric Planet Season 1 and 2. Mike's most recent series, Planet Earth III, has been seen by millions of people and brings a new perspective to understanding our natural world and the challenges it faces.
Mike is a fellow of the Royal Television Society and Linnean Society.
Q&A with Tom Hanks & Executive Producer Mike Gunton
Tom Hanks: First off, here's a test. You get to have your choice of plum assignments expedition wise. Which one of these sequences do you claim for yourself.
Mike Gunton: Witnessing those blue whales -- the biggest animal that has ever lived, four of them, swimming at 30 miles an hour, cavorting, leaping out there, I mean, that's got to be one of the most incredible things I've ever seen.
Tom Hanks: When did you first start doing this? And how many of these have you done?
Mike Gunton: I started when I was in my mid mid-twenties, so I can't remember how many I've done, but a lot. But it's getting on for about 35 years of filming all around the world. You always say the latest show is your best show. This is one of the best shows I've ever worked on, partly just the sheer scale of it - to be able to tell a story that has never been told about such an extraordinary part of the world.
I thought, why has nobody done this? Because this is one of the great locations in the world. But nobody made that connection of drawing the whole of the America together.
This is one extraordinary, connected environment. Let's tell the story of the whole thing. This has been an absolute dream to do.
Tom Hanks: This is not just animals that you feature. You have the majestic of the mountains and the effect of water vapor on the mountain trees that make their own rain. I did not know, for example, the existence of the American bison, were one of the reasons that the plains were as rich and vibrant as they were because they self- fertilized hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of square miles.
Did you discover anything in the process? Do you go to those locations knowing that you were going to capture that or did some things come as a surprise?
Mike Gunton: This is about the Americas. It's not about the wildlife. It's not called the Wildlife Americas. It is called The Americas. And that's an important part of watching -- that you get this big picture of how everything connects. As you say about the bison, the scientists call it ecology, but it's the how. It's a web of life. How everything is connected to everything else and how everything needs everything else.
When you go to location, you always have a very clear idea about the story you're trying to tell. The perspective you want to take, whose story it is. Is it a love story? The male story? The female story? But animals do not read scripts, which is good, because sometimes you go there thinking you're going to get this story and something else happens. I would say nine times out of ten, the way Mother Nature takes the story is more interesting than what we had in our heads before.
Tom Hanks: One thing that I got from the series that was an added bonus was an explanation of history. For example, the loss of the Amazon, the history of the buffalo. Blue whales now are multiplying because they have become protected in certain places.
In the Yucatan, the Mayan civilisation that existed there was built around places that made no sense. At first blush, there's no rivers, there's no ports. There's no reason for these huge cities to exist in the middle of a truly inhospitable jungle, although filled with plenty of wildlife. And The Americas answers that question.
Mike Gunton: Deep underground, there was subterranean water. The whole of that landscape is a honeycomb limestone full of water. And the Mayans knew it and they knew how to find where the water was because they used to follow a Mott Mott bird.
These birds specifically like to nest in the entrances of these deep caverns. So the Mayans used to listen for the sounds of these birds. So all these extraordinary temples are now being discovered in the forest. They're almost always near these access points to deep underground water.
Tom Hanks: The series answers questions that maybe we didn't even know that we had about the condition of life. I think that the importance of something like that is to realise one, that it exists in the first place. And number two, it is at risk.
And you can celebrate its existence, but you have to be aware of how it is at risk and choices are going to have to be made. Otherwise, there would have been no blue whales left, just as there were no passenger pigeons or American buffalo in the same way.
Mike Gunton: From someone who doesn't live in the Americas, we look at it and think that is so rich, huge, vast. And it can appear limitless.
One of the things that the series does show is there are wonders in this place. That's why we wanted to make the series. But there is a story to say you've got such an incredible place. Look after it, because this is one of the great wild places on planet Earth.
If you scan the world, there's nowhere that's got more superlatives, more extraordinary things, greater variety. It has this unique position on planet Earth where the most northerly bit is almost in the Arctic, the most southern bit is almost in the Antarctic.
Almost everywhere you go, there is a unique and extraordinary example of life on Earth. We tend to think so much about boundaries and countries. Nature doesn't care about that. It's all joined, it all flows. And it's been wonderful to see that.
Tom Hanks: In my dreams, I wake up saying lines that were not written, but yet at one o' clock in the morning my eyes will flutter and I will be hearing myself saying, 'Tonight on the Americas, where amazing adventures and the struggle to survive go hand in hand.' Now, you didn't write that.
Mike Gunton: I should have.
Discover each episode location:
The Atlantic Coast
The Atlantic Coast, where wild and urban worlds intersect in unexpected ways. On North Carolina's Outer Banks, an aging stallion's battle to defend his family reveals the intense, unseen dramas of wild horse life. In Chesapeake Bay, rare footage captures bald eagles chasing ospreys mid-air for a hard-won meal. Beneath the waters of the Graveyard of the Atlantic, sand tiger sharks act as unlikely guardians for schools of scad fish, a behaviour only recently observed. In New York City, a young raccoon learns the challenges of urban survival in a vertical world, while under threat from predatory red-tailed hawks, something seldom seen before. In the Appalachian forests, young black bears forage and fireflies light up the darkness, and in New England, a 130-year-old red oak tree's preparation for winter is captured in stunning macro detail, revealing the intricate changes within its leaves. With Tom Hanks.
Mexico
A land where the unexpected unfolds. In the Sonoran Desert, cameras capture, for the first time, a pygmy owl mother guiding her chicks from their nest during daylight hours. In the Sea of Cortez, orcas use complex team strategies to hunt dolphins, a rare cooperative behaviour among these apex predators. On San Pedro Martir island, new wide-angle lens techniques reveal the intimate drama of blue-footed boobies, as a male fights to keep the attention of his wandering mate. Orchid bees are shown in extraordinary detail, as they gather up to 40 different scents, filmed with specialist macro lenses to unveil this intricate process. In the Yucatan, explorers find new lifeforms like cave brittle stars, deep within flooded caves called cenotes that remain less explored than the moon. Finally, millions of monarch butterflies begin their epic journey across the continent, creating a spectacle of colour and movement on a massive scale. With Tom Hanks.
The Wild West
The Wild West, where survival demands grit and adaptability. In snowbound Yellowstone, coyotes use skill and geothermal heat to survive. In Colorado, hundreds of rattlesnakes emerge after winter, while a pregnant female risks starvation to give birth. In California, acorn woodpeckers battle for the best food storage sites, using barns and trees to secure their winter supplies. In Arizona's desert, honeypot ants survive extreme heat by storing nectar inside their own bodies deep underground. On the Great Plains, aging bison face fierce rivals to win mates, while fires renew the grasslands. In Kansas, wild horses run through lightning-charged skies. On Nebraska's Platte River, half a million sandhill cranes converge, their courtship dances creating a rare natural spectacle, now captured from above. The Wild West remains a place of extremes, where each creature must fight to endure its challenges. With Tom Hanks.
The Amazon
The Amazon, where extraordinary animal behaviours reveal the rainforest's hidden stories. In southern Brazil, over a million turtle hatchlings make a perilous dash to the river as black caiman prey on them—a behaviour newly filmed. InVenezuela, a young harpy eagle, filmed from its earliest days, endures intense storms while awaiting its father's return with food, providing new understanding of life high in the canopy. In Brazil, giant river otters hunt together in a coordinated effort, displaying unique social bonds as they corral fish in the shallows. Army ants in Ecuador break down their bivouac and march through the forest with a level of precision and cooperation seldom seen. In the Pantanal, caiman engage in an elaborate courtship display, their movements sending ripples across the water—a striking look at this ancient ritual. With Tom Hanks.
The Frozen North
The Frozen North, where survival means constantly adapting to an unforgiving landscape. In Hudson Bay, a rare encounter unfolds as wolves and polar bears, the region's top predators, clash over a single carcass—never caught on camera until now. Under the glow of the northern lights, snowshoe hares use their large feet to escape lynx in the vast boreal forest. In Alberta, sharp-tailed grouse put on a show like never before, practicing their courtship dances under car headlights. Off Alaska's coast, male walruses engage in curious vocal displays, singing together beneath a summer sunset. In summer, millions of salmon begin their epic journey upstream, while newborn caribou navigate dangerous river crossings on their first migratory trek. Life here is a series of bold moves and dramatic encounters, in a place where the stakes are always high. With Tom Hanks.
The Gulf Coast
The Gulf Coast, a diverse water world teeming with life. In Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, an alligator mother exhibits newly observed behaviour as she stirs the swamp to help her hatchlings learn to hunt. In Florida's Crystal River, manatees gather, and young males practise courtship in rarely-filmed behaviour known as cavorting. The Everglades reveal a new perspective on the apple snail, laying its eggs above water to protect them from fish, while facing danger from aerial predators. On Marco Island, Florida, burrowing owls find love amidst suburban sprawl, a unique glimpse into their adaptation to human habitats. In the Texan thornscrub, rarely seen footage shows a mother ocelot, one of the last remaining in the United States, raising her kittens. This episode showcases the Gulf Coast's extraordinary wildlife and the surprising behaviours they employ to survive in a landscape where land meets water. With Tom Hanks.
The Andes
The Andes, a landscape of dramatic contrasts where life adapts to extremes. In Ecuador, a mother bear and her cubs navigate a dangerous rock face for the first time, a journey never captured on drone before. In Peru, the rare spatuletail hummingbirds, with only 500 males left, engage in intense competition, with five males vying in a single courtship area — something never filmed before. In southern Peru, the marbled four-eyed frog, capable of freezing solid and reviving daily, is documented for the first time. Torrent ducks in Argentina navigate geothermally heated rivers, showcasing their resilience. In Chile, salt-flat lizards engage in fierce battles for territory, with new evidence suggesting females may intentionally trigger these fights. High in the Andes, flamingos perform mating dances on crimson lakes, while the Atacama Desert experiences a rare bloom, revealing life's adaptability in one of the harshest environments on Earth. With Tom Hanks.
The Caribbean
The Caribbean, a tropical paradise rich with surprising wildlife stories. In the open seas, sailfish use incredible speed and coordination to hunt sardines, a dynamic chase rarely seen in such detail. Off the coast of Dominica, a family of sperm whales dives deep to hunt squid, a world-first look at their communal dives, and unique hunting behaviour. On Cuba's Zapata Peninsula, millions of red land crabs undertake a massive migration to lay their eggs in the sea, revealing the full scale of this spectacle for the first time. In Dominica, purple-throated Carib hummingbirds defend their nectar-rich flowers in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, to help find love in a recovering ecosystem. On Panama's remote Isla Jicaron, capuchin monkeys cleverly use stone tools to crack nuts, a rare glimpse into their adaptability and intelligence in an unforgiving environment. With Tom Hanks.
The West Coast
The West Coast, where the Pacific Ocean shapes life in unexpected ways. Sea wolves roam the shorelines, hunting along the beaches and adapting to both land and sea. Off Vancouver Island, a giant Pacific octopus sacrifices herself to protect her eggs, a rare and dramatic act of survival. In Monterey Bay, sea otters navigate powerful waves to reach mussels, showing bold and seldom-seen behaviour. In the redwood forests of California, wandering salamanders leap from the treetops, an extraordinary survival tactic recently discovered. Beneath the surface, deep ocean canyons are home to strange and diverse creatures. Off the coast of California, male blue whales race and roll at high speed, likely competing to attract a mate—a spectacle never seen before. From the shores to the ocean depths, the West Coast is full of remarkable wildlife stories and surprising behaviours. With Tom Hanks.
Patagonia
Patagonia, an untamed wilderness at the edge of the Americas. In the icy waters off Argentina, rockhopper penguins risk their lives against crashing waves and predatory sea lions to feed their chicks, with never-before-seen footage from Los Estados Island. In Chile's Torres del Paine, a mother puma hunts through the snow, revealing unexpected social behaviours among these elusive cats. High in the trees, male Chilean stag beetles engage in epic battles for mates, filmed in microscopic detail. On the grasslands, in rare paternal behaviour, a Darwin's rhea raises his brood, and even adopts a lost chick. Meanwhile, off the coast of Argentina, a matriarch orca teaches her young the art of beaching to catch seals—behaviour rarely filmed. On the beaches, colossal elephant seals clash for dominance in brutal encounters, showing the struggle for survival in this unforgiving landscape. With Tom Hanks.
Series Credit
The Americas is executive produced by renowned Emmy and BAFTA Award- winning wildlife producer Mike Gunton (Life, Planet Earth II, Dynasties) for BBC Studios Natural History Unit, the best-known and most respected producers of natural history content in the world, in association with Universal Television Alternative Studio, a division of Universal Studio Group.