With the 20th anniversary of the filming of the seminal 10-part TV miniseries Band of Brothers being this year.
The History Hack team decided to stage a Band of Brothers weekend with a history show, a family-members of the veterans show and an actors reunion show.
As we talked about this, we thought we might get perhaps 4 or 5 actors to participate if we were lucky.
So 20 days ago I began the calls and e-mails. I was lucky in that I knew a number of the actors already having been part of events in Normandy and Bastogne, and the responses started to came back.
Well, this project grew and grew and in the end we had an amazing 22 Band of Brothers actors join us and had to split the show into 4 parts, the first of which about Bootcamp and the audition process went live on May 11th.
Tune into the Band of Brothers podcast below
Timing, they say, is everything, the guys were experiencing various levels of lock down in Countries across the globe and their annual private reunions had been cancelled because of the virus.
Thus the guys were extremely keen to speak to each other and in turn answer our questions.
We couldn’t get them all together at the same time, what with time-zones, kids to home-school and other commitments but over 7 sessions we absolutely captured lightning in a bottle.
Sure, the audio quality isn’t always the best, sure they sometimes talk over each other and sure you can tell this hasn’t been edited by a team of professional editors and sound engineers. Alex, Alina and I are historians, tour guides and writers and we were still recording pieces less than 24 hours before the release of part 1.
What you will hear though is, and I say this unpretentiously: podcast MAGIC. From boot camp stories, to tales of visiting the battlefields and the on set hazing of Tom Hardy, this is the guys opening up and sharing laughs and banter.
History Hack – Fantastic Podcasts Beating Lockdown Blues
The genuine affection the Band of Brothers actors have for the men who served in WWII, the deep and lasting connections they forged with each other and the families of the men they portrayed. All come shining through in these shows.
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Paul Woodadge – Historian and Battlefield Guide, Author and Presenter.