i95’s Exclusive Interview With ‘Bering Sea Gold’s’ Emily Riedel

Remember 'The Chris Farley Show' sketch on SNL? Farley interviewed the biggest celebrities in the world, shyly asking them stupid, open-ended questions in fits of fanboy rage. I was a huge fanboy raging this morning when we got to speak with Emily Riedel from the Discovery Channel's "Bering Sea Gold".

Get our free mobile app

I love the Alaskan gold shows, I watch them all. I've always been drawn to the cast of characters on Bering Sea Gold. Parker Schnabel is nothing compared to an inebriated Shawn "Mr. Gold" Pomrenke. The 15th season of Bering Sea Gold premiered last night(12-6-22), and I caught the first hour in time for our interview with Emily.

As our interview started, I congratulated Emily on her recent marriage, and she surprised us with a special guest, her 8 month-old daughter, who made the cutest noises through the rest of our interview.

I asked Riedel the most important question - "How have you not punched Vernon Adkison in the face yet?" She laughed, and came back with, "How do you know that I haven't punched Vern in the face? There's not always cameras around."

Ethan Carey has never seen "Bering Sea Gold", and asked Riedel to explain what they do in Nome, Alaska -

"Oh, we're humble folk, we simply operate a vacuum on the ocean floor, and hope there's gold in what we suck up. We're mining for gold offshore using whatever equipment we have - excavators, suction dredges, and a shovel, here and there."

Lou Milano asked Riedel what she considered her most financially successful season on the Bering Sea -

"2016, that was my most successful season, and as it happened, they weren't actually filming my boat that year, I was filmed on the show doing something else, but that was my most successful season."

I then asked Emily if she felt that she and the cast had been fairly represented in the final product after thousands of hours of footage have been edited down to 1 hour episodes -

"They (Discovery Channel) do a good job at being a fly on the wall, they do a good job in just letting the cameras roll, and yeah, it's very, very edited, as they have to, but they're trying to tell a story that in a lot of ways is stranger than fiction, and we are all very strange, so there's no crazy orchestration that they have to do."

I then had to ask Emily the question that has been burning my brain - Are you friends with fellow Discovery Channel stars? Do you hang out with Mike Rowe on the weekends as he narrates the show?

"I wish! I tried to meet Mike Rowe a couple times, but he's an evasive and very busy gentleman. I'm friends with the Kilchers on Last Frontier, and some of the Deadliest Catch guys, but we're not like getting together and having this "We're on a Discovery Channel show" party, although that would actually be an interesting one to have!"

I'm in, grab hold of Dozer Dave, and Sig & Edgar Emily. "Bering Sea Gold" airs Tuesday night at 8 PM on the Discovery Channel, and you can listen to the complete interview with Emily Riedel on the latest Ethan, Lou, and Large Dave podcast.