James May has insisted that he and his two colleagues, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, don't want to upset anyone and "police themselves" when recording for their show. Regardless of how it appears, May admits that the troublesome trio don't have any more freedom than they did when working with the BBC.
Captain Slow insists that they actually go out of their way to make sure they don't offend anybody - amid reports of "The Grand Tour" cast being knocked back at a German airport. Clarkson has lambasted an "Argentinian" airport worker in Germany, accusing him of deliberately preventing the former "Top Gear" star from getting on his flight.
The 56-year-old has claimed his team was barred from getting onto their British Airways flight to Heathrow by Manuel Pereira, claiming the airport worker told him at the departure gate: "I'm from Argentina, so f--- you."
The former "Top Gear" presenter has also come under fire for a line he gave in the debut episode, released last Thursday, in which he compared himself and his co-hosts Hammond and May to gypsies. "This is our new travelling studio tent. We're going to be roaming the world in it," said Clarkson. "We're going to be like gypsies... only the cars we drive are going to be insured."
Creative freedom
When talking of the difference between working with the BBC and Amazon, May told Vulture: "It's not really more creative freedom, to be honest.
The BBC gave us almost complete freedom; they rarely interfered unless we really stepped over the line.
"There were a few basic house rules, but there are few rules at Amazon as well. You can't go completely mad and we wouldn't want to." May goes on to say he, and his team, do not want to offend any citizens and the last thing they want to do it conjure up riots for simply making jokes.
Captain Slow also continues by saying that they don't want to come across as nasty; so they avoid swearing often and they "police" themselves - doing what they've always done, like at the BBC. He continues to explain that it's a little more complex behind closed doors as they have to run the business themselves.
An example May uses is that the trio have to sort out their own paper to use for the printer and bring in their own paperclips, explaining that they run the whole business, from top to bottom - something they may not have been expected to do when working on "Top Gear."
