'We Were the Lucky Ones' stars experienced 'overwhelming feelings of emotion' filming Holocaust survival show
"No one needs to put a political statement on it, I want people to just feel the pain that others may feel and just hold space for them," Joey King said
Georgia Hunter's novel "We Were the Lucky Ones," based on her family's history as Holocaust survivors, has been adapted into a limited series (now on Disney+ in Canada), starring Joey King and Logan Lerman. For King, the actor described this show as a "once in a lifetime" project.
"There's some times in life where you can feel this once in a lifetime thing brewing and that was what this was," King told Yahoo Canada. "I was just like, I have to be in this."
Watch We Were the Lucky Ones on Disney+ in Canada, with plans starting at $7.99/month
We Were the Lucky Ones follows the Kurc family, who we meet celebrating Passover in Radom, Poland. The family consists of parents Nechuma (Robin Weigert) and Sol (Lior Ashkenazi), and their five kids, Halina (King), Mila (Hadas Yaron), Jakob (Amit Rahav), Genek (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), and Addy (Lerman), who lives in Paris.
As the threat of World War II become more urgent, these characters shift to focusing on adapting to survive, as this close knit family is pulled apart. The wartime component of We Were the Lucky Ones occurs across different locations, including Poland, France, Morocco, Brazil and Siberia.
"I remember reading the script and thinking, I think this is some of the best crafted writing and detailed characters that I've ever seen," Sam Woolf, who plays Halina's love interest, Adam Eichenwald, said.
'She really held on to the light in her life'
What makes We Were the Lucky Ones unique, compared to other movies and TV shows set in the same time period, is that this limited series is able to really allow the audience to connect with who these characters are as people, their personalities and their interests.
That's particularly true for Halina. When we first meet her, the character has such great wit and sarcasm, and an infectious personality that King really brings forward throughout the series.
"I think that when it came to doing the research on Halina I was asking Georgia and her family questions, ... like, 'Who was Halina outside of the war? What are some funny anecdotes about her? What are some interesting quirks about her personality?'" King explained. "Through those questions, I really got insight into what a humorous woman she was and how she really held on to the light in her life, and really held on to the things that brought her joy."
"So infusing that into a person who's going through such an extreme, horrible situation was super important to me, because that's who she is. ... And so never losing that and making sure that in all of the things that she goes through that we feel like we know who she is as a person, and she is a true unique human, was super important to me."
"Those qualities in Halina, ... that's what [Adam] sees and that's what he falls head over heels in love with," Woolf added.
Watch We Were the Lucky Ones on Disney+ in Canada, with plans starting at $7.99/month
For Lerman, the actor stressed that it was particularly interesting to play a character that has a certain level of "guilt" for being away from his family, but still has to do what it takes to survive himself.
"I haven't really seen this explored before, where it's somebody who's trying to seek refuge outside of Europe, who's desperately trying to get away," Lerman said. "The way he survived is fascinating and at the core of it, at the centre of it all, was this longing for his family and longing to see them again, and to know if they're safe."
"This guilt for getting away, being able to get out of Europe, it was all interesting to play with, but there was a lot of loneliness and isolation at the centre of it all."
'Don't waste a single moment'
For showrunner, Erica Lipez, she recognized that asking the audience to follow the stories of so many characters it "a lot," but what We Were the Lucky Ones is able to achieve is an effective balance of understanding who these characters are as fully formed individuals, while still servicing the larger story.
"You had to be very judicious with the real estate you have for each character, don't waste a single moment," Lipez said.
"But I think we just felt like you have to invest equally in all storylines, and so that means you might miss a character for a little while, but they come back in a bigger way in another episode."
"The reality is, if it's on the page then you have a chance, and if it's not, it's pretty hard to try to summon that," executive producer and director, Thomas Kail, added.
"In that first episode, the moments that we were allowed to live with the family were opportunities to delve into that. So that scene after the Passover, when they're all sitting with the family, and then it shifts to the late night hang. It's a bunch of kids in their 20s who just smoke cigarettes out on the balcony, all piled in a couple of beds. They've been doing this for 15 years and you knew just by the way that they would relate physically to the environment, this is what they do."
For Amit Rahav, whose grandmother is a Holocaust survivor, he stressed that We Were the Lucky Ones is particularly unique in its depiction of World War II, largely because of how "intimate" and "raw" the story is.
"Growing up I was surrounded by a lot of Holocaust stories, I'm a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, my grandma, who's still with us, and she is the best. I love her," Rahav said.
"There are so many stories that have to be told from that time and this story, in particular, is such a different take on World War II. It's so intimate and personal, and we see those human beings perspectives in the war. You actually see them go through it during the course of eight years, and it feels so real, and honest and raw."
'Everyone made each other feel very safe, so everyone was able to be very vulnerable'
Of course, We Were the Lucky Ones is incredibly emotional, and the cast needed the space to go to those really sensitive places to craft this story for the audience.
"There's so many times where each of us separately experienced these overwhelming feelings of emotion, but somehow we were all so there for each other ... and connected," King said. "There was never this feeling of embarrassment once a cry was finished, or a scene that really took it out of someone was finished."
"If I had a moment where I had a really emotional moment that stemmed from what we were shooting, I never felt that weird like meekness that comes when that happens sometimes, ... that shame, because everyone was just like, 'We got you. We're there. We've been there. We're probably going to be there again.' And it was really special to have a connection like that with everyone."
"The safer you feel in the work, the more vulnerable you can be," Woolf added. "Everyone made each other feel very safe, so everyone was able to be very vulnerable."
As Kail described, there was intentional work done to ensure that everyone on set, whether they were present for a day or months, felt safe.
"We wanted to make sure that they felt safe and they felt that they were in a place where they could express off camera, and feel like they could go and do their work on camera," Kail said.
"We just tried to have real conversation, open conversation about anything that we perceived might have sensitivity to it, and also ask them, because ... it's important not to ever make those assumptions and to think that anybody knows better than the person who has to go have that experience."
'The only way of getting closer would be to be the real person'
Lerman also highlighted that there was a certain level of emotional impact to telling a story based on real people, with Hunter and her family watching as the show was being filmed.
"I think one of the hardest things for me as an actor is when you read a script for the first time, you feel so much, ... in this case I felt a lot, and really responded to the material," he said. "So much so that you just hope that you can feel this feeling that you're having for the first time reading it, bottle it up and feel it on the day that you're actually exploring it as an actor."
"One of the things that made it such a profound experience was Georgia and her mom being there, and their family at the monitor, on set. Looking at them and feeling what this is like for them to view it, to view the scene or to be there as an audience member in a way, or to be a part of this production, just brought me to a place emotionally that I was hoping to get to on the day. And it's not always the case."
Being able to craft those impactful moments was also assisted by detailed production design with elements in place for actors to draw from for their performances. But sometimes, unexpected instances can be happy accidents as well.
"It's one of those rare examples where every time it came to building the architecture of what that character was going through, I felt as an actor empowered that I was probably never going to get closer than we did on making this show," Lloyd-Hughes said. "The only way of getting closer would be to be the real person. There were a lot of sets, there were a lot of extras, there's a lot of gruesome makeup, costumes. ... All of that stuff was done by hand, organically."
"We built a set for Siberia and it was Romania, ... and the week that we turned up ... there was a snowstorm. I think it saved the production about $300,000 of CGI snow. But ... I looked out and I saw snow as far as the eye could see, when I was supposed to be seeing snow as far as the eye could see. They didn't even plan for that, but that's an example of how your mind and your body and your brain just goes there."
For this series overall, King stressed that each new perspective that's told in a story set during the Holocaust provides, "a different understanding of this horrible thing that happened."
"No one needs to put a political statement on it, I want people to just feel the pain that others may feel and just hold space for them, no matter who it is," King said.
