Netflix Released Jane Goodall’s Final Interview Weeks Ago – And Only Now Are We Learning Its Only The Beginning Of A Secret Series About Mortality

When the news of Jane Goodall’s death made headlines, Netflix had already been prepping for an unconventional premiere of its own. In under 48 hours, the streaming giant quietly pushed out the first episode of its new series Famous Last Words, which, quite literally, will only air after its subjects are deceased.

The first episode is with Goodall, the globally celebrated primatologist and conservationist, who died on at 91. Her interview, filmed months prior in March, had been sitting in a Netflix vault among several others. The series, in development for years, was executive produced and hosted by Brad Falchuk and his producing partner Mikkel Bondesen, who repped the concept from the successful Danish show Det Sidste Ord (The Last Word). The original series, also a one-on-one interview with elderly public figures in their last years, featured reflective, often deeply personal final interviews that were released only after their deaths.

The idea, as macabre as it is moving. In theory, Famous Last Words gives viewers one last interview with our cultural heroes, free from any consideration of time, public relations, or tomorrow’s consequences. The filming setup is simple Falchuk and the subject alone in a soundstage, the cameras controlled remotely to allow for as much intimacy as possible. Even Netflix staff can’t hear the interview until it’s complete.

Goodall’s episode, condensed from four hours to fifty-five minutes, is meditative in its duality. She’s bluntly honest about her hopes for humanity, believing we must “save what is still beautiful in this world,” and critical of some of the world’s most powerful leaders, like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Benjamin Netanyahu, at one point quipping that she’d like to “put them all on one of Elon Musk’s spaceships and send them off.” The conversation is also composed, wry, and often light. In her final remarks, she looks squarely into the camera and, in what seems like a benediction, says: “Each and every one of you has a role to play. You may not know it, you may not find it, but your life matters, and you are here for a reason.” The moment is the parting grace note from someone who spent her life insisting that our humanity and nature are inextricable.

Goodall’s is the first interview to air and The New York Times reported that at least three or four other finished episodes are in the vault, and more are still in production. Netflix and Falchuk have declined to identify the other subjects (though they’re said to be mostly in their 90s), but the secrecy has only fed a darkly morbid guessing game… Who could be next?

Could it be Dick Van Dyke, the 99-year-old Hollywood stalwart who has been charming audiences for generations? Or maybe David Attenborough, whose life’s work of nature documentaries is itself a testament to the beauty and importance of the natural world Goodall has spent a lifetime fighting to preserve? Some might speculate Mel Brooks, still going strong in his late 90s and the comedic genius behind Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, and The Producers.

These are, of course, only theories. In the meantime, they say something about the weird emotional alchemy that Famous Last Words sets us up for. Filled with anticipation and mourning, morbid curiosity and reverence it’s a format that upends how we think about the cultural legacies people leave and how they die. “When someone important dies, all you long for is just a little more time with them,” the show’s title sequence reminds viewers. With Famous Last Words, Netflix has found a way to grant that wish,