In 2024, “Loki” star Tom Hiddleston reunited with the film’s executive producer Kevin R. Wright to create a documentary that wasn’t about a salacious murder, a cult or Hiddleston’s acting career. Instead, the duo set out to make a doc about Pompeii and the attempts of three real Romans to survive the ancient city’s final hours after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.
The result is “Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston,” a three-part Nat Geo docuseries that blends “Loki”-inspired time travel with scripted drama and interviews between Hiddleston – the “Time Detective” – and archaeologists, historians, geologists, and disaster experts. Hiddleston examines long-held assumptions about the disaster and pours over ancient records and artifacts that bring to life the humanity and resilience of Pompeii’s inhabitants.
It’s an ambitious, entertaining hybrid show with the potential to pull off the impossible by attracting a wider audience including younger viewers.
“We certainly feel like we’ve unlocked an exciting format,” Wright told Variety. “We partially felt free to mash forms together because of how people consume media now anyway. You’re on your phone and scroll from clips from movies and shows, to a news story, to your friend’s travel photography and vacation videos. Our brains are kind of used to jumping around, for better or worse. And so we didn’t think it would be a shock to the system for us to interweave our story in a similar manner.”
Series showrunner and director Tom Barbor-Might said that one reason drama, character, and time travel were incorporated into the docuseries was to attract a broad audience.
“I am always interested in breaking down distinctions between genres, using dramatic techniques in factual stories and vice versa,” said Barbor-Might. “I think part of the secret sauce of “Pompeii: Out of Time” is that we use two forms of filmmaking, documentary and drama, to tell one story. I hope this hybrid approach means that we can attract audiences that might not normally watch more traditional historical documentaries – including the highly cineliterate younger people.”
In each episode of “Pompeii: Out of Time,” Hiddleston time-travels between the present-day ruins of Pompeii and Pompeii in August A.D. 79, which was recreated on a stage in Malta. With a twist of his hand, Hiddleston takes the audience back in time to meet Avianius, a teenage bronzesmith apprentice, Julia Felix, a bathhouse owner, and an unnamed Praetorian guard. With the help of experts, he pieces together how each confronted the volcanic eruption.
“The way we tell the story is the way I’ve always learned,” said Hiddleston, who studied Classics at Cambridge University. “I couldn’t help but have this overactive imagination when I was studying history and literature. So when I read “The Odyssey” in Greek, I would cast it in my head. I would see it like a movie.”
Hiddleston first visited the ruins of Pompeii in 1998 as a 17-year-old student traveling for the first time without adult supervision.
“Until that trip, the study of the ancient world was in books,” he said. “It was in the classroom. It was homework. So that trip was the first time that I understood that the past was a place that you could visit.”
Hiddleston visited Pompeii again in 2021 via a green screen for the second episode of “Loki” season 1. In the episode, Loki and Mobius (Owen Wilson) time-travel to Pompeii moments before the disaster began. Two years later. Plimsoll producer Alan Eyres approached the star about making a documentary about the ancient city for Nat Geo and Disney+.
Hiddleston signed on partially because of his fascination with Pompeii and partially because he was inspired by his “Thor” co-star, Chris Hemsworth’s two Nat Geo series, “A Road Trip to Remember” about Hemsworth’s dad’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and “Limitless,” which follows Hemsworth as he attempts to find and demonstrate secrets to a living longer, healthier life.
Barbor-Might directed “Road Trip” and the season finale of the first season of “Limitless” called “Acceptance.”
“The very first time (Tom and I) met, even before green-light — when we were still developing and packaging the show, we spoke a lot about ‘Road Trip’ and ‘Limitless,’ said Barbor-Might. “In both ‘Acceptance’ and ‘Road Trip,’ I started with a playful and comedic tone that draws you in before the story slowly becomes highly emotional. I think this approach reassured Tom that we could tell a documentary story but also access the same emotional depths and character empathy that are more common to drama.”
While Hiddleston, Barbor-Might and Wright discussed various films which did something interesting with the form, they were primarily inspired by fear of “getting it wrong and making the bad version of the show,” said Wright.
“Docudrama is almost a dirty word because it conjures images of wooden costume dramas, bad togas, unemotional scenes, scored with a cheesy pan-flute,” Wright said. “So every step of the way we actively were thinking about how we could make it more engaging, experiential, emotional, and heartfelt. How can we freshen up a genre that has largely stagnated? It’s freeing to allow yourself to be led by desire. What do I wish these movies/shows did? Okay, well let’s just do that!”
“Pompeii: Out of Time” premieres July 22 on Nat Geo, before its July 23 streaming release on Disney+/Hulu.
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