Tom Hanks Reveals He was Awed by The Americas Footage: "How Is That Even Possible?!"
The two-time Oscar winner narrates the all-American animal adventure, premiering February 23 on NBC.
Curated with care over five years and a mind-bending 180 excursions into some of nature’s most amazing places, NBC’s epic new documentary series The Americas is only days away from sharing the astonishing, never-before-seen stories of animals that connect the living world on both sides of the Equator.
Featuring narration by the iconic Tom Hanks, scored by Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer, and produced by veteran BBC documentary mastermind and Emmy winner Mike Gunton, The Americas premieres February 23 on NBC with a two-hour introductory episode to kick off its 10-installment run.
Gunton recently shared with NBC Insider that Hanks was always the project’s first choice as a narrator — and, apparently, the sentiment is mutual: “I feel I was born to narrate this,” an awed Hanks told Gunton, after an early screening of only a sliver of the project’s incredible animal footage.
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Recently, Hanks appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers where he further discussed how excited he was to bring his voice to this incredible project.
Tom Hanks on how narrating The Americas kept him in constant animal awe
Hanks’ enthusiasm for the project was definitely hard to miss when he dropped by the NBC studios on February 13 for a hilarious extended spot on Late Night with Seth Meyers. During the footage-screening phase in preparation for his narrative role, there were plenty of moments and images that, Hanks said, left him absolutely flabbergasted.
“They had to edit out so many ‘Holy cows — you’re kidding me! Are you nuts? How is that even possible?!’” gushed the Oscar-winning A-lister, who expressed a sort of stunned incredulity at what it must’ve taken for Gunton’s ace documentary camera crews to capture each extraordinary shot.
Tapping Hanks to narrate an Americas-centric take on nature was pretty much a no-brainer for Gunton, himself a legendary documentarian with credits that include 2018’s Dynasties docu-series as well as 2020’s landmark British series Life (each famously narrated by Sir David Attenborough).
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As Gunton previously explained to NBC Insider, Hanks — a back-to-back Oscar winner for Best Actor roles in both Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994) — “is one of the great storytellers… the voice of America. He's a great equalizer and a great connector. One of the things that we wanted to do — and I think he absolutely loved — was this idea that nature doesn't see national boundaries, or country boundaries. It's all interconnected.”
On Late Night, Hanks could barely hide how deeply engrossed he’d become in The Americas and its mystery-shattering animal insights. Reacting to an insanely up-close look at a frog species that essentially survives by freezing to death each night, he only had one hilarious (but genuinely stunned) on-brand response: “Who filmed that?!”
From frogs to forests to the (only sometimes) crab-infested shores of Cuba, The Americas promises just that kind of wonder at the secrets of the natural world, whether it’s at the tip of South America or North America’s Arctic reaches — along with everything in between.
Narrated by Hanks, scored by Zimmer, and cinematically presented in a documentary format that captures the animal kingdom at its most intimate, The Americas premieres Sunday, February 23 at 7 p.m. ET on NBC. From there, catch new episodes weekly on Sundays, when the 10-part series resumes at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 2.
