Yahoo News The Grand Tour hosts wanted total ‘control’ of how the show ends
Richard Hammond speaks with Yahoo UK about the Prime Video series almost reaching the end of the road
Sticking the landing is difficult to achieve in the entertainment industry, and more often than not shows can outstay their welcome and end things on a sour note — but not The Grand Tour, not on Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May’s watch.
Hammond spoke with Yahoo UK about bringing the series to a close for Origin Story, and he admits it was always the plan to end it “when, where and how” they wanted. This begins with the Prime Video show’s penultimate special Sand Job, which premiered on the platform on Friday, 16 February.
“The key thing on that whole issue, [is] we had decided years ago that we wanted to be in control,” Hammond explains.
“Having set off on this incredible adventure that none of us thought would ever come our way, we all wanted to be the ones —and I don't just mean us three, all of us— to decide when and where and how we landed it, and we have done. But that isn't uppermost in our minds yet because we haven't finished.”
That’s because Hammond, Clarkson and May are very much still hard at work on their final special for The Grand Tour. The final farewell will see the trio travel to Zimbabwe for one last adventure, and although filming finished last year it isn’t yet the end for them.
“We've worked together a very long time and been lucky to share some simply incredible experiences that none of us ever thought would come our way,” Hammond adds. “And not just share them with our mates but share them with a global audience which, again, we never thought we'd have the opportunity to do.
“We're still right now in the process of doing that, these films are enormous, and they are films really.
"We're an enormous crew, it's a huge combined effort to make that so when we bring back the thousands of hours of footage, when we call wrap at the end of the shoot, that isn't the end of the job.”Richard Hammond
Hammond explains that it is “a huge process” to deliver the high quality shows that fans are accustomed to. That means the trio —who became iconic after their time presenting on Top Gear together before they moved on to The Grand Tour— have a lot to do before they look towards what’s next.
“It's still a huge process to get it assembled and made before it's done, so we're still in that process,” he says. “We're delivering this one [as] it's all come together and finally the voiceovers [are] down and the picture is graded, locked and delivered.
“Then for a while we're gonna be sitting back, desperate to see what do people think, ‘did it work? Did we capture the spirit where we went?’ So that'll occupy us for a while yet.”Richard Hammond
Hammond goes on: “We're still in the process of making the next one, we've shot it but we're gonna [finish] it. That will occupy us, so really our attention hasn't turned to anything that follows until we get there.”
The Grand Tour: Sand Job is out now on Prime Video, the show’s final special will air on the streamer later this year.
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Watch Richard Hammond share his Origin Story:
