EXCLUSIVE: 'A love letter to Sunderland' - STID producers on why series felt so personal
Perhaps the ultimate irony of Sunderland Til I Die was that Sunderland supporters were the people who could enjoy it the least.
The first two seasons chronicled, in often painful detail, very dark days at Sunderland. Days in which fans, famed for their indefatigable hope, were forced to confront hopelessness.
The series itself, of course, was a huge hit, and considered among many to be one of the most influential sports documentaries of all time.
Its reach was so comprehensive it led to the Hollywood takeover of Wrexham. According to Wrexham executive director Humphrey Ker revealing Sunderland Til I Die completely changed Rob McElhenny’s opinion on football.
"I think that just blew his mind because it showed the relationships we have in the UK with our football teams," Ker told the BBC's 'Sacked in the Morning' podcast.
Season Three of the series is due to debut on Netflix this week, and it contains all the same heart and soul as the first two. It’s the final instalment and, finally, it’s one Sunderland fans themselves can enjoy with the Black Cats finally getting themselves moving in the right direction again.
Sunderland Nation caught up with Fulwell73 owners Gabe and Ben Turner, the Sunderland fans from London responsible for bringing Sunderland Til I Die to the world’s screens.
It was a natural project for the brothers to pursue but it presented an interesting question. Where do you even start when tasked with explaining Sunderland AFC to people not born into it?
Netflix / Fulwell73 Productions
“I think the starting point is most teams in sport lose,” Gabe told Sunderland Nation. “One team wins and everyone else loses, so most people can relate to blind faith and going in knowing that you're getting nothing for it other than being with your family and your friends and experiencing the ritual together.
“You're getting very little for it? Right. So I think that's the starting point. And then, you know, as Ben always says, we grew up in London and we were Sunderland fans.
“For us, Sunderland was like a magical place to, you know, a lot of the time you wouldn't expect to hear that from people from London. It's the capital and that's the city that everyone wants to be in.
”But the reality when you grow up in London and your football team's there [in the northeast], is that the magic of Roker Park and arriving in the region and getting your kit up there and all of that, to us, was really dreamy.
“Sunderland is a place we've always romanticized. Our cousin Leo (Pearlman, another STID producer and Fulwell73 partner) was up there when we were growing up, and we obviously know loads and loads of people from the area and always have done, and they've always been really special people.
Netflix / Fulwell73 Productions
“So special people learning how to lose in football and then trying to basically mirror that out to the rest of the world. I imagine if you come from Pennsylvania and you support a s**tty hockey team and who never wins, you probably can relate to that.”
Fulwell73 is a true Sunderland success story and they are due to bring a major new film studio to the banks of the Wear.
Sunderland Til I Die, though, was borne of many factors, and both David Beckham and Donald Trump played unwitting parts.
“I remember when we were talking about it in the initial stages with Netflix, Donald Trump had been recently elected, and there was so much talk about the Rust Belt in America,” Ben said.
“One of the conversations we had with them was like, this is kind of the Rust Belt in the UK. This is a place that modernity feels like it's moved on from and it's sort of hanging on a little bit.
“But again, like with most sports, teams don't win. Most of the world is kind of like that. It does have a resonance.
“And we've been making sports dots for a long time. We started in 2005, made a film called in the Hands of the Gods, and our career sort of snowballed from there.
“I remember when we were pitching a film called Class of 92, we wanted to make it because we love football. We were like: ‘if it means spending time with David Beckham, we're in.’ Then we found ourselves pitching about the film but people kept saying to us ‘what's the point?’
“This is long before sports talks were a big deal. What was the point? Everyone knows how it ends. It will never be as amazing as it was [in real life] because it was so unexpected when they won the treble in the last minute against Bayern Munich in injury time.
“So what's the point of the film? We couldn't say it's so that we can hang out with David Beckham. So we had to come up with something better.
“The answer we finally found was that the story has a resonance beyond the football. The Godfather is a story about gangsters, but it's really a story about family.
“So in our absolute will to be close to things we think are amazing, mainly Sunderland football club, we sort of come to realize that there needs to be something more in the story than just the action that you're watching.
“And as Gabe says, we just have such a romanticized and loving image of Sunderland in the northeast. It's like a love letter to a place that felt like it was just full of dreams for us.”
Sunderland Til I Die will stream on Netflix from February 13.
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