'I Don't Advise Anyone to Experience Everest': Director Jennifer Peedom on Everest Rows, Recovering Lost Narratives and Throwing Loki in the Gap

For the first time, Tenzing foregrounds the world's most famous Sherpa in his own story. He was a classic underdog, director Jennifer Peedum tells us

Tenzing Norgey was one half of the duo who reached the 'roof of the world' when they completed the historic first ascent of Mount Everest alongside Edmund Hillary in 1953 - and by all accounts they did it together when they got to the summit. But when the accolades were handed out, you might think he was on the lesser side.

Hilary of New Zealand received a knighthood. Also the leader of the expedition, the British army officer, John Hunt. But Tenzing, the man who not only reached the summit, but was the expedition commander (in charge) of all the logistics on the mountain that made the climb possible - was only presented with the George Medal, a civilian honor designed to mark acts of heroism during the Blitz.

The popular narrative that followed in the following decades was that Hillary had climbed Everest (increasingly referred to by one of its original names, Chomolungma) and that Tenzing was there. It's one of the many misconceptions about the man that director Jennifer Pidom seems to be hoping to dispel in her dramatic debut, Tenzing.

Peidom is no stranger to the Himalayas, having started out as a camera operator on Himalayan expeditions before making his own film – fans of mountain films may remember his 2015 film Sherpa, which documented the true stories of the Sherpa community following the deadly 2014 avalanche on the Khumbu glacier. Just as Sherpa was, Tenzing is a thinker and thinker, aiming to shed light on his own story for the first time.

Tom Hiddleston and Willem Dafoe are the biggest names in the cast as Hilary and Hunt, but the star is undoubtedly Genden Phuntsok - a Chinese actor of Tibetan descent - as Nurgi.

His cast reflects another little-known fact - the most famous Sherpa in the world was not an ethnic Sherpa, but the son of a herd of Tibetan boatmen who came to Nepal and later to Darjeeling, seeking work among expeditions. "Tenzing Nurgi" wasn't even the name he was born with. This is what was given to him later.

Peedom’s Tenzing is the story of how a young boy looked up at a mountain revered as Chomolungma – the Mother Goddess – and dreamed of what it meant to stand on literally sacred ground.

We caught up with the director for an exclusive interview after the film premiered in London to find out more.

The 1953 Everest climb is a well-known narrative, but it's often dominated by the idea of ​​a heroic conquest of Europe, and I wonder what you're trying to reveal about this story by focusing on Tenzing's perspective?

Jennifer Piddom: I spent a lot of my early life as a camera operator and documentary maker in the Himalayas, and for me something that was always interesting and part of the charm of this place was the culture and the Sherpa people.

One of my first films about the Sherpas [Sherpa, 2015] was because I was really interested in the idea that climbing is a job for them, but Chomolungma is the god they worship, and the landscape has a spiritual meaning that is very different from what it means to Western climbers who come and climb the mountain. I wanted the audience to see this point of view.

I heard you say about Sherpa that "you weren't making a mountaineering film, you were making a story about people". Tenzing seems to do a bit of both?

JP: The reason I wanted to make this film about Tenzing was, first, to redress the historical balance, because he's never been at the center. He was more of a minor character in the story.

But it was also [about] everything Tenzing had gone through in his life just to get to the start line of Everest, let alone climb Mt. I found this story fascinating - the sheer number of obstacles he had to overcome to get to that place.

He had been through a lot in his life. He was exiled from Tibet to Nepal when he was young. His family had to leave [him] while they looked for work just to survive. He was an outsider in that society—a classic underdog in many ways. He was underestimated throughout his life.

As much about it as anything else, it was about showing his family the cultural sacrifices he had to make to fulfill this childhood dream.

I was really drawn to the character played by Caitríona Balfe, Jill Henderson. He is a big part of the story of British climbing in general, Stenpal, but also a big part of the story of Tenzing.

JP: It was really him who convinced him to go on the [1953 Britain] expedition. He really hesitated. He had a fierce loyalty to the Swiss, with whom he had climbed the previous year and who had tried and failed. He was worn out. He was tired. He had promised his family that he would never return, and then the invitation came.

It was Henderson and Raymond Lambert [the Swiss mountaineer with whom Tenzing climbed the 237m summit in 1952] who colluded to convince Tenzing to go, knowing that this would probably be the one. They knew this was his moment and he deserved it more than anyone else.

Lambert wrote to him. Henderson campaigned endlessly for him until he finally agreed to go. And I just felt, what an amazing woman, who had such a prominent role in history that was never talked about in the traditional accounts of Everest either, but played an important role.

There's a conversation going on right now about the state of climbing Mount Everest, and we've all seen these amazing photos of the queues. When we talk about a mountain that represents the pinnacle of human endeavour, but also a place of spirituality, what do you think about the responsibilities we have as storytellers?

JP: For whatever reason, Everest has become a symbol of human achievement, and it's become a bucket list item. Ambition attracts people, and no matter what happens on Everest, the worse the disaster, the more people seem to come the next year to try it. And I think that says something about Western culture in some ways, and I find that interesting, even though I don't really understand it myself.

It's like a proving ground. And I suggest that there are other ways to do this than to come to Everest and add to the traffic that is on that mountain these days. I don't recommend anyone to go there and climb, really, because it's dangerous because of the crowd. There are better ways to achieve a dream than standing in line to set foot on the summit of the world's tallest mountain.

The difficulty of climbing a mountain like Everest was quite evident in Tenzing: the labored breathing and heavy steps were very memorable. How important was it to make you feel like it wasn't a walk in the park?

JP: It's really important, and it's very difficult to capture that on film, because it's an emotion. Someone once described it to me as running on a treadmill and breathing through a straw. You just can't get enough oxygen into your lungs and so your legs burn. You're kind of taking a step and then you take about three breaths and then you get the strength to take another step.

It's very challenging and the higher you go, the worse it gets. It's hard trying to picture it, but I'm glad you caught your breath. We spent a lot of time with them. Sound design works with breath because that's what keeps you alive.

Speaking of spirituality, there was one scene I wanted to ask you about: there is a rebellion among the Sherpas at one of the high camps, which Tenzing puts down, and ends with a blessing using rice. I wonder if you could tell us what we see there, and more broadly how you brought the authenticity of the Sherpa culture into the film?

JP: It really came from my own experiences with Sherpas in the mountains and hearing their stories. That scene where [Chumulungma] says they're too scared to go any further because now that we're in the southern colonel, we're literally driving our nails into his shoulders? They were the conversations I had heard in the Everest camps.

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And one of the sherpas in that scene—his name is Baloo—was actually our dispatch doctor who played that role. He also said, "Jen, these are the conversations I had with the Sherpas like a year ago on Everest." So it was about bringing all those experiences I've had over the years talking to the Sherpas about what the mountain means to them and trying to help a wider audience understand that for them it's a living embodiment of a God, a Goddess.

For them there is a quite literal feeling that the landscape is inseparable from the spirituality within. It was really important for me to capture that scene because I know the film is really from Tenzing's point of view when he had that conversation with the Sherpas on that Everest trip.

Not only did he have the challenge of climbing the mountain himself, but he led the Sherpa team and was responsible for providing all the equipment. So he had this kind of double work that he had to do and he was under a lot of pressure. And he was manipulating the demands of two very different rival groups. And the Sherpas were afraid of the unknown. Tenzing was unique in that he wanted to ascend, but he also chose to see the Goddess not as something to be feared but to be revered, and in that sense he was unusual and a pioneer in that way.

There is another way to look at this. We don't need to fear him if we ask his permission, ask his blessing, he will bring us through, he will keep us safe. And that's what that scene is about. They pour rice, which is an offering to Chomolungma. And I think, as you see in the film, it reassures the Sherpas that it's okay, and of course it was. There were no incidents during that trip. There were no deaths. It was remarkable.

It's a beautiful scene. I know you know the Sherpa culture well from your previous works, including the 2015 Sherpa documentary. How much did your documentary background inform your approach to Tenzing?

JP: You can probably tell from the movie that we were shooting on real mountains in real landscapes. And I guess for me, that's what I knew. It seemed crazy to do it any other way, because part of the story is the scenery, and so it didn't make sense to me to be fake.

I wanted the audience, as well as the actors, to experience those landscapes and those cultures, and I wanted to show that when you shoot in those communities, you shoot with the people who live in those communities, and that brings a beautiful level of authenticity.

And then the actors themselves can't help but be affected by it. You know, a lot of them have talked about the fact that they didn't really need to act a lot in these scenes, because when Tom Hiddleston is climbing that bottom gap, he's really climbing the gap. It was like, "Okay, Tom, start climbing." He really does. That was the point.

I wanted to ask you about that particular moment when Tom falls through the cracks. How does this actually happen?

JP: It was a hatch that we had set up, so when he landed at that point, the trap door was pulled and he had the safety rope. When he's hanging in the gap, it's just the main safety rope – so the image rope became the safety rope, and we did a lot of work to make sure we could make the ropes look appropriate, but they're also proper safety ropes. That's how we did it. He did it for real.