Mariana van Zeller

I think the way they dress, too, probably throws people.

Nothing against strippers.

A long time, months, sometimes even years.

Like the Niger episode, we started pitching it on season two, and it took us two and a half, three years to convince Nat Geo that it was safe for us to go to Niger.

No, it's very much a partnership where every story, we pitch them stories at the beginning of each season, and then they say yes to some and no to others.

The majority of the stories they say yes to, but there are definitely stories that they're not interested in.

And then once we start, before we hit the ground, we have weekly meetings with them and discussing everything.

This is who we're interviewing, this is how the story is going to unfold, or this is what we're hoping to get.

And even when they're on the ground, we have to send them reports.

And then they see when we get back and we start editing, they see rough cut one, rough cut two, all of the final cut, fine cut, all of it.

My first thought when I realized there had been a coup was, shit, Nat Geo is going to be so pissed.

My thought was like, Nat Geo, they're going to get their security people involved and they're going to want to pull us out of the country immediately.

And we haven't even finished our story.

And then I realized, oh, no, even if we wanted to get out of the country, we can't.

No, they were lovely.

They tried.

They were also having sleepless nights trying to figure out how to help us.

Yeah, it's not good.

The assassins one in season four.

Yeah, that was scary.