Sitting across from Tom Hiddleston and Genden Phuntsok, I felt the usual rhythm of an interview quickly dissolve. There was an arresting stillness in the room, an absence of the polished talking points and promotional patter that usually accompanies a project of this scale. Instead, listening to them reflect on the raw reality of nature and what it truly meant to walk in the footsteps of Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary for their new Apple TV film, Tenzing, felt joyously soulful. For them, it required confronting what it means to stand beneath something vast and surrender to it.
Norgay and Hillary were the first confirmed people to reach the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953, and the film structures the narrative not a flashy race to be first, but as a pure connection to Mother Nature and how the climb was a calling of sorts. It was striking how effortlessly Hiddleston and Phuntsok articulated the interior lives of these men — less as legendary figures carved into history, but simply as men with a dream. While interviewing them in Toronto for the Tenzing premiere at TIFF, I was moved by their reverence for the roles entrusted to them and the sacred bond they held with their craft.
For Phuntsok, the process of becoming Tenzing Norgay was a deeply emotional immersion rather than a technical exercise. He spent months delving into Norgay’s life, feeling that he had to truly become the man before he could ever play him. What stayed with him most was not the glory of the summit, but the weight of Tenzing’s domestic grief, his deep love for his wife Dawa and his daughters, set against surviving in an unforgiving climate. Reading about Tenzing’s personal tragedies moved Phuntsok to tears, so much so that even a year after production wrapped, he admits, “I cannot control myself emotionally every moment” whenever he watches the film.
“When I finished reading the book, I was crying, because he’s a really good man. He loved his wife Dawa. He loved his family, but you cannot stop nature. He just wanted to help his two daughters, but he also wanted to work to survive, and he had a very hard life, but he didn’t give up,” he said.
That quiet vulnerability was mirrored in Hiddleston’s reverence for Hillary. What drew Hiddleston in was the sheer absence of arrogance in how both men moved through the world. “I was so inspired by the men that Tenzing and Hillary were, and that they approached the mountain with such faith and humility, and probably a quiet determination. Not because they wanted to conquer the mountain, but because they loved climbing and they loved being in nature,” Hiddleston says.
Speaking with Hillary’s son Peter and grandson Alexander, Hiddleston learned that Sir Edmund’s defining legacy was never truly the summit itself. “At the end of his life, the thing he was proudest of is not necessarily that he was one of the first two men to summit Mount Everest, but the number of people who he had met on that journey in Nepal and around the world, and the joy they had shared, and how they’ve helped each other, and at the end of your life, that’s really all that matters.”
“That I’m part of this extraordinary planet, and that my life is folded into the fabric of life everywhere… I find an enormous peace in that.”Tom Hiddleston
When the two men spoke of the natural world, their tone turned almost devotional. For Hiddleston, immersion in vast landscapes — whether an ocean or an English field — acts as a grounding force, a reminder of how small we are when folded into the wider fabric of the planet.
“When I’m in nature, in all its beauty and majesty, and power, either in mountains or in the ocean, or even in the English countryside, which is much gentler, but when I’m surrounded by nature in its bounty, I feel very small, in a very reassuring way,” Hiddleston reflects. “That I’m part of this extraordinary planet, and that my life is folded into the fabric of life everywhere… I find an enormous peace in that. In the simplicity of being alive, and being a part of it, because life is magic, and I think that’s what Hillary’s talking about is that climbing mountains made him feel free, made him feel like he was part of it. That he was part of this awe and beauty and majesty around him, and maybe that the ego became surrendered. It was very spiritual for both of them.”
“I think one of the most moving things in [Jennifer Peedom’s] film is yes, it’s about Tenzing and Hillary standing on the top of that mountain, but actually, it’s about the people they carry in their heart,” Hiddleston observes. “When Tenzing is on the mountain, he thinks of Dawa and his two daughters, and he looks down. He’s standing on the roof of the world. He looks down where all of life is lived, including those he loves the most. And I feel that too. Any endeavor is empty unless you carry the people you love in your heart, and that’s what I think is so moving about this film.”
For Phuntsok, the mountains are an even more intimate, spiritual presence. A Chinese actor of Tibetan descent, he was raised among peaks. Phuntsok views the earth, water, and wind as living sanctuaries. Following the death of his father eight years ago, Phuntsok still climbs the heights of his hometown, shouting his father’s name into the open sky and feeling that the mountains answer him in return. The wind across his face and the swaying grass are a source of enduring solace, reminding him that the rush toward city luxuries pales beside the simple, quiet gifts of nature.
I couldn’t help but wonder how this soulfulness threads into their own craft, bleeding into their philosophy as artists. For Hiddleston, acting remains an age-old human ritual: a communal space to explore joy, agony, and loss so that audiences leave feeling less isolated in the mystery of being alive.
“The privilege of being an actor is being afforded the opportunity to explore the experience of being alive in all its complexity and subtlety, agony and ecstasy, and our gift by doing this job is that we get to explore many lives and the depth and range that’s available to human beings,” Hiddleston says. “The stories we tell and the stories we share, I think is a necessary practice that human beings have had for thousands of years to tell stories to each other about struggle, about pain, about loss, also about love and joy, but to share and connect over the experience of being alive, and to know that we’re not alone, and that we can share that experience.”
Hiddleston continues, describing what that connection feels like in a theatre full of strangers: “At its best, that’s what acting can do. In the audience, I have been so moved and inspired by other actors who have shown me aspects of the experience of being alive, which I have recognized, and I don’t know them; they are strangers to me, but they have, in some way, illuminated something essential about the reality of what it means to be a human being, and I walk away from the cinema or the theatre feeling more connected and less alone, and the idea that anything that we do can be an experience of meaning for others is real. There’s real meaning in that.”
Phuntsok views his craft through an even starker, Buddhist-like lens of impermanence. Approaching every character as if it might be his last, he pours his whole being into the role, taking in whatever wisdom it has to offer before letting it go. Once the work is done, the accolades and results matter far less than the lessons along the way.
It was clear that neither actor had treated this journey as just another credit. Watching them speak, I found the parallel between climbing and storytelling unmistakable: both demand that you push all your energy into the ascent, honour the lives you touch along the way and ultimately return changed.
Tenzing streams on Apple TV today.
FEATURE PHOTO COURTESY OF APPLE TV.
