Liam Brown was excited when he bagged a place on a Netflix show. He applied for a new programme the streaming service was creating, following a group of young adults living their best lives.
But the show wasn't quite as billed. What the group ended up doing was VERY different. He'd actually signed up to a survival show named Snowflake Mountain - and he was in for quite the surprise.
A synopsis for the show from Netflix says: “Hopelessly entitled or simply in need of tough love? Ten spoiled young adults experience nature without a parental safety net in this reality series”.
And Liam, 22, who lives in Manchester, was one of the 10 people who got the shock of their lives when they were whisked off to the Lake District and taught all sorts of survival tips in the wilderness with no phone signal and none of the luxuries they are used to.
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Telling the Manchester Evening News about the show, Liam said: “There were 10 of us that live quite a high-luxury, do what (we) want, memories over money kind of life and we thought we were going on a show called ‘Living Your Best Life’ which was like a party show advertised as a summer away partying.”
“I thought I was going on to Geordie Shore or Big Brother, something really cool!” he added. So what he ended up starring in was dramatically different. But how did Netflix manage to pull it off? “They spoke to our families, which we didn’t know at the time, and for me it was my Nan who said, ‘Yes, send him away, he’s out every weekend and has no life goals,’” Liam told us.
“So they spoke to producers behind our backs and we ended up in this wilderness retreat to try help us grow but we didn’t have any phones, running water, any contact to the outside world… it was literally like living on rations.”
He added: “We found out when we got there. They kept telling us ‘it’s a surprise’ and we then we just arrived in the wilderness, met our two hosts and they basically told us the situation.”
And it’s fair to say that Liam wasn’t impressed when he first realised what was going on. “At first I was traumatised. I didn’t think I was going to make it through. I was so upset and disappointed and just really annoyed.”
He added: “I wanted to leave straight away. I was really angry and I just thought, ‘I just wanted to do a TV programme and it’s all gone rubbish because I’ve ended up on this that I didn’t want to go on!”
The contestants had to take part in various challenges and it wasn’t until they got there that they found out $50,000 was at stake. But there was one task in particular that nearly pushed Liam over the edge.
“We had to skin a deer. It actually makes me cringe. I feel sick,” he said. “It actually sends shivers down my spine. We also had to do swimming challenges to get baskets of food and spend nights at the ‘Last Chance Lakes’ which was where if you weren’t doing well, the bottom two would be sent there with just a sleeping bag and if they made it back then we got food.”
But Liam does now admit that he learned a lot from his time away from life’s everyday luxuries. “Each challenge meant something different so one was accountability, one was about self-belief. It wasn’t [all] physically challenging but it was more mentally challenging. So each challenge was a life lesson and I actually learned loads from that show.
“I’m not a scouts type of person, that gives me the ick. If some says, ‘I went to scouts when I was younger’ I definitely swipe left on Tinder. It’s not for me but then when you’re thrown in it and you realise why you’re there and that you have this great opportunity, you put your head down. Although I was counting the days [to it ending].”
Speaking about what he was like before the show, Liam confessed: “I tried living with my mum and dad, who are separated, and I just didn’t like it and living with my Nan was the easy option because I was a sweet golden child.
“So I used to go out all the time, I had a job that I just didn’t really care about. I was too busy scrolling on a clothing website thinking about what I was going to wear at the weekend then actually doing my job. My motto was that I didn’t ask to be here. I didn’t ask to be born. I’d say, ‘Why should I do my washing? I wasn’t asked to be born!’” But he did add: “It wasn’t great.”
The term snowflake has also been bandied around a lot in recent years, which according to the Cambridge English Dictionary, is an insulting way of referring to someone who is considered by some people to be too easily upset and offended or implies a person has an inflated sense of uniqueness or an unwarranted sense of entitlement.
But that hasn’t bothered Liam. “To be honest, we never knew [about the title] and at first I was a bit disheartened thinking, ‘I’m not a snowflake’, and I think that’s just your initial reaction,” he said. “When I first got there I was like ‘Why am I here? I’m perfect, I don’t need to be here!’ But I think, it’s a really tough pill to swallow, but I was [a snowflake] and that’s just it.”
Since taking part in Snowflake Mountain, a lot has changed for Liam and he does confidently say it changed his life. “Since, I’ve moved to Manchester, I’m working at In The Style and I’ve got my own apartment. It really have me the kick up the backside I need to really elevate my future.”
He added: “It has been life-changing. It has genuinely given me the boost I needed and not even the show in general, but you know people are going to watch this and you don’t want to be that one where they’re like, ‘What’s he doing now?’ and you’re still doing the same thing.
“You have that pressure but I’ll take things from that show with me for the rest of my life. Even little things like how to make a fire. I think it has been really life-changing and it genuinely has been amazing.”
Despite his glowing review of the show, knowing what he does now, Liam wouldn’t do it again. “I just don’t think I need that experience,” he laughed. “But if there was a season two I’d definitely go on as someone who’s been there and done it.”
And the fact that he’s the star of a Netflix show still hasn’t quite sunk in. “I was out in Manchester and people come up to you and I forget how many people watched it,” Liam said. “We waited a year, this was filmed in June last year and I was in the castin process from January [2021] so I’ve known about the show for 18 months and I still feel like it hasn’t come out and I’m still waiting.”
He added: “It’s been this big build-up, it hasn’t sunk in until people come up to me and my Instagram [has grown] which has been really surreal. And [it’s been] overwhelming, definitely overwhelming.” But the big question is, was everything as it really seemed on-screen?
“I think it was how it seemed. Obviously, we did have medics and producers around us and I think things did take longer [to film],” Liam said, giving the example of the final mountain climbing challenge which was shown in 20 minutes on the show but took eight hours to complete in real life.
“So everything was as it seemed but we had the support of the producers. We weren’t just left by ourselves but it was genuinely really difficult.”
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