‘Pompeii’: See Tom Hiddleston Make Emotional Return to Ruins After ‘Out of Time’ Doc

Tom Hiddleston has a long history with the history of Pompeii. The Loki star visited the ruins of volcanic eruption in the Italian city at age 17, his first trip without adult supervision. The trip inspired his love of classics, which became a lifelong interest. When Pompeii was featured in Loki, it reignited his interest in the city’s history, leading to him hosting the National Geographic documentary Pompeii: Out of Time.

Hiddleston returned to Pompeii last week to promote the three-part documentary. See his emotional return to the Pompeii ruins in the TV Insider exclusive clip above. He returned to promote the series with press and content creators and surprise local fans at a screening of the documentary.

Pompeii: Out of Time premiered in full on Nat Geo on Wednesday, July 22. The documentary series is a fusion of cinematic scripted drama and investigative documentary storytelling that transports audiences to ancient Rome in the hours before and during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Guided by a team of archaeologists, historians, geologists, and disaster experts, Hiddleston uncovers remarkable evidence — and the stories of real people that challenge long-held assumptions about Pompeii and its final hours — not least revealing that many of those caught up in the disaster had the chance to survive.

Out of Time blends cutting-edge archaeological discoveries, expert analysis, and deeply personal storytelling as the series reframes Pompeii not as a story of destruction but as a human drama of resilience, sacrifice, and survival, revealing the lives, choices, and destinies of those who stood in the shadow of Vesuvius. It combines Loki-style magic with dramatic re-enactments and experts talking about the survivors of the devastation. Hiddleston appears as himself in some of the re-enactments.

“I wanted to find a narrative structure where I could communicate what I feel when I’m in Pompeii,” Hiddleston told TV Insider. “The 2000 years between my reality and their reality collapses instantaneously because Pompeii has been so perfectly preserved — the bread they were baking, the playgrounds they played in, the houses they lived in. It feels like yesterday.”

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“Pompeii had, with extraordinary generosity, given us permission to film in the site after dark,” Hiddleston told us of the unique filming process. “We were a small production unit of 10 people in this enormous town, and there’s nobody else, no streetlights. It was very dark, and you can see the shadow of Vesuvius. Myself, the camera operator, the first AD, the sound recorders, and the director took off on a high-speed chase through the alleyways and streets lit by only the moon and the stars. I’m looking for Avianius after the eruption of Vesuvius has eclipsed the light of the sun.”

“That sequence is almost a recreation of the historical process, which is to go into the past and shine a light on things that we don’t know about,” he continued. “It felt like we were inventing a new way of storytelling where there was this very fine liminal threshold between the past and the present.”

Pompeii: Out of Time With Tom Hiddleston, Available Now, Disney+