Original subtitles

[dramatic orchestral music]

It's just been a complete whirlwind.

This story has such a global scale.

It's an adventure. We're shooting all over the world.

[Ameen] We're not shooting one city for another.

We're actually shooting in Nairobi, actually shooting in Mumbai,

or Berlin, all these places.

They're shooting it like it is one big, long, amazing adventure.

The jet lag. [laughs] That's an adventure on its own.

It was so exciting.

I love Lana and Andy because even if they say nothing,

I can feel what they mean.

Something in their head seems really huge.

They can create anything.

[Desai] They have an answer for everything,

for why you said what your line is, any other characters.

As sensates, why all feel, think, believe, do, function, whatever.

They have all the answers. And I just love that they've thought it through so much.

And I think that's the best thing.

I'm not really sure if there's ever been anything that's been done like this.

It's really taken a global perspective, a totally international cast

and then also shot in all those different places, you know,

rather than on a green screen.

[Straczynski] The show looks like nothing I've ever seen.

Visually, it's got a panorama and a scope and a scale to it

that I've never seen in television before.

It's shot on an epic scale all over the world on six different continents.

Sense8 set out to be very kind of gritty, very based in real life places.

And with that ambition, are the massive challenges

of traveling around the world to nine cities.

You've got characters in every corner of the globe.

San Francisco, Chicago, London, Iceland, Nairobi,

Seoul, South Korea, Mexico City, Berlin, Mumbai.

[Silvestre] It's an amazing experience.

I've been in San Francisco, Chicago, Iceland, London, Berlin,

Mexico, and Korea.

[speaks Spanish]

I don't know that many television shows that have been filmed

in all these different cities and with different crews

from all different countries.

[Glass] Every scene takes place in a different place.

[laughs] Which had to be found as a practical location

that we then had to figure out how to get to.

- It's nice here. - Good, cut.

We decided to cast local actors, too.

It's a vast supporting cast. I think it was over 180 speaking parts.

For example, in Seoul, we reached out and we got some

of the top film and TV actors from Korea.

You also get sucked into the world of these cities you're going into.

Each city has its energy and it helps you to understand the character.

I know when I got to Iceland, I really understood the world that Riley came from

and being in Iceland was completely different to being in Nairobi.

Where am I?

And being in Nairobi is completely different to being in Berlin.

[Riemelt] This is the best thing you can give me as an actor.

Give me more info, more input to work with.

You cannot imagine the textures, or the smell, the feeling, and the people.

You can't imagine that. You have to actually be there and experience it.

- [upbeat music] - [cheering]

Filming in the middle of Gay Pride in San Francisco was thrilling. That was far out.

It was just a rush because we joined the "Dykes on Bikes" march

so our scene was integrated into that section of the parade.

[Clayton] Nomi starts experiencing really bad headaches

and she falls off the back

of her girlfriend's motorcycle during the Pride parade.

We really filmed it when there was the live event.

And that was very difficult to film that, but that gave it a sense of reality.

Usually, they will not let you film in these type of situations.

Just because they're difficult to control.

Guys, you got to stay in tight here!

Camera bike is trying to film this as well. Guys?

I'm gonna shoot Jamie's close-up.

That'll be in the background anyway 'cause it's all compact.

So we'll just get some extras and you're gonna duck behind some extras

and you're just gonna shoot a POV.

[Clayton] My favorite scene that we shot in San Francisco

is when Nomi's on the run. She steals a bike.

And so then I escape on the bike. And then Nomi decides

she's going to steal a car to get away, but then as soon as she gets in the car...

I don't know how to drive.

...she realizes she doesn't know how to drive.

Which, I don't know how to drive.

[laughs] So it was amazing, I mean, like it was written for me.

[screeching tires]

Are you crazy?

[cheering, clapping]

No one has ever rolled a smart car. Are you OK?

- Yeah, I bumped my head. - But we survived.

- We did. We survived. - We survived.

Lana and Andy are amazing at creating this sense of traveling

and visiting this kind of strange level of consciousness,

and I think it's going to look great.

They're not even stunts or tricks so much as clever ways of using the camera.

[Smith] You read these scripts like, "How are they going to do this?"

And every time we show up on set, it's not any of the 15 possibilities

that you had in your mind, it's something completely different.

- Three, two, one, action. - Miguel.

[Silvestre] The way they're doing the connection is not by post-production.

It's in the moment. It's very choreographed.

So normally, they use a piece of wall,

they use a shadow,

they use things to make us hide and suddenly appear.

We did a lot of cool things where, as this character blocked the other one,

this one would disappear.

[Smith] Every time we do it, it's different.

We've done, like, actual physical swaps where someone will slide in on a shot.

We've done it so many different ways, you know. It's kind of endless.

[Sally] That's the in-camera stuff.

What's cool about the in-camera stuff, once you establish the single shot stuff,

then when you go into the cutting,

the editing becomes the transition.

[crowd cheering]

[Clayton] They're all there. Then in the next take, they're gone.

And so I'm matching-- It's amazing. I love it.

It's like trying to work it out in your mind, like, what's this--

What am I doing? When you get here and you start shooting you're like, "OK."

[Clayton] I'm like, "Oh, that's how it works."

[Smith] That makes sense.

[Clayton] I'm like, "Yeah, this makes so much sense and it's so awesome."

[Middleton] Classic Sense8.

Yeah, it's just a standard switcheroo,

flipping to another city for a second, and then going back to your own reality.

You gotta go through that door. There's nowhere else for you to go.

[church bell tolling]

Now, walk with me.

I sliced my finger open.

I got this, I got this, I got that.

I tore my tricep in San Francisco.

[grunting]

I got a really bad internal bleeding bruise in this tricep in Chicago.

So this tricep started to atrophy.

And then my shoulder got messed up.

I was like, "My body is falling apart."

[Middleton] Quintessential Chicago: sports bar, pizza, beers.

- Batting cages. - Inside of a bar.

I've never seen that in my life.

[Ameen] Working with some of the greatest filmmakers on the planet,

shooting Sense8. I'm about to see some fireworks. It's beautiful.

[fireworks exploding]

[Smith] I feel like I'm seeing more of Chicago out on a shoot like this

than I normally would.

We shot at Millennium Park. We shot, I believe,

it was the Chicago Cultural Center, which was amazing.

There's been a lot of hospital shooting, a lot of warehouse shooting, and here.

- OK, here we go. - Get your arm twisted.

Just a little... [groans]

[Sally] When we watch Lana and Andy's footage,

it's very clear what they're trying to accomplish.

There's a lot of thought into how it's to be cut together.

We send them cuts every night.

They could really see what was working, what wasn't working,

then we could have a discussion and they could make adjustments.

I think the most important thing is all of the performances were really strong.

It made the cutting so much easier

because we could focus on the storytelling, the editing style.

We didn't have to worry about cutting off performances at all.

Once all 12 episodes were together, we screened all 12 in one day.

- We did our binge. - We did our binge screening.

So we're really able to get a sense of the thing as an entire piece,

which is rare to be able to do that before it airs.

And then go back and hone things as one piece, one 12-hour movie, essentially.

[Straczynski] Each actor gets their turn in the barrel,

and now it's Tuppence as Riley in every single shot.

[Middleton] We're now in London. This is my character's town,

and we're currently on Primrose Hill. It's very early in the morning.

The sun's just come up. And this is just a really cool area in London

where people come to kind of hang out.

In the summer it's always packed with people drinking and smoking

and chatting and having fun.

And it has the most beautiful view of London.

[techno music plays]

This is Koko. Formerly the Camden Palace.

In the early to mid-eighties it was the Music Machine.

It's got kind of an iconic status.

The scenes in the first episode which kind of set Riley up and her world up,

it made sense that that took place here.

What's quite different about tonight is that for the first time

Koko have allowed us to film in and around a real event.

We're putting Riley in to DJ between an act called Barron

and a very major act called Unkle.

Before we started filming, my hair was probably about here,

and it was brown, which is my natural color.

And for Riley, from the start, once I realized she was a DJ

and she had this kind of edgy side, I had always wanted to bleach my hair out.

And me and Lana were looking at it and she was like,

"What about if we go a bit shorter as well."

And so it just kind of got shorter and shorter.

And then we bleached it, and yeah, I was completely thrilled.

We're on Northbound Airlines, which is a fake airline.

[man] They got done shooting in London, but they had to fly to Iceland,

and they shot on the plane while they were flying so the landing is live.

[plane tires screech]

- Who does that? - [both laugh]

The first time we're all together in one shot.

It's going to be a very cool moment for the audience when you pull back

and you reveal and it's like, wow, the eight people are together.

It was kind of surreal and it was like, OK, what does the future hold?

It's the last moment of the season.

It's the only time that it happens through the season.

And it's freezing cold and it's in gorgeous Iceland.

Iceland has been incredibly magical.

I feel it's somewhere between a fairyland and the moon. [laughs]

It definitely feels enchanted. It's just an incredible place.

It's so pristine.

Staggeringly beautiful places that we've gotten to shoot.

Very dramatic, in themselves, without us having to do anything.

[Middleton] We start in one location, then we all move to the next.

So that in itself sort of screws with your mind

because you film everything based on where you are in the world

as opposed to based on where you are in the story, so that's very confusing.

[Smith] Because we had to go to Nairobi,

shoot every episode's worth of scenes, and then go to Berlin.

And then-- psh-- right back to the beginning

of the story, you do it again. It's like layers of paint.

I would film something in San Francisco and then go to Chicago,

and then I'm like, "What are we doing today?"

And they're like, "That scene we already shot in San Francisco,

now we're going to do it in the police station." And I'm like "Oh, OK."

We would cut a full scene in Chicago individually.

We would cut a full scene in San Francisco individually.

So we'd get all of the good moments from each location.

And then we'd take those two scenes and put them together

and cut a third scene with them integrated.

Shoot the scene, two, three, sometimes four times in different locations.

So if they had already shot in San Francisco and Chicago,

it was important for the directors and the actors

to see in Iceland what the scenes were looking like.

This is the rare time we had a second chance to shoot a scene.

So if they had different ideas about how the scene was playing,

they could make adjustments, and they did often, quite often.

They'd make adjustments to the performance,

potentially, or even in the writing.

[Smith] There's one scene that takes place in four different locations,

and that's amazing. It's really, really great.

It's so crazy I can't remember the whole thing.

I don't think anyone's ever done anything like this before.

[man shouts] Action!

Exactly 24 hours ago, I was in a cave freezing my ass off in Iceland.

Now we're in Eastleigh, Nairobi, Kenya.

[car honking]

A lot of traffic. A lot of people.

It's adventurous. Exciting. It's dangerous.

I drove 90 percent of the time, the Van Damn.

I drove around Nairobi.

I even had the experience of the police pulling me over

and someone having to get out of the car and speak to the police.

Basically, there's no brakes. There's no good clutch.

And the gears, it's like... yank,

so my arms are really flipping strong now, man.

It was tough, but it was fun, man.

Call me a bitch one more time.

And I will kill you.

Say what?

Bitch.

[screams]

[shouting]

[Jawar] Today we do the warehouse fight,

we're going to have some really nasty, messed up, bloody scene.

Really try to unload on him coming in.

You know, set yourself, because always you're too upright.

You're too upright to deliver the kick.

I'm really brutal and violent.

I can't quite put into words the experience I had in Nairobi.

It was literally just like an action movie at times,

and it was just very real.

I wasn't protected.

Good guys here, man.

[Andrews] Lana and Andy, there's a certain telepathy on set with them.

One is an extension of the other.

You know, they're almost like sensates with each other.

They have this incredible symbiotic relationship.

[Andrews] And it's very charming and very endearing to watch

and great to be a part of, very exciting because it informs the work.

Because if that's what the script is about,

then if, as people, they can bring some of that feel,

some of that soul to the piece, then it helps us all.

[Smith] It's really incredible to watch how they work.

When they show up on a set, they use everything.

[Hannah] They are constantly open to inspiration

and taking inspiration from wherever in the atmosphere,

the soil, the universe, the people, whatever that's there at the moment.

They allow it to come to life and be alive in that moment

and take what they have on the page,

which is what you're supposed to do, as a blueprint.

[Sally] They enjoy putting things together. They enjoy trying things.

We, often times, we'll cut things one way, you know,

it'll work, but let's try this way. Let's try something like this.

- Let's try it like that. - That was the big thing.

"Let's just try things because that's what we do."

Yeah, we do. "We try things. Yeah. We try things. Let's try this."

[Smith] They might have an idea for how a shot is supposed to look or feel

or how it's supposed to be lit, but then they'll see something.

They knew when I was doing the weights,

they just got this idea it would be really great if the weights keep wiping frame,

and by the third time it comes up, there's Lito just kissing your neck.

It's very exciting for me to be in Seoul and working at the same time.

We are actually, we are in the center of Seoul.

It's called Cheonggyecheon. This is a little canal.

This is a quite famous spot for tourists and local Korean people

to just hang out around here, chilling out, just very relaxing place.

For me, Seoul is very modern and very old-fashioned at the same time.

So I think that's the point of Seoul.

I actually live in Seoul, so it was a really special experience for me

to have all of the crew and cast members in my city.

I felt really responsible for some reason. [laughs]

I was too excited to have everyone,

and I really wanted to show them around.

After the shooting, I just drove my car around with Tina and Max and everyone.

Hey! It was really fun! Yeah!

There's someone you need to meet.

[Silvestre] It's amazing to be in Mexico.

I'm having so much fun with the character.

To be honest, I just started the series, um... with a sex scene,

with Brian, with Jamie and Amanita.

That was my first day.

[laughs] It was like, you know,

like, OK, I cannot start better than this.

- [rock music plays] - [crowd cheering]

Lucha Libre!

[Herrera] We are at the Lucha Libre arena.

- We're going to watch a real fight. - A real fight.

So we're waiting for the people to enter,

and afterwards we will have the Lucha Libre and then the scene

with the whole crowd going mad, going nuts.

We'll be rolling the scene from back there.

And then there's two cameras around the ring

so that they can see the fight up close.

- The fight for justice. - That's right.

[crowd cheering]

[Andrews] Traveling together and being in all these different locations

definitely helped bind us together and bond as a cast.

[Middleton] Although we're not always together,

we bonded really quickly, actually.

I think within about a week of being in San Francisco for rehearsals,

we were like a family.

We met and we were all in San Francisco for a minute,

and then we sort of all split off and then we all got back together again in Iceland,

which was so cool, and then we split off again.

And then now we're all here again.

It's so electric, like, when the eight of us come together.

[Ameen] It's weird 'cause you kind of go on your separate journeys,

then when you meet each other again you got all of this kind of pent up,

"Let me tell you what I've experienced and da-da-da-da."

It feels like family. When we meet again it's like really...

- It feels really good. - [Clayton] It's unexplainable.

It's like these insane family reunions that sort of happen

when we call come together and we can feel it.

And we've got this Sense8 picture group that we all subscribe to

so we all can see each other's lives unfold.

So in that way, you feel very much a part of it.

[Middleton] It's kind of a strange experience

because if it wasn't for this show

then I don't know when the eight of us ever would have met,

but it's been really amazing.

Now, we're in Berlin and we're filming in actually very beautiful weather.

[gunshots]

It's my home, hometown. So a lot of people that I love live here.

We've got lots of space, good air, good weather.

We are all together for the last time.

[Riemelt] We get to know each other and we see the person at their home city

and show them to each other.

For example, Doona showed me Seoul like nobody can.

In Berlin, I invited them for dinner and showed them my world as much as I could.

This is a nice thing to do.

What we are going to do now is blowing up a car with my RPG.

I'm finally filming my stuff in my city,

but they've saved the best for last and I'm very happy to be finally shooting.

I have another level of energy only happening.

It's now the level of excitement and happiness,

and also it's like good positive things that I'm feeling.

[bell ringing]

We are at the Ganesh Temple.

[bells ringing]

It's kind of romantic here. I like that.

The view is brilliant because you have the sea on one side

and you have a million dollar house on another side. [laughs]

And we're at a temple, which is very rare to shoot at.

- [indistinct chatter] - [laughs]

- [Indian vocal music plays] - [crowd cheering]

[Kohli] The dancing was different from how we shoot dance sequences in India

because Lana wanted it to be all shot in one go so we were dancing

and the cameras were capturing all of it. In India we shoot short

sequences of the dance and then put them all together.

[Indian music plays]

[Kohli] I think we did about ten or 15 runs of the dance last night.

So by the end of it everybody's bodies were like... ah... hurting.

[Indian dance music plays]

[Walpole] We're at the Renaissance Hotel,

and we just set up for the wedding.

As you can see by the amount of extras that we have here,

that's about the amount of guests that you'd get probably

in a medium to large wedding here in India.

[Desai] The wedding's location was brilliant with the lake behind

and the entire Powai skyline, the lights. It's so pretty.

The entire venue was decorated very elaborately

with the flowers and the tents.

And I had this beautiful lehenga, which I loved wearing

and it was ridiculously heavy and very hot.

[Indian dance music plays]

We're at the monuments circle. We're shooting the Ganesh Festival.

We've already shot some stuff of the real thing,

but with hidden cameras on rooftops and stuff like that.

So this is the cheat of being in the actual festival,

which would be impossible to actually film like this in.

It's a sea of humanity, more than a million people.

[Middleton] You know, spending four months with people

traveling around to different countries

when you're not with your friends and family, it's so important that you get on.

And I think one thing that the Wachowskis are great at doing

is bringing together like-minded people.

And I feel like we're all very similar

and we're all going through the same thing.

I think it really helps. It helps for the show.

And I think it helps having that support network

when you're traveling around so much.

[Desai] And you have company. If you want mad, you want intense,

you want conversation, it's all there.

[Smith] We got really close

and you get close with different people in different cities.

Every single person I can look at the cast and go,

there was a city where we really, really connected

and we really got to know each other

and we really talked about some really deep shit.

I'm not ready to leave now.

It's been completely life-changing, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

[Ameen] We've experienced many different cultures, many different foods,

gained weight, lost weight.

It's been an amazing experience.

Bye.

Sun's leaving.

Sun's gone.