Co-showrunner Dana Ledoux Miller Talks ‘Thai Cave Rescue’

Moviefone talks to the TV and movie veteran about working on the miniseries based on the 2018 rescue of 12 boys and their coach from a flooded Thai cave.

‘Thai Cave Rescue’ begins streaming on Netflix September 22nd. Photo courtesy of Netflix.

Premiering on Netflix beginning September 22nd is the six-part ‘Thai Cave Rescue’, which chronicles the real-life rescue of 12 young soccer players and their coach from a flooded cave in Thailand in 2018.

It was a true-life tale that gripped the world and – though a couple of rescuers heroically died in the effort, saw all those who were stranded brought out alive.

The limited series goes beyond the story of the rescue to also chronicle the day leading up to the huge storm that left the boys stranded. Featuring interviews with the actual players and others involved, and fictional versions of other people (such as those involved in weather prediction), the series aims to tell a more complete version of the rescue thanks to the elongated running time.

Moviefone recently had the chance to speak with Dana Ledoux Miller, who ran the show with Michael Russell Gunn and worked alongside directors Kevin Tancharoen, Baz Poonpiriya and Jon M. Chu (who originally shepherded the project) to bring it to life.

‘Thai Cave Rescue’ begins streaming on Netflix September 22nd. Photo courtesy of Netflix.

Moviefone: How did you come to be involved with the series?

Dana Ledoux Miller: I watched along with the rest of the world and I recognized that it was a great story. I didn’t realize at the time that I would be the right person to write it! But Jon M. Chu had the foresight when it was all going down to say, “This is something really special that’s happened here and I want to protect this story.” And so he immediately got with SK Global, who he did ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ with. They partnered with Netflix and secured the rights to the boys’ lives.

And once they had that, they went in search of writers and it was actually Michael (Russell Gunn), who I co-show ran it with, who came to me and we started talking about it. And the more we started reading about it, digging a little deeper than what you could see on CNN or the BBC, we realized, ‘holy smokes, there is so much to the story that isn’t being explored yet.’ And it really taps into a lot of things I think we both care about. And so we chased it and we got it.

MF: Was it always going to be a limited series? Was it going to be a movie? Was there some point where its format was in flux at all?

DLM: I think before Michael and I came on, there was some discussion about whether it was one movie or three movies, whether it was a series. But Michael and I, when we came in, we had very clear vision of what we thought a limited series would be. And that’s what we pitched to them. And once we did that, we were off to the races. There was no going back to features.

MF: What was your original pitch for the series?

DLM: We knew from the beginning that we wanted to start small and get bigger. Often in these kinds of incredible rescue stories, the people who are being rescued or the people who are most impacted by these tragedies are overlooked. And so we really wanted to go right to the beginning of how this happened and how did it spiral into something that suddenly the entire world is watching, instead of watching the World Cup? And so that was always kind of our vision. And it was tricky, because the more research we did, every single person that we interviewed was just as fascinating as the person before.

We had an abundance of riches, and that was a gift and a curse sometimes because we felt this great responsibility to do right by everyone involved in that story. And so it was hard to pick and choose, but our vision to start with the boys and let the world come into that and really honor their experience and honor the experience of their parents, their families, and start to see how something like this takes an emotional toll on the people involved, how it grows. And how does something like this become a worldwide story?

‘Thai Cave Rescue’ begins streaming on Netflix September 22nd. Photo courtesy of Netflix.

MF: It’s an amazing story, but was there something in particular that resonated with you?

DLM: The coach in particular was someone that we were really struck by. There were thousands of people involved in this rescue, but there were three people to our minds that really made it possible for the boys to live. And the first one was the coach. The fact that he had grown up in a monastery as a Buddhist monk and had experienced hunger and knew how to survive with that feeling. To not eat and to be so into mindfulness practice and meditation, to be able to keep the boys calm in that scenario. He’s the reason why, in my mind, they lived through those first 10 days. Without a doubt. And learning his background was a really important thing that we discovered. I don’t think anyone really talks about that it’s because of who he is that they lived.

MF: You have the real-life people interviewed and largely stick to the facts. But adaptations of stories always require some changes or invention. Was there something you needed to add to this?

DLM: The weather intern who tries to warn her superiors about the coming storm is one of our fictionalized characters. It’s sort of based off of news report information that we had, but not on any one specific person. It’s a strange balance to do a real life story. It’s always this way. You want to be as truthful to the moment and to the people who are involved in the story. You don’t want to mischaracterize people. And at the same time, you have to find a way to tell a compelling, entertaining story for television.

We’re writers. We realize a ticking clock is always something that helps you understand the tension or build tension within a script. And that was sort of the perfect storm approach that we took, because what we found was that there were people who were seeing that there was weather coming in. But the boys up in the north, from their interviews they told us, “It was a sunny day. We were just playing soccer and the storm came from the other side of the mountain.” And so they couldn’t see it. It wasn’t like, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t go into the cave today because the weather’s not quite right.” It was truly a surprise to them. And so we wanted to find a way to create that on screen.

MF: What was the biggest challenge for you?

DLM: Weather was a challenge for us throughout the production, and not in the way that we expected. We actually shot this during monsoon season. During the same time. I think we started production... We started production either on the day or right around the day that the boys were actually rescued, three years earlier. And we started in the cave. And so we were like, “Okay, this is probably not the greatest idea in the world.”

Yet the problem that we had wasn’t too much rain, which is what we thought was going to happen, it was that we couldn’t get rain to save our lives up there! So, we had all these funny days where we were trying to shoot the monsoons. It was really frustrating, but what it meant was that the cave wasn’t as flooded as it was when the boys were in there.

We were able to get into the first chamber and into the next couple of chambers. We shot that practically. And then we had our stunt guys go in and shoot some of the action bits later in the series in there. But most of the interior work was cave sets that we built in Bangkok based on a scan we did of the entire cave. So weather was an enemy, we used a lot of rain machines. But it was like the opposite enemy!

‘Thai Cave Rescue’ begins streaming on Netflix September 22nd. Photo courtesy of Netflix.

MF: You also shot during a rough patch of the Covid pandemic. How did that affect the shoot?

DLM: Yeah, that was absolutely a concern. But I can’t stress enough just what an amazing cast and crew we had. And everyone was so compliant with all of the regulations. And it’s a story that means so much to so many people, especially in Thailand. And so everyone was game. We were kind of in this together and we wanted to do right by the story. We wanted to do our best work. And we wanted to do it safely. None of the boys perished in the cave, no one on our crew was going to. There’s no reason that they should be any worse than that.

We had a really amazing experience. And shooting in the community, where this happened, was especially meaningful. The people up there really supported us and got behind us. They helped. So many of the real parents contributed to set decoration, like their clothes for the sets, or made food. They’re like, “This is what I made the day that this really happened, and I’d like to do it again.” And I showed up to the shrine one day at the cave and our set decorator took me aside and said, “These offerings were made by the parents. They’re the same offerings that they usually make.” I mean, it was just an exceptional experience.

MF: And the people involved felt you represented them well?

DLM: I think that’s part of how we have so many discussions about representation in Hollywood, and that’s something that I feel very passionate about as a Samoan American woman. And I felt equally responsible for protecting their stories and the authenticity of their lives as I would for telling a Pacific Islander story. And so people want to be heard, they want to be respected and they want to see themselves reflected on screen. Success to me, will be if they like it, that’s very important to me. That they feel like we’ve done right by them.