Nevada City, CA — The popular Discovery Channel docudrama Naked and Afraid will be filming in Nevada City during the fall shooting season, The Fazzler has learned. Filming is set for the October time-frame, with the “ahead” production team arriving in September to prepare the town for a bunch of naked people.
“A show like this takes a lot of planning and pre-production work,” said associate producer Kett Jameson in a Skype interview. “This is the show’s first urban foray. Well, let’s call this more of a small town gig. Anyhow, there will be lots of non-naked people walking around our participants, so there is a lot of planning to do.”
Filming was originally planned along a remote stretch of the Middle Fork of the Yuba River, according to the Naked and Afraid production team, however Nevada City turned out to be a better place to experiment with public nudity and other “progressive” topics. Local starlets Heather Donahue and Matt Herman’s ground breaking pilot opened the door to a host of risky topics, and the producers of the popular Discovery Channel show thought the timing was right for open public nudity.
“Heather’s work really opening up the field for more experimental television,” continued Mr. Jameson. “This is just the beginning. If this works out, other Discovery [Channel] productions plan on making their way to Nevada City.”
Local Nevada City enthusiast and community supporter Stacy Grant was thrilled about this development.
“This is exactly the kind of thing we want here in Nevada City,” exclaimed Ms. Grant. “I’m not going to name-names, but the Presbyterians were a little concerned about naked people walking around Broad Street. Kids and all. But I told them on Sunday that they’ll blur-out the naughty bits just like they’ve seen on TV. So they won’t be able to seem them. They seemed more comfortable with that. The Baptists and the Methodists didn’t even care. Figures.”
If the Naked and Afraid production is a success, Discovery Channel executives have announced follow-up shows to take advantage of Nevada County’s rugged, “don’t tell me what to do” individualist spirit. Some of the shows/topics would include:
- Amish Mafia: Stars Levi and Alvin find themselves in Alta Sierra and have to make their way to Nevada City. Along the way they battle Bigfoot and retirees ending with an epic fight in the Kmart parking lot with a bunch of tweakers.
- Dirty Jobs: Mike Rowe is at it again. This time he teams up with Navo and Sons for some serious septic tank work. And he’s happy to do it. And he wants you to be happy about it as well.
- Gold Rush: The Huffman crew arrives in Nevada County and proves they can’t find gold even in a salted Nevada County mine. Frustrated, leader Todd Huffman instructs the team to make granite amulets to sell at the Thursday night market in Grass Valley.
- Moonshiners: Special Edition, co-produced by Heather Donahue and Matt Herman. Tim and Tickle take a break from their Appalachian efforts and try out a little Ridge-style activity, if you know what we mean. And I’m sure you do. They make their way out to Tyler Foote Road where production is high and the harvest is plentiful. The party really gets going when Sheriff Royal shows up to say hello.
- And a new reality TV show tentatively called Break that Shit Up!: Producers pay out-of-town hooligans to vandalize the town. Then the town rallies together and rebuilds. Note: this is planned for Grass Valley, not Nevada City.
