Life Below Zero: Next Generation’s creation and casting; Life Below Zero season 14 details
When Life Below Zero returns for its 14th season, it will be followed by Life Below Zero: Next Generation, which fittingly follows a new cast of people who have decided to move to Alaska and live off the grid—including an Army veteran, Alex Javor, who was inspired to move to Alaska while watching Life Below Zero.
How did this spin-off come about, and how was it cast? And how has filming on Life Below Zero‘s new season in 2020 been affected by the global pandemᎥc? I talked to the showrunner of NatGeo’s popular franchise, executive producer Joseph Litzinger, to find out that and a lot more.
Both shows return on Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 7, starting at 8 p.m. on National Geographic Channel. But then they’ll immediately move to their regular timeslots: Tuesdays at 8 for Life Below Zero, and Tuesdays at 9 for Life Below Zero: Next Generation.
Watch the first few minutes of the new show—which is also produced by BBC Studios’ Los Angeles division for NatGeo—here:
Creating and casting Life Below Zero: Next Generation
“Over the years, we’ve discussed a variety of options—how to have the brand be bigger,” Life Below Zero showrunner Joseph Litzinger told me. Because they can “just add another character” to the main show, he said, they didn’t want to create a new series with cast members similar to those on LBZ.
A question that the producers frequently heard from fans about Life Below Zero is what inspired the new show. That question: “What were these people like when they first moved to Alaska? What we landed on was Life Below Zero: Origin Story.”
Most of Life Below Zero’s cast has been living off-grid for decades, so for Next Generation’s cast, they wanted to find people “who recently moved out there, or who have one foot in civilization and one foot in wilderness.”
The process of casting the new series was much different than when the production originally cast Life Below Zero eight years ago. Back then, “most of them didn’t have access to the Internet,” Litzinger said, so producers ended up “driving around Alaska, asking pilots, asking local stores—do you know anyone who comes in every month?” They even put notices on trees.
