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Tom Hiddleston plays Edmund Hillary in Tenzing, Jennifer Peedom's Apple TV film about the 1953 Everest ascent, with Genden Phuntsok as Tenzing Norgay.
Tom Hiddleston accepted the role of Edmund Hillary in Tenzing immediately after reading a letter from director Jennifer Peedom. He says the answer was an instant yes.
His first question to her was how she knew. When do we start? Peedom planned to put Hillary's climbing companion Tenzing Norgay at the centre of the story. The Australian-led film shows the fellowship and friendship between the two men during the historic first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953.
It was shot in Nepal and New Zealand. The letter included a promise that the film would be shot and photographed on real mountains. Hiddleston recalls the words, we will go to Nepal, we will go to the Himalayas, we will be in real ice, real snow, real crevasses. A final line sealed the deal.
Bonding Between Hiddleston and Phuntsok
In the last paragraph Peedom wrote that something told her Hiddleston was the kind of person who would be up for an adventure like this. Hiddleston needed to bond with Genden Phuntsok, the actor who plays Tenzing Norgay. The two sat next to each other on a Zoom call from the Toronto International Film Festival. They are contrasting characters.
Hiddleston, 45, is an Eton, Cambridge and Royal Academy of Dramatic Art-educated star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where he plays the Norse god Loki. He has shone on stage in Shakespeare and has shot films with Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch, Guillermo del Toro and Taika Waititi. He also happens to be an exceptional dancer. Phuntsok, 40, is a little-known Chinese actor of Tibetan descent.
He has only previously appeared in Tibetan-language films such as Pema Tseden's Snow Leopard. Like the rest of the expedition cast, including Willem Dafoe as leader Colonel John Hunt, he had to learn the basics of mountain climbing. He also had to master Sherpa and English language lessons. Far from getting a written invitation from the director, Phuntsok had to make it through a casting process.
That included an initial video call with Peedom, then auditions two years later in Nepal and Australia. He says he was happy but also had big stress because Tenzing was such an amazing man. How can I perform well? That was a big problem for me.
Before the shoot, the cast gathered at Lukla, Nepal, early one morning. After tea in a tea house, they set off on a five-day trek with two Sherpas: Phurba Tashi, who has summited Everest 21 times, and high-altitude doctor Nima Sherpa, who both appear in the film. Hiddleston says they talked about the privilege and the honour and responsibility of playing these two great men. They represent so much in terms of courage and belief and commitment and fellowship.
Trekking Together in Nepal
Peedom says the trek helped them connect. There is no better way to form a relationship, she says, than just walking and talking. Peedom was introduced to documentary-making in 2000 by Race Around Oz. She lives in Sydney's eastern suburbs with her stills photographer husband Mark Rogers and their children Tashi, 18, and Luca, 16.
She made Sherpas' Burden in 2004. She loved being in the Himalayas and found her body could handle conditions on climbs up to 8400 metres, just 450 metres below the Everest summit. Documentaries kept taking her back to the region. She says she was getting jobs early in her career as a camera operator on Everest expeditions.
She became increasingly frustrated at the extent to which the Sherpas were written out of the narrative, literally left on the cutting room floor. Peedom's film Sherpa screened at the Sydney Film Festival in 2015. She says that she and Norbu both realised there was a hunger for this story. The story that everyone knows is the ascent of Everest, she says.
But they don't know everything that it took, all the obstacles that Tenzing had to overcome, just to get to the starting line. The film was initially set up with Barack and Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground, for Netflix. But a bidding war saw Apple TV acquire the worldwide rights. It was made with See-Saw Films.
Tenzing's Spiritual Connection to Everest
While the British wanted to be first to conquer Everest, Tenzing had a spiritual connection with the sacred mother goddess Chomolungma, the traditional Tibetan name for Everest. He first tried to join an expedition in 1933 before getting an opportunity in 1935, initially as a porter. Over the next two decades he built his experience. He still had to talk his way into Hunt's party for his 35th attempt.
Peedom shot the film in Nepal and New Zealand with none of the luxuries of a Marvel set. She says that in most situations with movies of this scale, there are people looking after those actors constantly. She told all of them they could not have any of that. She said they would be putting their own lunch in their backpacks.
They would be putting on their own crampons and they would be climbing. She wanted it to feel like an expedition. She asked if they were all OK with that. Hiddleston loved the adventure of it.
Authentic Climbing Experience for Cast
He says they were surrounded by riggers and mountaineers and a stunt team that had absolutely everything conceivable to ensure their safety. That let them experience the environment: the depths of those crevasses, the vertiginous precipices of those summits, the snow, the ice, the wind, the cold. He says the thrill for both of them was climbing a wall of ice to climb out of a crevasse. They had to really climb it.
You feel your legs burning and your tank of energy depleting rapidly. Hiddleston's research included speaking to Hillary's son, Peter, and grandson, Alexander. He says that knowing you are playing someone's father, someone's grandfather, crystallises the responsibility in a very vivid and real way in the mind. He also listened constantly to Hillary being interviewed on radio and TV.
He worked with dialect coach Jenny Kent to capture Hillary's period New Zealand accent. Every dog walk, every car journey, every bicycle ride, he had Ed Hillary.
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smh:‘Real snow, real ice, real crevasses’: The letter than inspired Tom Hiddleston to shoot the Everest film Tenzing 
brisbanetimes:‘Real snow, real ice, real crevasses’: The letter that inspired Tom Hiddleston to shoot the Everest film TenzingThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
Tenzing Norgay Mount Everest Jennifer Peedom Apple TV Tenzing Edmund Hillary
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