his 100th birthday on 8 May<\/a>, with Making Life of Earth: Attenborough\u2019s Greatest Adventure revisiting the award-winning 1979 docuseries. <\/p>\nReading from his diaries in the special, Attenborough reveals that the production crew had \u201cno idea\u201d that they were going to capture the now-iconic gorilla moment in Rwanda \u2013 \u201cor how close we would come to losing everything\u201d. <\/p>\n
![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/01KQ99STWEM7KCXJZ22ENGZFAR.jpg\")
David Attenborough opens up about making ‘Life on Earth’ in a new BBC documentary (PA)<\/p>\n
While heading back to the airport, the crew was stopped by a group of army soldiers, who began firing guns over their heads. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought: \u2018What\u2019s happening?\u2019\u201d Attenborough told the documentary. \u201cAnd we turned round the corner and there was an armed guard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were taken to police headquarters and interrogated as to what we\u2019d been doing,\u201d he added. \u201cWe\u2019d got all the permissions that were needed so it was absolutely ok. <\/p>\n
\u201cMartin Saunders, the cameraman, was realising what was happening and realising too that there was a danger that the film we had shot, with which we were obviously thrilled to death about, was going to be confiscated.\u201d <\/p>\n
Acting quickly, Saunders swapped the labels on the film cans to make it appear as if those containing the gorilla footage hadn\u2019t been used. <\/p>\n
They were held in a hotel overnight, with Attenborough and Saunders being taken to an army compound the next morning. \u201cDavid and I were told to stand in the middle of this compound in the sun. We weren\u2019t even allowed to go into the shade,\u201d Saunders told the documentary. \u201cI thought, \u2018I don\u2019t know. They\u2019re going to put us against the wall and shoot us or something.\u2019 At this stage, we just couldn\u2019t understand what the problem was.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"Attenborough](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/01KQ99STED7HZTZPSZQ2V1WKG9.jpg\")
Attenborough and Martin Saunders on location in Comoros for \u2018Life on Earth\u2019 (PA)<\/p>\n
They were finally let go and allowed to fly back to the UK. <\/p>\n
In Life on Earth, Attenborough and his crew join Dian Fossey, a primatologist who spent years living alongside and studying gorillas, in the Virunga mountains. <\/p>\n
While he originally filmed the sequence to talk about the importance of the thumb and forefinger, Attenborough ended up among the silverbacks. <\/p>\n
\u201cI turned to look back at the camera, I felt a weight on my feet and I looked down, and there was little Pablo,\u201d Attenborough told Netflix\u2019s David Attenborough: A Gorilla Story earlier in April. <\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t talk about the evolution of the thumb and forefinger, I just sit back and let it happen. Look at this lovely little creature. Absolutely engaging, you want to hug him. Just sheer bliss, really. Many people would think it was the most important sequence in that series, if not in my filmed life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Making Life on Earth: Attenborough\u2019s Greatest Adventure airs on Sunday 3 May at 8pm on BBC One<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,208572,147,406],"class_list":["post-404861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pa-feature-showbiz-tv-david-attenborough","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}