Photo: YouTube
This couple shares a love for creatures of all kinds.
By Nicole Pomarico — Written on Sep 07, 2020
My Octopus Teacher, a documentary about filmmaker Craig Foster as he meets an octopus in South Africa and actually forms a friendship with her, hits Netflix on Sept. 7. Year after year, he dives in the same kelp forest, following along with the same octopus as she grows and changes, and she ends up teaching him lessons he needed to learn about himself. The whole thing looks pretty wild (especially for fans of nature and animals alike), but what about Foster's life outside of the water?
Who is Craig Foster's wife, Swati Thiyagarajan?
As it turns out, Foster is actually married in real life to a lady he has a lot in common with — and she worked with him on the new documentary. Here's what to know about Swati Thiyagarajan.
Swati Thiyagarajan is an environmental journalist.
Thiyagarajan currently works for NDTV as an environmental journalist — where she's worked for over 20 years. Though she's originally from India, she currently lives in the Cape Town, South Africa area, and frequently writes blog posts about the climate, animals, and her own works for the website while advocating for causes to protect these animals' habitats at the same time.
Thiyagarajan is also an author.
When she's not writing for NDTV, Thiyagarajan also writes books. In 2017, she published her book Born Wild, which is about animals native to India and Africa.
"Feel the magic of the wild come alive with the book you're holding in your hand. Come, walk with the author through mesmerizing wildlife landscape — from the length and breadth of India's forests and sanctuaries in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, the Western Ghats, Karnataka and Orissa to Rwanda, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa," says the book's description on Amazon.
"Through brilliantly vivid experiences Swati recounts fascinating insights into wildlife sighting and conservation efforts around the world, covering a wide array of wildlife including tigers and gorillas, lions and elephants, sloth bears, sea turtles and sharks, crocodiles, pelicans and penguins."
She promotes conservationism in the environment.
Thiyagarajan's main mission is to promote conservation, which she has said in an interview is something that humans don't prioritize enough, even though what we're doing to the environment doesn't just affect animals, but us as well.
"Look at the main topics of conversation these days — politics, economics, terrorism, besides the Bollywood news and gossip," she said. "Maybe there will be one random conversation about climate change. It shows where we put our priorities. I don’t blame people. You have had a hard day and want to talk about something light. But it’s because of these priorities that we are not aware of what we have. We are not alarmed enough."
Foster and Thiyagarajan keep their personal life pretty private.
Outside of their work, not much is known about Foster and Tiyagarajan's personal life, though it seems like that's very intentional. They don't have public Instagram accounts, and they don't seem to share much about their marriage or life together outside of the projects they've collaborated on, since it seems like that's what they want to be the focus of the attention that they are given.
The couple has worked together on documentaries.
My Octopus Teacher isn't the first film that Foster and Thiyagarajan have worked on together. They also directed The Animal Communicator together in 2012, so they're no strangers to collaborating. Who knows? Maybe with success on Netflix, they'll end up working together even more in the future.
Thiyagarajan focuses most of her social media presence on the environment.
Most of Thiyagarajan's tweets (if not all of them) focus on the environment, conservationism, and her own projects, as well as speaking out for journalists around the world like herself.
"The only thing worth anything anymore is nature, nature and more nature," she tweeted in May. "It’s our greatest blessing and our home. We need to wake up to this. Reconnection, our only way forward."
Nicole Pomarico is an entertainment and lifestyle writer whose work has appeared in Cosmo, Us Weekly, Refinery29, and more.