TLDNR: I ENVIED THE CAST.
Summer 2020, right when the unemployment checks started shrinking. A friend of a friend of a friend mentioned that their friend was hiring production assistants for this show. I have a little film background and have always liked the outdoors, and figured the Discovery channel would have their shit together. They did not.
The first week, pre-production, was fine enough. But the day before filming began, they sent me and the other PAs out to location during the hottest part of the day – it was in the 110-115 degrees Fahrenheit range. They wanted us to do some pretty hard manual labor, when none of us had experience in that. They also didn't give us the tools we needed to get the job done in any efficient manner. Producers drove the trucks away before we get a chance to argue, though. Main guy in charge came back and yelled at us a few hours later for not working fast enough.
Lots of stuff like that. I suggested that we come back in the early morning, when it wasn't so hot. He snapped at me, saying something like “oh, so you think you know how to do my job better than me?” Yes. Yes I did. He didn't even know how to file a basic expense report for a single item. And for some reason, he never thought through any of the scheduling, so we ended up having to do the physically hardest work during the hottest part of the day, almost every day. One of the camera operators started to show signs of heat stroke – he got super disoriented and ended up throwing up – and the production manager called him a “pussy”. Medics sent him back to our hotel with an IV bag.
I came close to getting heat stroke, too – I started getting goosebumps and felt my heart pounding in my head. I also got sent back to the hotel to recover. Thank god for those medics, they were the only competent ones around. Producers then lectured us about “being a liability” and that we needed to “know our limits,” while simultaneously telling us we weren't working hard enough.
And then there was the wage theft. Every single week, our checks would be short by at least 10 hours, and the production manager said it was because he “didn't approve the overtime”. HE WAS THE ONE WHO DROPPED US OFF AND PICKED US UP EVERY DAY. It was so frustrating, and so hard to fight it because of the physical exhaustion. But I eventually did end up getting all $15/hour worth of my overtime pay, only after threatening several times in writing to report them. I was told that the “PAs in Africa are paid in food only,” and that if I thought this was bad, I should “see how the show production goes in South America.”
Oh, and there was also the exhaustion from him banging on our hotel room doors in the middle of the night, because THEN he decided that was when he wanted us to work. Passive aggressive asshole was like “you said you wanted to go early.” Legally, there's supposed to be at least a 10 hour break, for the union members anyway. But nobody pushed back. We'd get back at 11pm and get dragged back out at 4am. Got told I needed to shower. When did they want me to do that?
I almost quit so many times, but then there would be a day where it wasn't quite so brutal and I'd decide to stick it out. This was mostly because if I quit, I wouldn't get unemployment, and I had no idea when another job would come around. Also, we were in the middle of nowhere, and I was too damn mentally exhausted to even begin trying to figure out how to get home. Honestly, I think the only reason I stayed is because the conditions made it so I couldn't think straight.
Contract was up after two months, and I'd gone from 130 pounds to 110 – obviously, not on purpose. Pretty sure I just sat in bed for several weeks once I got back. Had a lot of anxiety attacks. I'm okay now, but god, that was hell.