How Melanie Lynskey's Husband and Daughter Helped Her Through 'Heavy' “Tattooist of Auschwitz” Shoot (Exclusive)

"It wasn't a fun set, that's for sure," the Emmy-nominated actress tells PEOPLE of filming the upcoming Holocaust series for Peacock

Unsurprisingly, revisiting the Holocaust for her new show The Tattooist of Auschwitz brought up some intense emotions for Melanie Lynskey.

“It wasn't a fun set, that's for sure,” Lynskey, 45, tells PEOPLE. “Every day was heavy. At the end of the day, I got to go home and see my husband and my daughter. I looked forward to that. I would be like, ‘OK, one hour till I get to go home.’”

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The three-time Emmy winner refers to her 5-year-old daughter with husband Jason Ritter as “a little angel person who's just the best little human being” and she says that having a young child makes it easier for her to “to live in the moment and enjoy your day-to-day life.”

Having 44-year-old Ritter’s support at home helps, too.

“He's the most supportive person in the world,” Lynskey says of her husband since 2020. “The last few years we've had this role of like, whoever's job makes the most sense, whether it's the most exciting career wise or it's more money, we would prioritize the one that was going to help move the person's career forward.”

Lynskey adds that portraying author Heather Morris in The Tattooist of Auschwitz — based on Morris’ book by the same name — gave her “greater perspective” to appreciate “being safe and healthy and housed and [that] my loved ones are not in immediate danger.”

“You have to have a global perspective and be like, gosh, there's so much privilege in my life,” she says. “[I’m] so, so, so lucky.”

As Morris, Lynskey interviews Holocaust survivor Lali Sokolov (Harvey Keitel) about his experience serving as one of the tätowierer (tattooists) in charge of applying ink identification numbers onto fellow prisoners’ arms at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“Filming in this apartment, you really feel the repetition of this is what it was like for Heather to go there for years and years every day and hear these painful, terrible, traumatic stories,” Lynskey says.

The series also tells the story of how Lali fell in love with Gita (Anna Próchniak) while tattooing her prisoner number on her arm.

“There's so much in the series that is beautiful,” Lynskey says. “It's such an incredible story that the two of them survived. It's a miracle they went on to have a life and live together for the rest of their lives, they had a child together. That's an incredible thing that they found each other in the worst time, certainly of their lives, one of the worst times in history.

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The New Zealand native says she “was so immersed in the story” of The Tattooist of Auschwitz when she first read the script and “before I knew it, I'd read three of the scripts — I just couldn't stop!” She hopes others see the value in the story, too.

“I think it's important to tell as many stories as we can from this period in history and from many other periods in history,” Lynskey says. “People have gone through unimaginable things. People have heartbreaking stories, heroic stories, beautiful stories, and I think the more of them we can see, the better.”

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The Tattooist of Auschwitz premieres Thursday, May 2, on Peacock.

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