It’s 79 A.D. in the small but affluent Roman city of Pompeii. In the distance, Mount Vesuvius is starting to erupt, and in the streets, life turns upside down: meals left in restaurant kitchens, horses abandoned in harnesses, valuables snatched from homes. Amidst the chaos, does businesswoman Julia Felix make it out alive?
It’s one of the questions driving Pompeii: Out of Time, a three-episode recreation set to air on National Geographic July 22 at 8 p.m. and stream on Disney+/Hulu starting July 23. Cornell archaeologist Caitie Barrett, an expert on ancient daily life and Pompeii excavation veteran, appears with series host and Marvel Studios “Loki” star Tom Hiddleston on the show as a guide.
“In this series they are following real people,” said Barrett, professor of classics in the College of Arts and Sciences, who has conducted research on the historical Pompeii resident named Julia Felix. “The show alternates between scenes set in the present day – Tom Hiddleston and me and other folks with relevant expertise walking around Pompeii and other sites – and then scenes that are trying to reimagine the lives of the ancient people in 79 C.E.”
The show brings to life three individuals known from archaeological and textual evidence preserved at Pompeii and Herculaneum, where volcanic ash protected material remains for centuries. A notice written on the wall of one large property offering rooms for rent established Felix as its owner, Barrett said.
Barrett, who has studied the Felix estate for its depictions of Egyptian themes, helped consult on script development. She answered questions such as what Felix might be wearing in certain situations, and how she might pray at the Isis shrine that once stood in her garden.
Barrett also appears in scenes filmed at Pompeii and Naples. She and Hiddleston walk through Felix’s property, including a bath complex that was open to the public “like a fancy spa,” Barrett said. They visit Casa Bacco, a modern administrative building at Pompeii, to discuss jewelry worn by a person who may have been Felix.
The show also follows a teenaged apprentice and a member of the Praetorian Guard – an elite unit of the Roman army – as the city was buried in hot volcanic ash.
The series, directed by Tom Barbor-Might and produced by “Loki” executive producer Kevin R. Wright, makes it clear these are based on a mixture of historical fact and imaginative recreation, Barrett said.
“These were real people, but we can’t know everything about them,” Barrett said. “Archaeology can tell us a lot, but it can’t tell us everything about what happened in someone’s life or what they were thinking or feeling, so we have to fill in the gaps with informed imaginative reconstruction.”
Barrett was invited to participate in the project in early 2026. A National Geographic Explorer, she’s received support from the organization for Casa della Regina Carolina Project, which she co-directs at Pompeii.
Although shooting a docuseries was a new experience for Barrett (“the folks doing the filming are absolute wizards,” she said, making a practical administrative building look “like a temple,”) she recognized from her own fieldwork operations the logistics and teamwork involved in getting a crew of 30-40 people, each with a different specialty, to work together to accomplish a common goal.
The evidence from Pompeii is not a perfect snapshot of a typical day in the life of the city, Barrett said. As the series points out, there were early warning signs and many people did get out, some taking objects with them. Still, the level of preservation in Vesuvian cities is special, revealing a lot about people’s lives in antiquity.
“Pompeii connects with a wide public because it’s so easy to engage your imagination and your empathy when you’re walking down these streets,” Barrett said. “You feel as though you could go into one of these houses and strike up a conversation with the people who used to live in it. There are all these shops and bars and restaurants along the street where it feels as though you could go in and order a glass of wine or a hot meal.”
Barrett hopes viewers come away from “Pompeii: Out of Time” with a new empathy and respect for the people whose lives “were as full and meaningful as ours” and to learn something about the society these individuals lived in. She said, “I’d like them to see the variety and diversity of everyday life in a real Roman town.”
Kate Blackwood is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.
