Tonight and for the next two nights, The CW will be presenting a documentary series titled “My Last Days” hosted, produced, and created by Jane the Virgin actor Justin Baldoni.
The three episodes of “My Last Days” feature six stories of young people who are facing illness that they are told is terminal — but these six people refuse to allow it to keep them from living life to the fullest. There’s Claire, a 19-year-old with cystic fibrosis who aspires to be and succeeds at being a public speaker that will inspire others. Kendrick is a 25-year-old Gospel singer with a rare but deadly form of sleep apnea, determined to spread his music with more people. Isabel was told she wouldn’t live past 20; she’s now past that age, popular, funny and sharing awareness of her rare condition (MPS VI) with others.
The show also features a man who now calls himself “Darth Vader.” He was diagnosed with leukemia 14 years ago and has participated in over 30 “Tough Mudder” competitions in addition to being a great father to his daughter. Las Vegas resident Kat is a foodie who ended up being diagnosed with stomach cancer, keeping her from enjoying the thing she loves most. Finally, there’s Jess, whose love story has had her living years beyond what was expected of her… and boy, does she have a surprise for her longtime love in her very touching episode.
“My Last Days” is part of The CW’s new “CW Good” initiative and last night all six episodes were screened in Hollywood with appearances by all six of the series’ young people as well as Mr. Baldoni himself. The show — which could be dismissed as a “downer” by someone before giving it a try — is actually uplifting, and the title — which was not very popular among some of the documentary’s subjects — is somewhat misleading, as you are left with the hope that the number of “last days” of these people will be in the thousands.
Justin Baldoni looks back at his own life as being formative in his mission to do good with his work and projects like these. “My life’s been made up by a series of moments where I’d lost everything, and I look back and I realize I’ve lost everything because I put my faith in the wrong things, and every time that happens, I feel like God comes in and presses the reset button, and when he presses the reset button, I have an awakening,” Baldoni told us before the screening. “Often times when those things happen, we have a choice. We can keep doing the old thing that didn’t work or we can do the new thing. When I was 26, I started doing the new thing, and I went to Israel, I went to Haifa, and I sat and I just prayed, and I said ‘God, if you’re there, and I believe you’re there, use me. Because I’m tired of doing it my way. My way’s not working, because I don’t know anything.’ I just said ‘use me for good.’ If I’m a janitor, I’m a director, or whatever I’m supposed to do, whatever it is, let me do it, and let me be of service. That moment changed my whole life.”
In putting together “My Last Days,” it took “casting, luck, intuition and social media” to find the fascinating subjects of the documentary. “We did casting, and the first round, we found Darth Vader and Jessica… those were the first two… but we realized that we were only looking at white people, and this subject — this is a global thing. We don’t get out of life alive, so we can’t just tell the stories of white people, and so I went on social media; I started doing searches for ‘terminal cancer’ or ‘dying singer,’ and what happens is, when people find out that they’re dying, they tend to use social media to tell their story and be an inspiration to people, or they start vlogging, or they start writing blogs. A lot of people want to use their stories to help others, whether it’s helping people find the right chemo drugs, or just giving inspiration to share their story, that’s what people turn to,” Baldoni explains.
“The show is optimistic,” Baldoni stresses. “Just because you find out you’re dying doesn’t mean you lose hope, at least from what I’ve been told by my friends [on the show]. And at the end of the day, you have to have hope. You have to. What do you have, without hope? And what do you have without optimism? I mean, they’re doing extraordinarily well. They’ve all exceeded what the doctors said about how long they’re going to live. That doesn’t happen without optimism. You can either just roll over and die, or you can say ‘you know what? I’m gonna beat this thing. I’m going to go as long as I can, and I’m going to make the world a better place while I’m doing it’.”
Finally, why should people check out the series when it premieres at 9PM tonight on The CW? “People should tune in because it will be one of the most real, beautiful things that they’ve ever seen on television,” Justin says. “I don’t say that because I made it; I say that because I could have used my iPhone to tell these stories, and these people are that incredible. We all need hope. Everybody in the country right now. We all need inspiration. You get it from these people, because nothing is impossible.”
You can see a trailer for “My Last Days” below.
