April 24th, National Geographic Genius premiered in Westwood. It is a 10 part global series about how Albert Einstein became who we all know and remember today as Einstein, the nobel prize-winning physicist . This is National Geographic’s first scripted and is directed by two of my favorite director’s Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. For a science lover like me, just hearing about this new series had me beyond excited.
The series is based on Walter Isaacson’s book which chronicled Einstein’s life from the beginning in 1879. Isaacson described Einstein as “brilliant, but he’s also like your uncle: He can’t quite remember where he’s left his shoes, and he needs to know the rules of baseball, and he’s fun with kids helping them. He wasn’t some strange genius from a different planet. He was human.”
Einstein was human and this series does a phenomenal job of bringing to life the “true” life of Einstein. You rarely hear about his wife, sons and the mental health issues surrounding him. National Geographic Genius is that perfect integration of rich history and evolution of science done in a way that will draw anyone in. It is one of the talents that Ron Howard brings to each and every project he has worked on, not to mention to the actors are fantastic in this series. Geoffrey Rush portrays Einstein, and Johnny Flynn portrays the scientist as a young man and Samantha Colley as Mileva Maric, Einstein’s first wife.
This series will have you wishing you could binge watch all 10 episodes, but you will have to anxiously await each episode on Nat Geo every Tuesday night. The story delves into Einstein’s very simple beginnings as a young, rebellious thinker and his tribulations in being taken seriously with the academia before ultimately becoming a true celebrity with disclosure of his theory of relativity. National Geographic Genius also explores Einstein’s personal life which we rarely know anything about. Einstein has two wives, two children and numerous extramarital affairs.
Genius premieres tomorrow April 25th on National Geographic!
