Tom Hiddelston: Are there any direct reports of experiences with the blowout column?
Steven Tuck: Well, there’s one in the database, a first-hand account of that day. Oh…in 79 AD. Come with me.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
On supporting science journalism
If you enjoy this article, please consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribe. By purchasing a subscription, you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Go home : Take a look.
Brianne Kane: So I wanted to ask you today on the docuseries to talk about how you went to Pompeii for the first time at 17 years old.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
Kane: And it was a truly life-changing experience.
Hiddelston: Yes. 100 percent.
Kane: Can you tell me about this experience and how it inspired your interest in the ancient world?
Hiddelston: So yes, it’s absolutely true. In 1998, I had two friends who were doing art history and ancient history, and I was doing Latin and Greek. I have always loved the ancient world.
I loved how far away it was and how close it seemed at the same time. The stories, the people, the history, the philosophy, the architecture, it’s the cornerstone of everything we think about in the Western world, in Western democracy. Our politics, our architecture, our art, our theater, our language. Being in Pompeii, it’s vast and it’s perfectly preserved.
And I was 17, and it was my first trip, and I felt like those 2,000 years were just compressed. As if the volcano erupted last week, as if it were yesterday. And I realized that the past was a living, breathing thing. You know, Pompeii, I think, is almost the most famous physical emblem of our connection to the ancient world, and it’s a thriller because it has a volcano.
A terrifying pitch-black cloud burst open with simmering explosions of fire, shooting out in all directions, revealing longer, flaming forms.
Kane: You say in the documentary that Pompeii is a complicated place to visit.
Hiddelston: Mmm.
Kane: It’s a story of mass death.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
Kane: And I wanted to ask you about your experience seeing the plaster casts for the first time.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
Kane: These are humans, as you say, who were reduced to ashes and died in great suffering.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
Kane: And some of them were with family members, but some couldn’t reach them, as you explain in the documentary.
Hiddelston: Yeah.
Kane: I wanted to ask you about your experience seeing these plaster casts for the first time.
Hiddelston: There is one that I still remember. You can see that it’s an adult and a child who are entwined in an embrace, and the adult, perhaps a parent, family member, or caregiver, wraps their arms around the child to protect them. And this very intimate image of protection and envelopment found me intensely moving.
Next to one of them was this family dog…
Kane: Yeah …
Hiddelston: …that, and we had a dog, you know, when I was 17. I thought, “Oh, these are families just like, just like us, just like me.” It’s very powerful because the plaster casts are the shapes of human beings. These are real human lives. What has always stuck with me is that Pompeii is not just an archaeological site of historical interest.
This is a place where there has been an extraordinary loss of life. And in the show, what I really wanted to communicate was that these were real people, real human beings, ordinary people, just like us, experiencing an extraordinary moment. While filming the series, the more I learned about the details of these individual lives, the more I truly felt my own, the depth of my own empathy for them.
I felt like I got to know them like I would get to know friends, and I feel less alone in the world when I study the classics because in reality the human condition and the experience of being alive as a human being has not changed. Of course, our technologies have changed, the way we communicate, the way we live, the way we cook, the way we, you know.
They didn’t fly planes back then and didn’t have, you know, smartphones back then, but they had families, and they lived and they loved each other, and they took care of each other, and they cooked and they slept, and they had pets, and they had jobs and communities and playgrounds. and the teachers and the students and, thus, their hopes and their fears and, and the essential essence of being human were exactly the same.
And when you go around Pompeii and you see these handprints of little children or bread baking in the oven, that they found in Herculaneum, which is just over the hill from Pompeii, because the pyroclastic surge, which is just one wave after another, I’m sure you know, of ash and pumice and molten rock, has preserved this place so perfectly that you can see and almost smell who they were.
Why does she stay?
Caitie Barrett: Well, one possible reason might be here before us.
Hiddelston: What, Isis?
Barrett: Isis was a cosmic creator. She could embody all the gods into one, and she was also a mother figure. She is therefore a protector. She could keep people safe. This is definitely a god you might want to have on your side during a natural disaster.
Kane: Well, thank you very much for your time today. I wanted to give you the latest issue of Scientific American. Thank you so much. We have a report on ancient Roman roads. And it’s about,
Hiddelston: and it’s about, and you have some quantum stuff here.
Kane: Oh, it’s our favorite word.
Hiddelston: Quantum. Now, I mean, uh, it’s about time this show aired, right?
SO-
Kane: Exactly …
Hiddelston: I opened it on a m- on a, on a card from the old network.
Kane: I thought you would find this question particularly interesting.
Hiddelston: Athens, Byzen-Byzantium, Thessalonica, Antioch. We haven’t even started on Alexander the Great. See, pick me up and I’ll go.
Kane: There’s a lot of ancient history to cover.
