‘She’s A Dominatrix, This One’ – Interview with Riima Daher, Executive Producer of Alone Australia Season 2

With Alone Australia Season 2 just around the corner, Tim got a chance to pick Riima’s brain about the new series, from the brand new location and cast, to whether we’ll ever get a ‘hot Alone’.

Read more: Alone Australia Season 2 2024 – Everything You Need to Know

Riima all geared up on ‘set’

Tim Ashelford: Quite a big change this year moving to New Zealand.

Riima Daher: I know, right?

Did you look at Australian locations first, or did you just decide straight away you wanted to include hunting and head over?

Look, it was a combination of a few things. We had a lot of locations on the boil, but being able to bow hunt and to get that approval happening a lot faster was definitely an appeal. So, a little bit of wanting to be able to hunt, and also just the landscape being a whole new landscape, and a game changer for us, it was a no-brainer in the end.

Alone Australia S2 promo

Yeah, it’s so lovely down on the South Island. Or harsh, depending on what you’re doing.

A bit of both, isn’t it, at the same time, always.

You’re always looking for a kind of cold and wet place. I’ve had friends ask me, ‘Why don’t they go up north, to the tropics or something?’

Between you and I, Tim, that’s my dream, to make a hot, red dirt Alone one day. But for the moment, I think we are probably more experienced as a nation with that type of landscape than we are with the cold, in general. So, it feels like a more level playing field to go for the colder weather option, and it makes it harder. It’s also quite pretty to see the season change, and to see that landscape change with the harsher winter.

I remember last time you said lutruwita was the protagonist. Did you feel the same with Aotearoa?

That’s where making a Season 2 is the same as making a Season 1, in that sense.

The majestic and formidable South Island is the main character this season

Definitely.

She’s a dominatrix, this one.

[laughs] That’s excellent. How did you go about incorporating the Māori stories into the show? Especially when all the contestants are Australian or Aboriginal Australian?

With a lot of guidance, consultation, and building relationships. It’s really important for us to understand the original survivors of any land that we’re on – it’s our first step in approaching any landscape.

There’s quite a strong Māori cultural heritage connection in the South Island, so it wasn’t hard to tap into. We had Ngāi Tahu support all the way, right from the start. They were the first people we called once we found the land that we liked. And that relationship began right from the outset, in terms of forming our understanding of the history of the land that we were on, and then understanding how it had been navigated previously, historically.

We had Māori representation in our bootcamp for cultural awareness, but also in terms of understanding how flora and fauna had been used, and are being used. Learnings about flora and fauna, what works, what doesn’t, the dangers of certain flora and fauna. There’s quite a lot to be wary of out there in terms of what’s edible and what’s not, and how it can affect you. So, it also fed into the safety of the program.

But also the language, learning how to use Māori words, and how to welcome yourself onto Country through karakia. It really wove itself into their experience through bootcamp, and then carried through, in terms of how they felt on the land. And we also did a pōwhiri. I’m not sure if you’re aware of what a pōwhiri is?

I don’t think so.

It’s where you’re officially welcomed onto the land, sort of equivalent to a smoking ceremony. We were welcomed through pōwhiri and all of our participants felt really safe and welcome, from an ancestral and spiritual point of view as well as a cultural point of view.

That’s awesome. And I guess, from a more physical perspective, there’s a lot of logistics around keeping the contestants safe. Was that harder this time around, or was Season 1 the chance to get those processes down?

[laughs] Season 1 definitely taught us a lot about how to respond, how to tighten up our systems, and how to better them. So, we’ve gone into Season 2 with stronger learnings. But we did have a much vaster landscape.

You’ll see that when you start to look at the distances between where people were placed. So, when you’ve got them further spread out, you have to tighten things up even more. So, there were new learnings when it comes to safety and keeping them safe, definitely.

Last season, you had 34 days just between Mike and Gina. Is it feasible it could go on forever? Or is there some kind of point where you’d have to call it?

Mike (left) and Gina (right) were the last two contestants from S1

I’ve been watching this series for years because I’m a big fan of the international format. And I’m not sure whether someone who doesn’t work in TV asks the same question, but right from the outset, the first time I watched the first series of the US show, I just went, ‘How does anyone say yes to this series? How does anyone say yes to a series where you don’t know when it can end? And what’s to stop them going forever?’ And the reality is that there’s nothing to stop them going forever, except hunger and starvation, and possibly their body breaking down. That’s it.

Our Content Editor Jess didn’t believe it. And I said ‘I’m pretty sure it goes forever’. So I’ll tell her that.

Yeah, it’s terrifying. It really is terrifying from a production point of view because it could go the other way, too. It could be really short. And what if suddenly you’ve got a 10-day series? You’re in trouble.

How popular was the casting for Season 2? And did you focus on anything different, like hunting skills or mental toughness, compared to Season 1?

In terms of the type of character that we’re looking for, we’re still looking for the same things. We’re still looking for the same qualities. We want them to be competent, and we want them to be interesting, and we want them to also just be 10 distinct characters. We don’t want 10 of the same type of person.

That’s really important from a content and storytelling point of view. And it’s also really important from an SBS Charter point of view, and from us, as storytellers ourselves. It’s really important for us that everyone sitting at home watching on the couch feels represented somehow, or feels someone that they connect to.

Meet the 10 contestants from S2 here

It’s so refreshing actually.

That’s a real priority for us. And I think the only difference between that approach last year and this year is that we know for sure that people do enjoy that representation, so we were encouraged to do the same thing again. They didn’t know this at the time, but we were looking for people with bow and arrow skills as well, because we knew that that was going to be one of the possible 10 items, so we wanted to make sure that we had people who could use it competently.

‘Competently’ is key!

It’s not easy. The bow and arrow is not easy. You’ve got to get up close. There are lots of things that make it a really tough hunting tool to use. You need to be skilled to be successful with a recurve bow.

Actually, I went bow and arrow shooting at a range recently, and they were just sailing over the targets. It was a bit of a wake-up call.

Okay, so you may not have made it onto the series.

No, potentially not.

If there are people in our audience who are thinking about applying for a potential Season 3, do you have any tips on how to get your application noticed?

I would say the main thing is, be yourself in your application. It’s really important that we get a sense of who you are as a person. Don’t try to be anybody else that you think we want. Don’t try and be anyone that you’ve seen before. Just be your authentic self, because that’s what we want. We want to see who you are. That’s what the viewer wants to see.

We need to see from the outset what the viewers are likely to see when you’re on the ground and alone with that camera.

You’re not going to be able to act the whole time. You’re going to have to be yourself once things get hard.

Exactly. You can’t hide that. We all know our hangry selves, so there’s no fronting that.

We definitely saw Outback Mike experiencing the hangries in S1

The self-filming aspect is obviously such a major part of it. Have you changed anything related to how they film themselves?

No, nothing. We had the amazing Tim Noonan, who is a phenomenal DOP (Director of Photography). And probably, if you were going to find the one authority on self-shooting in the world, it would be him.

We had Tim again trying to cram years and years of knowledge about storytelling, as well as the tech, into a very short week.

I can barely film myself when I’m on a normal hike.

I’ve got to give credit to the rest of the team. We’ve got an amazing group of people who all work to make sure the contestants feel as competent as they can be within a week. They do a great job. And the participants themselves, I mean, you can imagine when you’re starving, and going through caffeine withdrawals, to be able to pick up that camera and make sure that you’re filming and creating content all the time isn’t easy, but they do it.

At its core, what would you want viewers to be getting out of the show?

If everyone can walk away with the inspiration to try that for themselves, that would be amazing. But in terms of them watching the show, I just hope that they love it, and that they fall in love with all the characters, because all 10 of them are brand new, wonderful, brave, remarkable humans

If you take one thing away from each of those 10 characters, then you’ll walk away a rich person.

I love that. It’s such an antidote to modern life, even just watching it reminds you of where we’ve come from.

It’s crazy because it wasn’t that long ago that we lived that way, when you really think about it.

True.

We’re all so obsessed with stimulation, constant stimulation. And if it’s taken away for five minutes, that’s a disaster. So, to watch people who are doing that full time, for however long they’re out there, and then we sit with them in that quiet for an hour, I think it’s good for us as humans who are consumers of television to sit down and just enjoy looking at greenery for an hour, even. It’s meditative in some ways, isn’t it?

Observing Gina sing and make friends with a platypus definitely brought a sense of pause to us viewers

Definitely. Actually speaking of meditation, my final question is about you. What do you get up to when you go outdoors? What’s your poison?

My thing is kayaking. I love being on the water. And that’s the dream one day, that I’ll retire somewhere where a river runs, and I’ll be able to kayak daily.

Thanks so much for chatting with us Riima, we can’t wait to watch Alone Australia Season 2!

Thanks Tim. I think every single one of our participants subscribes to We Are Explorers, and they’re big fans. I think what you’re doing for the community is wonderful, so please keep doing it, we love your work.

Read more: Alone Australia Season 2 2024 – Everything You Need to Know