Hollywood stars Nick Braun and Alexander Skarsgard came to Wales earlier this year to film a new series of cult, spoof documentary show, Documentary Now! The pair, who both star in HBO smash hit, Succession, appear in the first two episodes of the latest series, the fourth instalment but makers are calling it season 53, and the show has some huge comedy brains behind it including Barry's Bill Hader, Anchorman and Portlandia's Fred Armisen and former Saturday Night Live writers and stars, Seth Myers and John Mulany. The series is also directed by Cowbridge-born Rhys Thomas.
The first two episodes of this new series, Soldier of Illusion, a two-parter, was shot in, as Skarsgard explains it 'the largest slate mine in the world,' meaning that they were up near slate country in Snowdonia, a famous part of Wales which last year became an Unesco World Heritage site. Director, Thomas, posted back in March on Instagram from Cwmorthin Quarry near Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Both stars spoke about their time in Wales during an Entertainment Weekly interview, when Big Little Lies baddie, Skarsgard, spoke about the intense experience and getting lost in the terrifying tunnels.
Read more: Our interview with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power's Welsh stars
Skarsgard said about his time on Emmy-winning Documentary Now!: "We shot in Wales in what I believe is the largest slate mine in the world. Apparently, it's like 90 miles of just tunnel. That was quite an incredible experience. It was visually stunning, but also a little bit terrifying because they basically said, "If you turn the wrong corner when you try to get out of here, we're never going to find you. Because of the acoustics of the tunnels, we're never going to hear you scream. Once you turn the wrong corner, it's pitch black. You can't find your way out, and you will starve to death in there. Okay, now go to set and have fun and shoot all day!" [ Laughs ] So that was quite an intense experience to try to make jokes and be funny, knowing that I'm 15 feet away from certain death."
Nicholas Braun, who plays Succession fan-favourite cousin Greg, said his co-star was an insurance liability. He said: "Alex would go off at lunch and find tunnels. That was tough for production because they'd have to chase him down. They'd keep a P.A. with him at all times because they knew he wanted to explore, and that's a huge insurance liability." Earlier this year, Braun shared his visit to nearby Conwy with his fans on Instagram, on a particularly sunny March day, see more on that , here.
Soldier of Illusion follows Skarsgard's character Rainer Wolz - a homage to German auteur Werner Herzog - as he attempts to simultaneously film two projects. One, a hard-hitting documentary about the remote people living in the fictional Russian Ular mountains and the other is a campy 1980s sitcom called Bachelor Nanny and both are shot on the same location.
Skarsgard is no stranger to filming in north Wales, having filmed the 2016 big screen version of Tarzan at Dinorwg and the wider Snowdonia area has been used in many Hollywood films like Guy Ritchie's King Arthur, Lara Croft, Highlander amongst others.
Also, Braun and Skarsgard's episodes aren't the only instalment of Documentary Now! made in Wales, episode four, How They Threw Rocks is a spoof of 1996 Muhammad Ali documentary When We Were Kings. Starring Lord of the Rings' Trystan Gravelle, Jonathan Pryce and Sam C Wilson, it's a chronicle of the 'iconic 1974 Craig Maes (Field Rock) showdown' dubbed The Melon vs. The Felon. Producers on this episode were searching for locals to play townspeople in the instalment which was based in a fictional village called Llagoelwyn on Wrst.
Director Rhys Thomas, who worked on Saturday Night Live, the long-running, live sketch show which airs on.....Saturdays in the US, for 13 years after first studying in Dublin before moving to New York. Through his time with SNL, between 2005 and 2018, he worked as producer and director on countless specials, films and segments, trading ideas and working with the top class of American comedic talent and superstar guest hosts like The Rock, Melissa McCarthy, Chris Hemsworth, Larry David, Lady Gaga and Paul Rudd. It was at SNL he met Documentary Now! co-creators, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Seth Meyers. Last year he helmed one of Marvel's original series on Disney+, Hawkeye, and at the time spoke to WalesOnline about making TV in Wales, or the lack of it when he was younger. "Nothing filmed here when I was growing up and now everything's here!" he mused.
"I did some Welsh TV when I was younger, Pobl y Cwm, a few times, I did Glan Hafran for a while and I was in a coma for that one and I eventually died of food poisoning.
"The fun part of that was my real grandfather was cast in it and came to mourn me, he'd never done acting before and it the first time he walked into set, I'm laying in a hospital bed with tubes. I mean, he just starts talking to me normally, it was funny."
Documentary Now! is currently airing in the US. There's no UK airdate release as yet, but we'll update this article when there is.
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