On January 13th, I was contacted via Instagram message by a reporter named Hannah Simpson from London, England who works for a company called SWNS - South West News Service. She saw my pictures and was "inspired by Emma's incredible story". I got her message right away and learned that people can make phone calls through Instagram, that way we didn't have to worry about international fees. She asked a few questions, asked me to send her some of my favorite Emma photos, and we scheduled an interview for a magazine the following Monday.
On the Friday after the interview, Hannah emailed me saying, "I hope you're keeping well. I'm excited to tell you that our filming team are interested in filming with you to create a mini documentary about Emma's story in addition to the magazine piece. This would be published on our social media channels. If you were happy and interested in this, our team would come and spend a day with you and film your day-to-day lives and do some interviews at your home if that suited you. Let me know your thoughts and I can get back to you with more details."
Aaaahhhhhhh!!! I was sooo excited and emailed her back saying YES right away, even before calling Michael. I felt certain he would say yes too, and he did. We had been wanting this opportunity since Emma came home in May 2018 after spending 323 long days in the NICU. We had seen other people with primordial dwarfism on UK documentaries, who were also from America, and then got to meet some of them when we went to the Little People of America/ LPA conference in 2018 since it was held in Orlando that year.
The documentary was scheduled for Thursday, February 24th (although one picture below says the 23rd) and the "filming team" ended up just consisting of one really nice guy named Adam. He was British, but lives in New York, although it sounds like he doesn't actually spend a lot of time there with all the traveling he does for work. Michael and I had to take Covid tests the day before to make sure we were negative, and so did Adam. Here are the "behind the scenes" photos that I got while he was at our apartment that we just moved out of.
Adam had a lot of the same questions that Hannah asked me, and they are also often the same questions I get asked in other interviews. But some of the answers change as Emma grows up and her personality develops. Although the beginning of her story is always the same. Adam did a great job making us feel comfortable, leading us and telling us what he would be filming next (we went off of what Emma was in the mood for rather than the order of the schedule). He told us that each answer we gave was super and only had Michael start one answer over because he wanted Michael start the sentence with "Emma" instead of "she". The apartment got really toasty during the interviews because Adam needed us to turn the AC off so the air blowing wouldn't be picked up over our talking audio.
Hannah was wanting us to be able to go somewhere fun for more shoot locations, but wasn't able to get permission from any places without a permit being required, so we stayed within the apartment complex. The shoot still lasted about four hours from 11:30-3:30 I think. Adam took some cute photos of us on the camera that he also did the filming with and I just got those photos emailed from Hannah this morning, so I waited until today to write this post. I specifically asked for them because I had only seen a couple used in the interview article and was sure there were more:
Here are the links to Emma's five minute documentary "Part of Me" made by Adam, Hannah, and the SWNS team, as well as my interview, which also has the documentary within the page.
* Documentary only on Vimeo (and YouTube)
* Interview with documentary on Talker News
Michael and I were discussing how it is interesting that the UK seems to care a lot about kids with genetic differences, but nobody in America ever contacts us. Even when we emailed Ellen DeGeneres to see if she wanted us and Emma on her show, we never got an email back. I can't remember if Michael emailed any other famous talk show celebrities? But then we flip through the channels on TV at the hotel we are currently at and all anyone in America seems to care about is stupid drama: teen pregnancy, 600 pound life, growths on people's bodies that need to be removed, 90 day fiance, shows where ex's are constantly arguing. *eye roll to America*.
Also, Michael often tells me I should get rid of my Instagram account, due to using social media too much, but all three reporters have found me because of the hashtags I have used in my posts about Emma and her medical issues. So no, I'll keep it going! Lastly, here are the links to the two previous articles that have been published on Emma that I blogged about.
* Emma's First Interview, March 2020
* Completely Compatible with Life, May 2021 (article is at the bottom of this post)
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