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Tom Hiddleston laughs at the idea that his new National Geographic series, Pompeii: Out of Timeis the product of the same machinations that defined his distinctive character, Loki.
Marvel fans may remember this from Marvel Studios Episode 2 Loki In the series, the god of mischief and then-Mobius (Owen Wilson) travels back in time to Pompeii in 79 AD just moments before Mount Vesuvius erupts, killing thousands of people across six Roman cities and settlements.
Hiddleston suggested the Pompeii scene Loki It was an iconic team at the time, but it wasn’t so much about playing the long game as it was about merging two of his longstanding interests.
“It would be a Loki-level strategy to do a full series for Marvel Studios/Disney+ and then do a Pompeii series, only to secure a series later for National Geographic,” says Hiddleston. Hollywood Reporter In support of Pompeii: Out of TimeIt will premiere on July 22 on Nat Geo, followed by its streaming release on Disney+ and Hulu on July 23.
pedigreed Pompeii Instead, it dates back to 1998 when 17-year-old Hiddleston and two friends took a trip to the Campania region of Italy. What started as fun in the sun with lots of pizza consumption soon turned into a life-changing experience for the British teenager. That’s when he visited the remains of Pompeii and its neighboring city, Herculaneum, which had been excavated and preserved in amazing detail. The site serves as an archaeological memorial to the victims of Vesuvius. Hiddleston was able to see how they lived, but also how they died, as the remains of 100 Romans are still on display via plaster casts. “I felt like there were two thousand years between me and the people of Pompeii,” Hiddleston says.
When Hiddleston received an inquiry about developing the Nat Geo project, he went straight to Pompeii, and the powers that be quickly warmed to the synergistic relationship between Loki And what is now his stablemate, Pompeii: Out of Time. “Everyone saw the joy of using it Loki “As a starting point and connecting the dots,” says Hiddleston’s producing partner, Kevin R. Wright.
Hiddleston credits his formative tour of Pompeii with his interest in the ancient world, as well as his pursuit of acting. At Cambridge University, he took a degree in Classics, short for ancient Greek and Roman studies. His three-year program even included courses in Latin, the primary language of Pompeii. before LokiHiddleston took care to improve the classical language of ancient Rome so that Loki could vainly warn the Pompeians of the impending apocalyptic event.
Another domino that fell on the way to Hiddleston executive producing Pompeii His fictional brother was involved in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Chris Hemsworth has played Thor, the god of thunder, in seven films opposite Luke Hiddleston, starting with Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 film, bull.
In 2022, Hemsworth launched his own Nat Geo series called No limits In order to test the limits of his mind and body. Hiddleston was so impressed by his friend’s work exploits that he can still recall specific details from the two-season series, such as Hemsworth swimming 250 yards in freezing Arctic water or walking across a crane atop a 900-foot Sydney skyscraper. In addition, Hiddleston was particularly influenced by the Nat Geo documentary directed by Hemsworth, A road trip to rememberWhere he sets out with his father, Craig. Together, in response to a diagnosis of early-stage Alzheimer’s, they revisited places meaningful to the Hemsworth family and reignited memories. (Writer-director Tom Barbour-Mayet has worked on both Hiddleston and Hemsworth projects.)
“When National Geographic approached us about doing something in the nonfiction space, I was definitely very encouraged by Chris’ experience,” Hiddleston says. “I can see that working in this way expands your abilities as a performer, and it has become an interesting expansion of my curiosity about different types of storytelling.”
Hiddleston knew he wanted to tell the story of Pompeii, but he needed to do it in an innovative way. Most of all, he strove for the audience to feel the same way they did during their first visit to Pompeii nearly 30 years ago. The result is one of the most unique docudramas to date. Hiddleston serves as host and “classics buff” seeking to understand the fates of three real-life Romans during the 24-hour eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
“Tom brings an extraordinary combination of intellect, curiosity and heart to this journey,” says Courtney Monroe, chief content officer at National Geographic. “We’ve created a bold, immersive series that makes the ancient world feel urgent and impossible to look away from.”
Hiddleston relies on professors, scientists, archaeologists, and psychologists to piece together what happened to a teenage blacksmith’s apprentice, a businesswoman/bathhouse owner, and an unidentified imperial guard. Between Hiddleston’s current investigation, the cinematic drama follows the unique experiences of the three people during the disaster that unleashed 100,000 times more thermal energy than the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It shows that while humanity can be incredibly destructive, Mother Nature is a force that should not be manipulated.
2,000 years from now, documentary filmmakers will likely be overwhelmed by an overabundance of recorded information from our own era, leaving very little to the imagination. On the contrary, there are moments all the time Pompeii The trail goes cold due to insufficient documentation from 2,000 years ago, frustrating Hiddleston in the process. Thus, he uses a method of acting where he combines available evidence with imagination in order to form the most logical conclusions possible. Similar to Loki The series’ time mechanics occasionally rewind and replay moments based on new data that redefines each character’s story.
To tell this ambitious story, Hiddleston called on his right-hand man LokiI saw the aforementioned. In 2018, the former US Marine turned Marvel Studios executive approached Hiddleston with a 30-page pitch for a Loki-led spinoff series. The show contained several cornerstones that would form the future crown jewel of Marvel shows on Disney+. Midway through the conclusion of their two-season series in 2023, Hiddleston realized it was his turn to ask Wright out. That’s when he proposed a production partnership known as Ithaca, a reference to the island home of the legendary Greek hero Odysseus.
At the time when Christopher Nolan Odyssey is arriving in theaters, and Hiddleston admits that the timing of his first Ithaca project was somewhat fortuitous, especially since Matt Damon, Nolan’s Odysseus, played a version of Loki Hiddleston in Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). “the[[Odyssey]The story I often refer to is about being careful at the finish line. “On shoots, everyone gets excited near the end,” Hiddleston says. “And I’ll be like, ‘Okay, hold on, guys.’” We haven’t seen the beaches of Ithaca yet. That’s why our company is called Ithaca.”
As for the future of the character she helped pave the way for Pompeii: Out of TimeHiddleston will reprise the role of Loki in December Avengers: Doomsday. Consider how well Loki Season 2 has now completed the God of Stories arc, and would have served as Hiddleston’s swan song in the MCU. But he assures fans that Loki’s evolution will not be in vain. “Loki It felt like closure. And when Marvel called Avengers: Doomsday“It was going to start from that endpoint,” Hiddleston shares. “So there was no sense of dismantling or undoing all of this development. And that development still stands as a place to start.”
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National Geographic Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston Showing for the first time Out July 22 on Disney+ and Hulu.
