‘She’s helped turn our attempts from boring talking heads into riveting television’

  • 32
  • Producer/director
  • Freelance
  • Nominated by: Norma Percy, executive producer, Brook Lapping Productions

“Persuading a reluctant Boris Johnson to talk about Vladimir Putin and landing the only interview that Hamas’ chief negotiator and political leader granted to foreign media – months before his assassination – are just two examples of Olivia Bernhardt Brogan’s impressive hit rate for Brook Lapping over the past five years.

After supporting Zinc’s head of development across the companies’ London labels throughout the extreme challenges of Covid, Olivia was swiftly promoted from researcher to assistant producer on 2022’s Putin vs the West.

Working simultaneously on that and another Norma Percy series, Afghanistan: Getting Out – at a time when the Taliban had just swept Afghanistan and Russia had just invaded Ukraine – was no small challenge; guiding production of Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October was fraught with similar difficulties.

Yet Olivia took it all in her stride, convincing busy world leaders and top officials to find time to talk and rearranging shoots around missile threats, while continuing to navigate intricately complex historical research.

On series two of Putin vs the West, while still an assistant producer, Olivia was trusted to fly solo to Finland to interview the president. After producing Live Aid at 40, and edit producing one episode, Olivia landed her first producer/director credit on Brook Lapping’s recent BBC landmark Brexit: A Very Civil War.

It’s small wonder that Percy has taken Olivia to her heart.

“Liv grew up in the Brook Lapping tradition helping us secure crucial interviews with world leaders and their most senior officials, including seven former British PMs, Volodymyr Zelensky, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, the Director of the CIA and the Secretary Generals of both the UN and NATO,” she says.

“On our Brexit series, she has honed her outstanding abilities of persistence and eye for the quirky personal detail and good storytelling … She’s helped turn our attempts from boring talking heads into riveting television.”

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