ESPN filmed the six-part documentary series titled 'The Kingdom' throughout the season last year. It will premiere on August 14th. Mahomes speaks on his role and experience filming. By Dominick Williams
As the Chiefs entered last season on a quest to become the first team to win three straight Super Bowls, the organization seeking to be known as the World’s Team was acutely conscious of both the momentous opportunity and its precariousness.
So as they considered how to seize the rare moment, they recognized that it shouldn’t be contingent so much on an unpredictable result but on a deeper context.
“If you’re sitting in my seat, it’s how do we tell the story and make sure that the entire story is told?” Chiefs president Mark Donovan said in an interview with The Star. “Not just (last) season but the seasons of the Chiefs.”
Emphasizing the ever-fascinating Lamar Hunt, the franchise and AFL founder and so much more, Donovan and Co. envisioned telling parallel stories of the chase and the dynamic narrative that preceded and enabled it.
Even with what Donovan called “the biggest people in Hollywood” taking interest, one group stood out.
The one led by Words + Pictures founder Connor Schell, whose considerable resume includes co-launching and executive producing ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentaries, producing the Oscar-winning “O.J.: Made in America” and earning one of his 16 Emmy Awards for “The Last Dance” chronicling Michael Jordan.
Oh, and then there was this:
Schell is virtually a lifelong Chiefs fan who still refers to Kansas City as home even some 30 years since he graduated from Pembroke Hill.
As an American history major at Harvard, he wrote his senior thesis on the Kansas City Monarchs post-Jackie Robinson — an undertaking that included interviewing former Monarchs and the great Buck O’Neil and that Schell’s wife likes to refer to as his “first 30 for 30.”
As we spoke via Zoom the other day, Schell got up from his New York home office seat to pick up and share some Chiefs memorabilia, including a Patrick Mahomes-signed helmet. He still has text threads with Chiefs fans he grew up with and is part of a group that gets together in NYC to watch Chiefs games, and he’s proud to say his three kids always have been Chiefs fans.
He retains an abiding hatred of the Colts for administering repeated playoff agony for a franchise and fan base that knew about every machination of defeat — a baseline that makes him appreciate the 50-year gap between Super Bowls that informs this magical era.
And he spoke about how reading The Star sports section after he moved here as a 12-year-old “sort of created my love of storytelling.”
For that matter, he added, being written about in The Star now “will make my mom very happy.”
So the more the Chiefs spoke with Schell and his team, the more they were struck by what went into “The Last Dance,” but also by Schell’s “passion and authentic knowledge of Chiefs history,” as Donovan put it.
“That was a very compelling combination for us,” Donovan said.
All of which led to the six-part series “The Kingdom” premiering on ESPN+ and Disney+ on August 14.
Connor Schell is helping bring to life a docuseries on the Kansas City Chiefs, coming to ESPN+ and Disney+ in August 2025. Contributed photo Kevin Mazur
The labor of love for Schell and his team in association with ESPN, Skydance Sports, NFL Films, 2PM Productions, and Foolish Club Studios figures to be compelling entertainment for any Chiefs fan.
Or anyone else who may be curious about not just the phenomenon of a modern-day dynasty but its underpinnings and the interwoven tales of the people behind it.
As it happens, Schell long had wanted to tell the story of Lamar Hunt, the father of chairman and CEO Clark Hunt and three siblings that constitute the current ownership group.
So much so that one of Schell’s favorite elements of this series is in bringing to life and light the visionary he considers “maybe as responsible as anyone for what the modern sports landscape is. And I just feel like everyone should know that story.”
But perhaps what moved him most was the chance to blend past and present in the docuseries directed by Kristen Lappas and co-produced by Jason Hehir, Libby Geist and Aaron Cohen.
Perhaps that’s most embodied in the shooting they did at SubTropolis, the cave where the Chiefs records and archives are kept. Team historian Bob Moore, Schell said, led a tour with Clark Hunt, coach Andy Reid, Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Chris Jones.
Maybe that’s part of what Mahomes had in mind when I asked him Thursday if he’d watched it yet.
From the parts he’s seen, he said, “I saw stuff that I didn’t even know, and I thought I knew everything about the Kansas City Chiefs.”
(Schell referred to Mahomes as a “partner” in the documentary; Mahomes said “seeing how the bread is buttered was really cool” but smiled and added that about the only sorts of things he suggested were “more of like, ‘Hey, let’s just keep this code word out of there so I can use it this next year.’”)
In addition to delving into Lamar Hunt’s innovation and legacy, Schell most relished an element that stirred Donovan, too.
“What I’m most excited about is all of our fans and future fans and prospective fans seeing all of the human side of what we do. And the human side of some of those bigger-than-life stars,” Donovan said. “I think they’re going to see a piece of everybody. And none more compelling, in my opinion, than Andy.
“I think they’re going to see a side of Andy that they’ve not seen before and the cameras have not captured before. … As a head coach and a leader, but also as a dad and a grandfather and someone that a lot of us count on.”
Coincidentally, Reid’s tale was the first to which Schell referred after Lamar Hunt.
In part because of the coaching acumen that led to him becoming the fourth-winningest coach in NFL history. But really more because of personal traits, Schell said, such as “loyalty and second chances and not judging people that he really lives.”
Specifically in the first half of episode two, Schell said, Reid opened up far beyond what we might normally see and “let us in in a way we’re honored that he did. It was a privilege to get to tell his personal story, and I think it really gives you an understanding of how he got here and who he is.”
For his part, Reid said such things aren’t “really my deal” but that since the boss (Hunt) asked him to do it “I jumped in on it. So if I’m going in, I’m going in. I’m going to go all-in.” And any concerns he had about it being a distraction were unfounded because he “didn’t have to tell people to get back, get out of here, you know. That’s not what it was.”
Among other aspects that particularly reverberated with Schell were some background of Mahomes animated by home movies furnished by his mother, Randi, of him playing baseball and basketball as a child. Those include, Schell said, highlights of him at the 2000 World Series as a 5-year-old when his father was playing for the Mets against the Yankees in the so-called Subway Series.
Schell also was struck by such dynamics as defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo and his wife, Maria, making dinner for the defense. And current general manager Brett Veach “sort of deciding that he was going to stake his career” on Mahomes when he incessantly pushed Reid and then-GM John Dorsey to draft Mahomes.
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (15) hugs tight end Travis Kelce (87) after the Chiefs lost to the Philadelphia Eagles 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, in New Orleans. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com
Those were just a few of what Schell called “the inflection points” of the broader arc of the story that also focuses in on how Clark Hunt and his siblings seek to honor the legacy of their father and how Reid came to the Chiefs and what went into drafting Kelce and the relationship between Spagnuolo and Chris Jones.
And much more.
“You start to tell the story of each of these individuals,” Schell said, “and it adds up to something really special, right?”
Sure, maybe it could have been all the more special if the Chiefs had won that third straight Super Bowl instead of getting clobbered 40-22 by the Eagles.
“No, it’s not the outcome we wanted; let’s just start there,” Schell said. “But the show was always about the pursuit of greatness. … And that doesn’t always work out, right?”
Toward that pursuit end, I asked Schell if he saw parallels between Jordan and Mahomes. He said he preferred not to compare people in that way and noted that “The Last Dance” was made decades after the fact while this was in real time.
Instead, he answered with a wider range.
After the Chiefs lost the Super Bowl, he said, Mahomes was immediately back in the gym and Veach was instantly reviewing the game and preparing for the NFL Draft and Reid right away resumed driving into the office “at God knows how early in the morning.”
“It is an obsession with winning and an obsession with preparation,” he said, “that was unlike any I’ve ever seen.”
And now it’s what Donovan considers another global opportunity to share the story of the Chiefs — one Schell was rather uniquely qualified to tell.
“Now,” Schell said, smiling, “I’ve got to figure out something else in Kansas City.”