Will Reeve Reveals How He Stays ‘Connected’ to His Late Parents, Christopher and Dana Reeve (Exclusive)
The son of the screen Superman has made the special ‘Finding My Father’, in which he revisits the same remote places his dad did before his spinal cord injury
MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY; BARRY KING/WIREIMAGE
Will Reeve is thrilled that he’s finally followed in his dad’s footsteps — quite literally.
In the new special Will Reeve: Finding My Father (airing 10 p.m., Feb. 26 on ABC, and streaming on Hulu), the Good Morning America correspondent retraces his dad’s final project — a nature documentary about gray whales in Alaska and Mexico that Christopher Reeve filmed just months before the horse riding accident that left him paralyzed in 1995.
“I’ve wanted to do this for most of my life,” Will tells PEOPLE of the passion project, which he produced with his ABC News colleague Robin Roberts.
“I grew up obsessed with this one-hour-long documentary that my dad made just before he got injured,” he says of the 1995 In the Wild episode “Gray Whales with Christopher Reeve.”
“For as long as I can remember, I wanted to go to this same lagoon in Mexico and this island off the coast of Alaska to see the gray whales and meet the people who live in harmony with them, just because my dad did it and because it seemed like this great big adventure,” he says.
The idea took on more meaning after his father died in 2004 at age 52; Will was 12.
“I had always dreamed that he and I would go there together, or that I would go and come back and be able to tell him all about it,” he says. “Of course, that ended up not being possible. So I made it my mission as a journalist to make a documentary that picked up where my dad left off.”
ABC NEWS STUDIOS
In the special, he meets the son of the man who guided Christopher in Mexico 30 years ago. He says it was impossible for them not to sense the presence of their fathers.
“We all felt multiple layers of connection to our fathers, and to my father, and to the whales that connected us all,” Will explains. While the special shows that things have changed over the past three decades in the places he visits, Will notes that one thing stayed the same.
ABC NEWS STUDIOS
“The spirit of the people has not changed a bit,” he says. “Their traditions are as strong as ever. Their connection to their past has not changed and has only grown stronger. And that made it all very fertile ground for me to come and explore and try to find my own connection to my past, using these people and places as my guide.”
As meaningful as it was to make the documentary, Will admits that although he felt a connection to his father, he didn’t talk out loud to him during the expedition.
ABC NEWS STUDIOS
“That’s not my approach to my connection with either of my parents who have passed,” he says. (His mother, Dana Reeve, died from lung cancer at age 44 a year after his father’s death.)
“I connect with my parents, and I try to feel their presence in the way that I move through the world, the way that I interact with people, and the way that I might channel my parents in my values and my lived experience in the present moment,” he says.
He adds, “This documentary journey was key in helping me get closer to an understanding of who my parents were, and who I am and how we’re the same, and how we’re different and how I’m carrying on their legacy and how I’m creating my own at the same time.”
Will Reeve: Finding My Father is streaming on Hulu.
Related Articles
Follow Us
To the world, he was ‘Superman.’ But to Will Reeve, he was dad
Just months before a horseriding accident paralyzed him from the neck down, forcing him to use a ventilator for the rest of his life, actor Christopher Reeve was flying planes, scuba diving and chasing whales.
The actor was embracing all of this adventure for a nature documentary, “In the Wild: Gray Whales with Christopher Reeve.”
Although it was a little-known, made-for-TV documentary that was just an hour long — a far cry from the “Superman” films that made Reeve a household name — Will Reeve considers it to be his favorite movie that stars his dad.
“When I was a little kid, my dad and I watched it on VHS over and over,” Will Reeve wrote in an essay shared on ABC News. “I loved it because it had all these almost mythical elements to it: rugged, exotic locations, 40-ton whales that would let humans touch them, and a version of my dad that I had been robbed of the chance to know.”
Will Reeve was only 2 at the time of the accident — just a few weeks shy of this third birthday. Nine years later, his father died from complications related to the accident.
Although a recent Sundance Film Festival documentary explored the ups and downs of Christopher Reeve’s life — guided with remarkable vulnerability by Reeve’s three children — for Will Reeve, the story was incomplete.
He dreamed of visiting the places his father explored in those months before the life-altering accident — of literally retracing his father’s footsteps.
“I’ve wrestled with lots of questions. What parts of my dad I can carry forward into the world. What kind of man he would have wanted me to be? And did he leave clues for me to help piece that together for myself?” Reeve wrote in his essay. “I hoped by going to the last places he’d been before his accident, I’d be able to get closer to those answers and the active, daring, adventurous father I had heard stories about, and seen time and again in that gray whale documentary, but never fully gotten to experience for myself.”
Now, 30 years since Christopher Reeve’s accident, Will Reeve is sharing his own exploration of the places his father traveled — and the discoveries he made about his dad along the way.
“My father was my hero,” Reeve says in the trailer for “Will Reeve: Finding My Father,” which premieres Wednesday night on ABC. “To millions, he was Superman. I idolize and miss a different Christopher Reeve … dad.”
Reeve has long had his sights set on retracing his father’s expedition, which tracked the Pacific gray whale migration and led him to Mexico and an island near Siberia.
The ABC News correspondent has said putting the nature documentary more in the spotlight — and visiting some of the places himself — was a way to get to know his father better.
“It has been my mission for years now to find a way to show the world the Christopher Reeve on display in that hourlong nature documentary and to use the 30-year-old film as an entry point into the void I’ve had in me since he was injured and since he’s been gone,” Reeve wrote in his essay for ABC News.
“I’ve inherited some of my dad’s sense of adventure and have carried it with me into my job every day at ‘Good Morning America’ and across ABC News,” he said in the trailer. “I’ve gotten to travel the world telling stories, but this is the one story that needs an ending.”
After its premiere on ABC, the one-hour special will be available for streaming on Hulu.
“Finding My Father” comes a year after Reeve and his siblings attended the Sundance Film Festival for the premiere of “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.”
The film draws from raw interviews with Reeve’s children, archives and home videos to show how the actor went from being a relative unknown to an on-screen superhero to a real-life hero as he became a public face for disability research and activism, the Deseret News previously reported.
Opening up for the film involved “reliving a lot of trauma and reliving a lot of happiness,” Reeve said.
“We wanted this project to be the definitive story of our dad’s life, and that requires an emotional ride,” Will Reeve told the Deseret News ahead of the film’s premiere. “And we were prepared for it, as much as one can be.”
The film also touches on Will Reeve’s mother, Dana Reeve, who died less than two years after her husband following an unexpected lung cancer diagnosis.
Will Reeve was just 13 when he lost both of his parents.
Following the Sundance screening, Reeve became emotional as he shared that his adopted family — “the single greatest thing” his mother ever did for him — was in the audience. He said he was overwhelmed with love and gratitude for his adopted family and for the love both of his parents gave him, as well as the bond he has with his two siblings.
“The three of us were given a great head start as people just having these role models in our lives and the values instilled in them,” he said.
All three siblings are involved with the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, helping to carry on their parents’ legacy. As they stood in front of the first few hundred people to view the movie about their father at Sundance, they were visibly proud.
“We’re proud of all of it,” Will Reeve said, per Deseret News. “We’re proud of all the complexities and nuances and not-so-great elements of the story, because that’s humanity, that’s what makes a human. And that’s what makes an ordinary individual into a hero, is all of the messiness and all of the striving to be better.”
Arts and Entertainment
Stay current on Utah’s amazing arts scene with weekly stories about local festivals, theater, music, fine arts, dance and authors.
‘My father was my hero,’ Reeve says in the trailer for ’Will Reeve: Finding My Father,‘ which premieres Wednesday night on ABC
Cookie Notice
How to watch ‘Will Reeve: Finding My Father’
Will Reeve on ‘Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story’
Robin Roberts left lost for words by GMA co-host Will Reeves during eye-opening moment
Robin Roberts is lending support to her Good Morning America co-anchor and friend Will Reeve as he embarks on a personal new journey.
Fresh off a BAFTA win for Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, 32-year-old Will is debuting a new ABC special titled Will Reeve: Finding My Father.
In the special, Will retraces the steps of his late father Christopher Reeve on his final expedition, 1995’s In the Wild: Gray Whales with Christopher Reeve, as he charted the Pacific gray whale migration from the Arctic to Mexico, months before the horseback riding accident that paralyzed him.
The special is slated to air on ABC on February 26, and ahead of its debut, Will sat down with the anchors of GMA to give what they deemed a “15-second elevator pitch to watch” the documentary.
“I reconnect with my father in a way I didn’t know was possible, learned more about him in a way that has fulfilled me, hopefully for the rest of my life,” Will responds before turning to his co-workers and in particular Robin, who acts as an executive producer on the special.
“And I’m so grateful to you for executive producing, and to all of you for loving me. And I love you back,” he sweetly added, which touched Robin greatly. When asked for comment, she was too lost for words simply deferring to her co-anchors.
Christopher spent the major part of his later life serving as an activist and champion for environmental and human rights causes following the success from his turn in the Superman movies and on Broadway.
MORE: Will Reeve proposes to girlfriend with sweet nod to his famous father Christopher
In 1995, he was thrown from a horse and was paralyzed from the waist down, using a wheelchair and ventilator for the rest of his life. He became an advocate for spinal cell injury research and founded the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. He passed away in 2004 at the age of 52.
Will penned an emotional and moving essay for ABC News about his father and his journey to rediscover some of the last moments of joy and exploration Christopher experienced before his accident.
MORE: Robin Roberts shares emotional message as she reflects on difficult time in life
“The world knows my dad as Superman, and as the face of spinal cord injury — a heroic figure fighting for others and for himself,” he wrote. “Many have also learned more about him and our family in a recent award-winning theatrical documentary, Super/Man: the Christopher Reeve Story. But there’s still more to the story, still more to the man.”
He added: “It has been my mission for years now to find a way to show the world the Christopher Reeve on display in that hourlong nature documentary and to use the 30-year-old film as an entry point into the void I’ve had in me since he was injured and since he’s been gone.”
MORE: Robin Roberts admits it’s ‘still very hard’ during GMA moment marking health milestone
“What I discovered by going to San Ignacio Lagoon and St. Lawrence Island and meeting the remarkable people there, and seeing the gray whales on their journey, and taking a camera and an open heart with me defies comprehension. I left with a better understanding of myself and of my dad; of the natural world and of humanity. Of how they all connect through space and time.”
By entering your details, you are agreeing to HELLO! Magazine User Data Protection Policy. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information, please click here.
