In this episode of the ScreenUK Podcast, Rhianna Dhillon sits down with director Mike Christie and producer Alice Popplewell to go inside the making of WHAM! 10 DAYS IN CHINA - the new documentary about George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley's landmark 1985 visit to China, when Wham! became the first Western pop group to perform in Communist China.
From the restored archive footage that had barely been touched in 40 years, to interviewing Andrew Ridgeley across two and a half days in a freezing cold Greenwich theatre, Mike and Alice take us through the years of detective work behind a documentary that is - as Mike puts it - 41 years in the making.
They discuss the maverick PR strategy that sparked the whole trip, the challenge of telling five different narratives in one film, tracking down contributors including Ling Ling Coe - the only truly bicultural and bilingual person who could bridge East and West at the time - and what they discovered when they took Andrew back to Beijing on the 40th anniversary of the tour. Plus: what the archive reveals about George and Andrew's relationship under pressure, the seeds of cultural transformation that Wham!'s concerts planted in China, and why it had to be this band.
Click below to have a watch!
