'Thai Cave Rescue' Creator on How Real Boys and Coach Helped With the Show

To make Thai Cave Rescue authentic, the creative team made sure to include the real people involved in the event as much as possible.

In 2018, 12 members of the Wild Boars soccer team and their assistant coach became trapped in the Tham Luang cave in Thailand when heavy rainfall flooded the cave system, and it took 18 days and 10,000 people to complete the rescue mission.

Co-showrunner Dana Ledoux Miller told Newsweek how keen she was to ensure their plight was "not overlooked" by focusing on "the people that come in and save the day," and to do so they endeavored to work closely alongside them.

'Thai Cave Rescue' Co-Creator on How the Real Boys and Coach Helped With the Show

Miller and her team interviewed Mark, Tee, Adul, Titan, Biw, Phong, Mix, Dom, Night, Nick, Note, Tle of the Wild Boars soccer team as well as their assistant coach Ekapol "Ek" Chanthawong (Netflix spells it Eakapol "Eak" Chanthawong on its website) for the show, and they and their families even let the crew film scenes inside their homes and use personal items as props.

"I don't think that I will ever have an experience like this again, it was just so special," Miller told Newsweek. "Michael [Russell Gunn, co-showrunner] and I talked a lot about the boys before we even met them and started interviewing them because they've been through this pretty incredible life-changing event as children, facing their own mortality and here we are going to speak about it again.

"So we took a lot of care and we really wanted to let them lead the way, and we were never going to push them or ask anything of them that they weren't willing to give. [...]

"These boys are remarkably resilient, and they're all in such a great place today and were so open and generous with their time, and their story."

Miller went on: "I think the parts of the show that are my favorite are the moments inside the cave where they're bonding, and joking, and playing pranks on each other, and that was informed by them and the story that they told us.

"And so it was just really special and I don't think that we would have even found certain moments within the show on our own without them, and they're just really, really special kids."

What was important for Miller was allowing the 12 boys to tell their story on their own time and not feel pressured at any point during the process.

"We just had a lot of discussions about their mental health and being sensitive to what they had been through, and so we were really careful on working with our team and how we asked questions and how we moved into talking about their time in the cave," Miller explained.

"If at any point any of the boys had said, 'we don't want to talk about this,' or had shown any signs that they were upset about talking about it, we had all agreed that we would not push any further.

"Also their guardians were there and we spoke with [them] as well, and so we let them share as much or as little as they wanted to share."

There were scenes of the show filmed at Night's home and at Adul's church, with Miller sharing how much it meant to have these boys' families help them in surprising ways throughout shooting.

At the time the boys and coach Ake went missing it was Night's 17th birthday, and his family allowed the crew to film at their home.

"They opened their doors to us, and we said, 'oh, we're going to film a scene here of the night the boys went into the cave' and they jumped up and said, 'you know what, why don't we help? We can show you what we made that night and we'll make the same kind of food and we'll help you.'

"They were so enthusiastic and generous and welcoming, but I think so much of that is because our crew, and Michael and I, really worked hard to assure them that we were going to respect what they went through, and that we're going to do our best to tell their story as authentically as possible."

Unexpected Link Between the Real Boys and Their Cast

Directed by Kevin Tancharoen and Baz Poonpiriya, Thai Cave Rescue aimed to cast locals to portray the 12 boys trapped in Tham Luang Cave, and in the end it turned out that this was the right strategy because it was revealed that some of the actors had a closer link to the real-life event than they initially realized.

Miller said: "A couple of our boys actually were on the Wild Boars at the time that this happened. We didn't know that when we cast them. That came to light later when we met them in person and they were like, 'I was a Wild Boar, I was there that day, I just went home and didn't end up going into the cave.' And we were kind of blown away by that."

Songpon Kantawong, who portrays Tee, and his brother Thanaphong, who plays Dom, were both on the Wild Boars soccer team.

"They're two of the ones that were on the team and so they're friends with the real Tee and Dom, I just think that's so wild that your first performance is playing your friends."

A light is shone upon the efforts that the coach made to keep the boys safe, including the way he taught them to meditate so they remained calm and didn't use up all their oxygen.

This, Miller said, was very important to her and Gunn: "[We] both feel hands down that he is the reason those boys are alive today.

"He is a remarkable young man, I think a lot of people, myself included, in the same situation would not have handled it with such calm.

"I think, part of his growing up as a monk, he used so much of his experience [to help] those boys, and so, in my opinion, he saved those boys long enough for the rescuers to get in and find them, and I think he should be heralded for that."

As well as being interviewed for the show, the coach also came in to help put on a soccer camp for the cast, some of whom actually are part of teams at his current soccer academy.

Avoiding White-Washing the Story

Miller also explained that she wanted to present the details of the rescue mission from multiple angles and not just from the perspective of the international team that successfully completed the mission.

An episode is dedicated to retired Thai Navy Seal Saman Gunan, for example, who lost his life during the rescue mission and it explores the late man's life with his wife Meaw (Waleeporn Gunan), something Miller wanted to highlight.

"It's something that we always knew we wanted to honor," she said. "And then as we were digging into the research and learning more about him [we realized] that he has this incredible love story with his wife, Meaw, and we were able to talk to her, she told us her story also.

"It's something that we really felt was important, he gave up his life for these boys and he also played I think, to my mind, a really pivotal role in the rescue. His death was a tragedy and it also caused the rescuers to kind of stop and re-evaluate what they were about to do and change course."

Jon M. Chu, who helped produce the show, previously spoke on Twitter about how the story of the rescue should not be "white-washed" and should be approached "respectfully," and this was something that Miller agreed with.

"I feel it's a really important story to people in Thailand and I think as a writer I have a huge responsibility, especially when telling a true story, to get it right," Miller said. "And, to me, that means not just the emotional truth of the moment and the reality of what happened, but also the texture, the cultural texture of the place where the story takes place.

"But, also as a Pacific Islander and as Samoan woman my own culture is often not portrayed properly on the screen, and usually it's done either by using stereotypes or just not really doing research into who we are.

"And, so, I take that personally and I wanted to do right by the people of Thailand in ways that it hadn't been done for me."

Miller went on: "There's so many people that were involved in this rescue, I think there's a million different perspectives to tell.

"I was really thankful to be working with Jon because he said what he said at the beginning of this whole process, but also because I think so often in these rescue stories, not just this one in particular, the focus is put on the people that come in and save the day.

"And the people for whom, you know, bear the biggest emotional toll or trauma really are often overlooked.

"So the prospect of really digging in and starting where the story began with the boys, with their families, with the local people that were first affected by it, was really exciting to me because I don't think that that is usually the perspective that's told in in stories like this."

Thai Cave Rescue is out on Netflix now.

Correction 09/30/2022, 4:48 a.m. ET: This article was updated to remove a reference to executive producer Jon M. Chu directing the series and to add in Kevin Tancharoen and Baz Poonpiriya as directors.