“Just before Queens came across my path, it was probably the lowest point of my life,” Musembi tells Glamour while on location on a new wildlife series in Africa. “I was 34 at the time and thinking, ‘How do I keep doing what I’ve been doing when there are no jobs for Kenyans in Kenya in natural history?’”
After a series of devastating setbacks out of Musembi’s control, she applied for and got a coveted scholarship with Jackson Wild. From there, she was connected to the team from Queens.
“They were actually going out of their way to find people like me. And I was ready,” she says. Still, it took quite some time—and several rounds of interviews—before Musembi was hired. “I knew if it happened, I’d be working with all these amazing producers—like a Sophie Darlington—who have done these amazing projects. I had sleepless nights thinking, Oh, my God, is this really happening? And then telling myself, Don’t get excited. Don’t get excited.”
But when the official call came, Musembi was more than ready. And when the project was completed four years later, it was obvious to everyone at Wildstar Films and National Geographic that Musembi—and other female locals they worked with in the field—were the secret weapons to elevating the project in a way that simply couldn’t have been anticipated.
“One of the episodes was filmed in Amboseli, which is a national park in Kenya. And my mom grew up so close to there,” Musembi says. “So the fact that I was able to work in the area, and the researchers we worked with actually went to school with my mom’s sisters, which was just incredible.”
And then there was this: “Faith also speaks Swahili,” Sarosh told reporters at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. “So she spoke Swahili to the elephant researchers. They liked her 100 times more than anyone. The access we got because Faith was there provided so much more value.”
Berlowitz agrees. “That’s what happens when you bring in a new voice to this genre. You get different stories and better stories. And Faith is a perfect example of that.”
Musembi so impressed the higher ups that they also gave her the first directing opportunity of her career, with a previously unplanned seventh episode commissioned by NatGeo. Titled “Behind the Queens,” the episode shows how the series was made, and the filmmakers whose lives were changed because of it.
While the entire series is highly worth your time, episode seven is the kind of television that speaks to the power of change and taking big swings.
“Someone in our industry said, ‘Oh, Queens, that series the girls are making,’” Sarosh said at the TCAs. “Vanessa and I knew at that moment that not only did we have to make a great series, we had to make something that was better. And to sit here four years later with all these amazing women and go, ‘Well, just look at the series those girls made,’ feels really good and really important.”
Read the full article here
