It’s Not the Size of the Wave, It’s the Story of the Journey, Says ‘100 Foot Wave’ Docuseries’ Joe Lewis
The one thing Joe Lewis, executive producer of HBO’s 100 Foot Wave docuseries, knows for sure when the show’s crew sets out to begin filming each season of the daring big-wave surfing documentary, is that they’re chasing something that might never materialize.
Lewis, whose TV experience comes from the sets of such beloved scripted series as Fleabag and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, began his journey to capture the big-wave surfing community in the remote Portuguese fishing village of Nazaré some six years ago.
Over the course of three seasons of the Emmy-winning show, the camera crew has recorded roughly 3,000 hours of footage each season. And in that time, the show has yet to realize its titular promise of tackling the mythic 100-foot wave.
When he began shopping the first season of the show to networks, the questions everyone wanted to know, Lewis says, were: “When are they going to get the 100-foot wave?” and “What are you going to do if they don’t get the 100-foot wave?”
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“Will someone get the 100-foot wave one day? I’m curious myself like everybody else, but I don’t think [the show] is as contingent on that as I once thought,” Lewis tells THR. (Although he teased that audiences may get what they’ve been waiting for in season four, even still, he says he’s not sure.)
“I’m someone who loves long stories; I love longitudinal documentaries,” he adds. “l think with more time comes greater depth of character and story. Now, when do I think the people involved with the world of big-wave surfing will stop being interesting? That will never happen.”
Season three of 100 Foot Wave, which this year has been nominated for four Emmys — one for outstanding cinematography and another for outstanding documentary series — centers on big-wave pioneer Garrett McNamara and his decades-long compulsion to surf the 100-foot wave. (The show won the award in 2022 and 2023, the other two times it has been nominated.)
The series’ most recent season, however, sees its aperture widen, introducing more members of the big-wave community and traveling to multiple destinations beyond Nazaré, something the creators hadn’t really done before.
“The tide kind of just changed in that direction,” Lewis says. It’s not something they were planning on entering the season.
“I wish I could explain it, except I can’t,” Lewis adds. “We just followed an amazing group of people for an insane amount of time, and these individual season arcs just started appearing.”
One of the greatest parts of the show is how much footage they shoot, Lewis says: “It makes the production even bigger than people realize. It’s more difficult, but it’s also why I hope it just feels so intimate and sort of infinite in where we can go.
“Where we evolved to after the first season, and what we believe so firmly, is it’s not about getting the wave,” Lewis says. “It’s about the chase for this thing — the chase for this thing that might not even exist.”
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
