Where was ‘Tenzing’ filmed? Crew member dishes on ‘terrifying’ helicopter trip to Everest
For 'Tenzing' cinematographer Stefan Duscio, getting Everest on camera was enough of an adventure. Climbing it himself held less appeal. Speaking exclusively to MTN at the film's New York premiere, he recalled a helicopter trip that took him higher up the mountain. "And then I took a helicopter basically as high as you could possibly go up Everest, and that was terrifying enough for me." Directed by Jennifer Peedom, 'Tenzing' was filmed across Nepal and New Zealand. It opened in select theaters on October 9 and will premiere on Apple TV on October 16. Genden Phuntsok plays Tenzing Norgay, with Tom Hiddleston as Edmund Hillary and Willem Dafoe as John Hunt. The film revisits the 1953 ascent from Norgay's perspective.
Duscio's second-unit expedition supplied footage of Everest and its surroundings. "Though I did take a 2nd unit there to film all the landscapes, VFX plates, a lot of footage that's in the film is from an expedition that I did there with some crew, but I basically got to base camp over, a couple of weeks, filming all through Nepal and the Khumbu Valley." Asked whether he would climb Everest, he said, "No, the more I learned about it, the less I wanted to climb it. It's way too dangerous."
Hiddleston also spoke exclusively to MTN at the premiere about filming in the challenging sequences. "And so we did this on real mountains." He explained, "Everything without snow is in Nepal, and everything with snow is in New Zealand in the high mountains of the South, South Island." The conditions became part of the performance: "Real ice, real snow, real crevasses."
That included putting Hiddleston inside a crevasse for the sequence in which Norgay saves Hillary. "You know, I've got dropped into a real crevasse and was asked to climb out of it, just like Hillary." He added, "Hillary fell into a crevasse. And so did I. I mean, on purpose." Darwin Glacier is said to be the location for that scene, and Aoraki/Mount Cook is the setting for the summit sequence.
The production's demands also extended beyond the climbing. Producer Liz Watts told MTN at the premiere, "It was a complicated film to produce, and we also had 4 languages; we had casts from all over the world." She added, "So it's been a very challenging but very rewarding process." The New Zealand Film Commission credits mountain pilots, safety specialists and an alpine production team with helping deliver the shoot.
For Hiddleston, the experience also served the film's perspective on its central figure. Asked about the reward of bringing the story to the screen, he said, "I think the premise and the promise of the film is to put Tenzing Norgay at the center of his own story and to reframe a familiar historical narrative of the summit of Mount Everest in 1953 for the first time by two men." He added, "I think his presence on the expedition made it possible."
