The last time Maro Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre produced a long-form documentary for PBS, it was about life on an aircraft carrier.
But what’s different about “Circus” from the 2008 “Carrier” is the wide variety of colorful personalities.
Also, Chermayeff said at press tour, “Circus performers are tougher than pilots. I never thought that was possible. I thought the top gun mentality was as hard as it would get. But like two weeks into shooting, Jeff and I were like, ‘Oh, God. That war in Iraq was easy compared to the circus.’”
But, Chermayeff adds, “it was a different world. It was 150 people as opposed to the 5,500 people that live aboard the carrier, so there was a huge operational world that was quite different. However, this sort of singular goal and the unified nature of the groups, you know, towards what their goal is — in this case, it’s an incredible circus performance and a show that will, you know, razzle and dazzle and engage and delight. And this sort of singular focus of the 5,500 on the carrier are actually quite similar.
“In a sense, I think one of the purposes in all of our series is to bring you into a world that you might not otherwise have an opportunity to be at, she says. “When we got off the carrier, we did, frankly, say, ‘OK, now what? We’re in trouble. Now what?’ And then it was sort of surprising that when we started to talk about different places to go with our vision of series television that the circus came up and everyone was like, ‘You know what? The circus is gonna be pretty great.’
“Ultimately,” she says, “it’s about story. It’s about character. It’s about who we are and who we see in ourselves, whether that’s a young marine or a young acrobat. So it was similar, yet wholly different.”
“Circus” continues Wednesday on PBS.