When Bear Grylls signs up for TV projects, it’s so much more than just a job.
“I want to stand for something good and that’s going to be empowering for families to watch together,” Bear, 52, exclusively told Us before the premiere of The Chosen in the Wild With Bear Grylls on Sunday, August 9. “It’s hard sometimes as a parent to know what to watch with your kids and the values that are going to come out. I actually do pride ourselves on that.”
In his new TV venture with Prime Video, Grylls follows the cast of the groundbreaking historical drama The Chosen as they take on challenges across forests, deserts and canyons.
Cameras roll as Bear leads actors Jonathan Roumie, Paras Patel, Elizabeth Tabish, Noah James and Luke Dimyan through Utah’s treacherous Castle Valley, Canyonlands, the Ausable River, the Colorado River, the Great Basin Desert and the Adirondack Forest.
“That is an intentional kind of thing as a team is we try and keep integrity to what we do and true to how we are as individuals,” Bear explained. “Faith has been a part of my life, as is respect for the outdoors and a love of a fellow man and doing our best and all that good stuff. We try and keep those values at the heart of the show.”
He continued, “I’m proud that Chosen in the Wild is such a sort of firm, family-friendly, positive, faith-forward, family-impacting type show.”
While working on Running Wild With Bear Grylls, Bear would often have conversations with celebrities centered less around faith and more on their personal battles and triumphs.
In Chosen in the Wild, he’s excited to say he “can get straight into” religion and spirituality.
“Viewers, I think, really want that. That’s why they’re watching the show,” he said. “They want to hear, ‘How has it affected you?’”
While fans will have to see how The Chosen cast was transformed by the show, Bear was struck by the diverse backgrounds of faith and culture within the participants.
“What I love about the wild is that there’s space and time to actually talk about things in a real way where it’s not just a sound-bite,” he said. “You can actually say, ‘Actually, tell me about that. That sounded hard.’ You sit around a campfire or on the edge of a cliff and you hear those stories in a very raw, real way. I love that.”
The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls premieres on Prime Video Sunday, August 9, with all six episodes debuting at launch.
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