'Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan': Our fearless leader previews tonight's finale and looks back on the creepy-crawlies of season 1

Comments +
Add comment

(Page 2 of 2)

Have you ever regretted getting too close to these animals that can bite and claw at you?
No, not yet. I’ve been bitten and scratched and stung, gotten murdered by mosquitoes and black flies, got stung by a few bees and ants and bitten by spiders, but in terms of the real dangerous animals — your cobras and vipers and scorpions and things like that — I’m obviously aware of the element of danger, and I avoid being bitten at all costs. I’m obviously very partial to all my limbs and I don’t want to come back without any of them. This is also a show where I attempt to show people that I can spend a little bit of time with even the dangerous ones and be okay.

If the show gets renewed, in season 2 or even on your own off-camera travels, what animals are still on your wish list to see?
There’s so many. The list is almost endless. I’d like to go to the Galapagos Islands. I’d like to go to Christmas Island and Easter Island, Tasmania, Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, Nairobi, Kenya, Rwanda, different places in Europe to tell a whole bunch of animal stories. I don’t necessarily want to tell you the specific animals ’cause I don’t want to make it easier for nature shows to go and steal my ideas, but there are animals all around the world with fascinating stories about how they came to be and how they have such incredible abilities. Season 2 isn’t necessarily going to just deal with the creepy, crawling invertebrate-type animals. I think we’ll branch out. We’ll do some stuff about fish. We’ll do some stuff about birds. We’ll do more stuff about reptiles. We’ll probably deal with a few mammals along the way as well.

So you might need to invest in an underwater camera for season 2.
I think an underwater camera might be the way forward.

What can you tell us about what fans have to look forward to in tonight’s finale?
I go to Guatemala to look for one of the world’s rarest and most venomous lizards, called the Beaded Lizard, a very fascinating, slow-moving, armor-plated lizard with one of the most powerful bites in the reptile kingdom and a pretty potent venom at the same time. They’re shrouded in myth and mystery. In certain areas of Guatemala, people believe if you step in their shadow, they’ll kill you. People think that they’re devils sent form the underworld. People think that they control lightning and thunder and things like that. So I go to this incredibly welcoming country with amazing people and food and spend some time trying to find this very, very elusive, hard-to-find reptile.

In season 2, is there a chance we’ll see any costars from past projects, any buddies like Billy Boyd?
You absolutely will. It’s one of the things that I tried to do in season 1, and we just didn’t quite have the machine up and running as well as we will in season 2, but it was something enticing to all networks. I’m still very good friends with a whole bunch of people that I’ve worked with on different films and TV shows, people like Billy and Elijah and Viggo and Jorge Garcia and Harold Perrineau, and there are other people that I just happen to know [from outside my acting career] that I’m sure would come along with me. Billy would probably be at the top of my list simply because he’s a very dear friend of mine and we work well on camera together, so going back to New Zealand or possibly Australia with Billy would be something that we would do.

I bet that would be fun to see also because their experience [with animals] would probably be closer to how the viewers who haven’t been as daring as you all their life feel about these creatures.
Absolutely. And Billy’s full of humor. He’s a very funny guy, so the way that he would deal with fear would probably be to be quite funny about it, so it’s something that I’m definitely looking forward to doing.

The season 1 finale of Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan airs tonight on BBC America at 10 p.m.

Follow Emily on Twitter: @EmilyNRome