Wilfred Frost is getting ready to put a large part of his family business on the public representation.
Frost, who can be best known for his anchor for both CNBC in the US and Sky News, is also CEO of Paradine Productions, the production vehicle founded in 1961 by his father, the renowned journalist and interviewer Sir David Frost. From Sunday, April 27, MSNBC will broadcast a six -part documentary series that investigates seismic changes in culture with the help of decades of the legendary interviews of the senior frost with everyone, from The Beatles to Muhammad Ali.
“These are moments in history where he had a chair in the front row,” says Wilfred Frost, during a recent interview. “This is not an archive show.”
The six -part series, “Frost vs.”, will investigate themes such as civil rights, university protests and cultural revolution, using Frost’s archive of more than 10,000 interviews with figures that were celebrated or controversial, and sometimes both. Some images have not been seen in decades and part of it has never been seen in public. The Senior Frost is perhaps best known in the US for his 1977 series interviews with former President Richard Nixon who served as a basis for a play and the film from 2008, “Frost/Nixon”. But in the course of his career, he conducted hundreds of interviews with prominent figures that varied from top athletes to musicians to heads of state.
Wilfred Frost took over the lead tasks at his father’s production company after his death in 2013. The younger Frost says that he tried to place the majority of his father’s work under a single production caraplu for years. This new project, he says, “took me a long time. The first half of that period I was, you know, rebuilding the archive and the return of rights and the repair and registering of many old images, in particular the 60s and 70s he did in America. I got that back and got the rights from CBS, and then had to digitize, had to recover it all. I was ready to pitch things by 2018. “
Every episode of one hour from “Frost vs.” is anchored around interviews with an important personality for several decades, including Ali, Jane Fonda, Elton John and, of course, Nixon .. The images are supplemented with interviews with contributors, including Michael Sheen, Liam Neeson, Joanna Lumley and Khalilah Ali, that that All have brought the work and life of Frost into context. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair both recently contributed comments for an episode that will investigate conflicts in the middle, in which Frost Yasser Arafat, Menachem starts interviewing, Benjamin Netanyahu and other important players.
What is amazing about the interviews is that Frost was able to often talk to these personalities in a longer time arch. That means that viewers Mohammed Ali and members of the Beatles will see about different periods of their career, and the longer association yields conversations that may not take place with journalists who have no contact with their subjects.
The new series is part of a broader effort launched by MSNBC in 2020 to build a selection of a longer form of documentaries and non-fiction series that appeal to its audience. As traditional TV viewers become more difficult to lure, many media companies venture into documentaries, which they can broadcast as an “event” programming. CNN was early to baptize his toes in space, launched series by Anthony Bourdain and films that investigated animals in captivity and the life of Linda Ronstadt ABC News in 2019 changed “20/20” in a showcase for in -depth two hours of probes to everything , from the life of actor Robert Blake to the downfall of Tele evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. And Fox News Channel has made a documentary series for his Fox Nation streaming service that investigate American monuments, national parks and history, among others.
Viewers will probably come across a number of great moments in the new series, says Wilfred Frost, including the Beatles who first plays “Hey Jude” during “Frost on Sunday” in 1968. “It’s a euphoric moment in the middle of episode, you know, and it’s a bit extraordinary,” he says. The performance also marks the last of the group on TV.
There are also images of an emotional interview with Elton John from the early nineties, when the musician just comes from Rehab after many years of addiction. “It’s incredible at the roughest possible moment,” says Frost. “I think dad was sometimes a sort of confession for some of his friends, some of his contacts.”
“Frost vs” is a co-production of MSNBC films and Sky Studios with paradine productions and white horse photos for Sky documentaries and appears on Sky and MSNBC.
Wilfred Frost says that he could have used the hours of images of his father’s interviews to create longer episodes, and believes that there was material that could have been tapped to make more of the programs. “I could make all kinds of extensive versions,” he says. “But you know, I think you want to leave people who want more.”