In Fisher Stevens’ utterly compelling 2016 documentary, Before The Flood, Leonardo Di Caprio – the film’s narrator – says that when you start a conversation about climate change, people often want to tune out. Fisher Stevens has spent the best part of a decade figuring out how to ensure we don’t.  

Stevens has had a long and stellar acting career, appearing in everything from Reversal of Fortune to Friends (he played Phoebe’s psychologist boyfriend in an episode of the first season) to Succession, but in recent years has made a name for himself as a director and producer of documentaries that focus on climate change, although that’s a term he dislikes.

“Climate change is too soft a phrase,” Stevens says. “Climate emergency or climate catastrophe is better, because that’s what it is.”

Stevens wasn’t always this committed. “When I first started making real money around 1996, I bought a Toyota Landcruiser which got about eleven miles to the gallon, which shows how clueless I was. I went to a few Earth Day things, and realised I can never buy a car like that, so my first awakening was my car.”

Then he met the billionaire Netscape founder Jim Clark, who opened his eyes to what was happening to the environment. “He took me scuba diving to places he had been before, and after one dive he came up and he was shaken – he said there was no fish, the corals were bleaching, and I asked him what it was from. He took a piece of paper and explained to me what carbon in the air does to the sea and the climate,” Stevens says. “He schooled me in the issues. When he broke it down, that’s when I realised I had to do something about this. That’s when I started reading up and becoming more politically engaged and realising that all these politicians were funded by the fossil fuel industry.”

Clark happened to be funding a documentary called The Cove about how carbon in the water was destroying the oceans, and Stevens came onboard as a producer. That documentary, released in 2009, ended up being about dolphin hunting in Japan, and was a worldwide smash (and Oscar winner). Stevens was hooked. “Once you start and see what’s going on you just have to keep going. In one way or another I have been making activist films ever since.”

Before The Flood is on one level, incredibly depressing; a litany of the ways we have destroyed the planet. Di Caprio travels the world (Greenland, China, Palau, India) witnessing the real effects of climate change, from flooded villages in the South Pacific to destroyed coral reefs to melting ice in the Arctic. Yet there’s also hope; hope in the idea that there is still time to fix things.

So, has anything changed since Before the Flood was released five years ago? “Well, people are more aware of climate change now, and people are talking about it more. But, things have gotten much worse than anticipated,” he says. “The planet is warming much faster than the experts five years ago said it would.”

So how do we get people to act? How does a filmmaker balance the reality of what’s happening to the planet without scaring people into inaction. “I don’t think scaring people works unless they have experienced it first-hand. I always think we need a very popular TV show like Friends or Game of Thrones to be about the climate disaster, but told in an entertaining way that enlightens them but makes them think ‘oh my God, this is me!’”

Of course, Steven’s long career in film and TV means he understands something about holding people’s attention. “You need bad guys and good guys,” Stevens says. “In Before The Flood, we highlighted the heroes that are doing amazing work, and then highlighted these villains, the politicians that don’t care what goes into your air or water. We use the old storytelling techniques. We got Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to do the coolest soundtrack you can imagine. Try and make the music popping and shoot in a beautiful, artistic way and get a movie star to take you through the journey. That was kind of the goal, and we came out and a lot of people watched it. And for us the goal of that movie was to get an audience and to get people engaged.”

Stevens also treats his non-fiction work like this dramatic work. “I view all films as films, so for me when I am casting a documentary to figure out who is going to be the main character to tell the story, it’s like casting a feature film. I try to build drama and structure like a movie, as movies are my background and what I know.” That cross-pollination works both ways, as he found out while directing his most recent film, Palmer (starring Justin Timberlake). “I found I was using the experience I had gained directing documentaries in that movie, which was interesting,” he says.

Ultimately though, whether movie or documentary, it’s about stories. And the most important story right now is the one about what we are doing to our planet, a story with an as of yet unknown ending.

“I would tell people not to give up hope,” Stevens says. “Keep fighting. Get involved locally and politically. One of the first things I always look at whether it’s a governor, or senator or congressman is what is their environmental record. I always try to put the most climate-friendly politician in office, someone who fights for clean water and clean air and for the big picture.”