Grand Tour Presenter James May Talks Filming In Russia: “We were Closed Down”
It’s no surprise that The Grand Tour was in a state of limbo as the pandemic grew in size last year. The whole point of the show, obviously, is to ‘tour’, so when the show’s freedom became questionable, they had to make some moves.
Now, James May and Jeremy Clarkson have discussed this subject, revealing that they and their fellow presenter Richard Hammond were forced to shut down a shoot, which they’d never done before.
Executive producer of the Amazon Prime Video show explained that the process of travelling and filming such a thing was similar to a “Hollywood movie”.
“We were making calculations like you see in war-room meetings about what to do next. Do we keep spending money and assuming it will work? Or pull the plug, and then find we didn’t need to?”
Jeremy Clarkson added the following:
“We had to pull out with hours to spare, days at most.
“We could sense this lockdown was coming.
“So we pulled it, and then we were closed down [on March 23], so thank God we did,” he finished.
James May added to the story, saying:
“I’ve never had a whole shoot cancelled like that – it was serious stuff.”
The Grand Tour Bumped Into Top Gear While Filming In Scotland Along With Others
It’s been confirmed that The Grand Tour was heading for the North of Russia before it was shut down due to the Coronavirus.
James May gave us an insight into the episode while talking to Grand Tour Nation and other press:
“Well, we got a big plan for Russia on hold.
“One that we couldn’t do when Covid kicked off so it would be nice to finish that off since we set it all up.
“We’ve even bought the cars, I’m not sure where they are, whether they’re in storage somewhere.”
The Russia special is expected to be filmed in 2022, but with everything these days, this is entirely dependent on the rules and regulations at the time. Regardless of this, we can’t wait!
