Bering Sea Gold, which kicked off a new season last Friday night on Discovery, stars gold miner Emily Reidel, who spoke candidly about the trials and tribulations, as well as the perks, of being on a reality television show. The series airs Friday nights at 10pm on Discovery Canada and Discovery.
CraveOnline: Can you tell us about the new season of Bering Sea Gold?
Emily Reidel: We’re in the middle of our summer season and what’s premiering now is our ice mining season shot back in March/April, when it’s springtime in Gnome but it’s still completely frozen over. We drill through up to five feet of ice and dive under the ice and try to mine. The only reason it’s a benefit to mine this way is because we can work around the clock.
What is the most difficult thing about your job, both of mining and being on television?
It’s so weird because I’ve been doing this for long enough to know that both those jobs are very difficult. I’ve been doing it long enough that it doesn’t faze me like it used to. It’s hard to quantify the hardest thing. It’s all bloody hard. On the gold mining front, you get leery of the endless mechanical failures and the polarization of gold. It’s really tiring. And the hardest thing about being on reality TV is having those highs and lows while being filmed. It’s the nature of the beast- they’re going to be there for all your worst and best moments, and there’s nothing you can control about that.
Have you become acclimated to being on television?
We’re in the middle of filming our 6th season, so I guess if I’m not acclimated now I don’t know what I am! I guess I’m in a state of shock. It’s such a weird experience that I don’t think about it all that much. I just go about my business here, and when I’m not here I’m traveling and relatively homeless, so I don’t think about it all that much. I don’t know if I’ll ever call it normal but I’m used to it. At first it was really stressful and purely bizarre to have this person interested in whatever you do and trying to capture every minute of it, it’s intrusive in your personal life, and you have to get used to letting them in. I’m going to do some seriously yelling and melting down, and you’ll have to turn it into national television.
