‘A Small Light’: Bel Powley and Liev Schreiber on the responsibility that comes with portraying WWII heroes

National Geographic’s eight-part limited series “A Small Light” premiering May 1 tells the story of Anne Frank through the eyes of Miep Gies, the brave young woman who hid the Franks and four others in secret annex above Otto Frank’’s office in Amsterdam from the Nazis who were rounding up Jewish residents. Miep, who worked for Frank, was one of six people who took care of them.  She was tasked with supplying them with meat and vegetables. Wrote Anne Frank: “Miep is just like a pack mule, she fetches and carries so much. Almost every day she manages to get hold of  some vegetables for us brings everything in shopping bags on her bicycle.” Miep also brought them books.

The Nazis discovered their hiding place and on Aug. 4, 1944, they were arrested and sent to the death camps. Miep managed to save Anne’s notes and journals from the annex that would become “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Otto Frank also lived with Miep and her husband when he was liberated — the only attic resident who survived — for seven years. In 1987, Miep published her memoir “Anne Frank Remembered.” And in 1988, CBS aired “The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank,” starring Mary Steenburgen as Miep and Paul Scofield as Otto Frank. Nominated for six Emmys, the drama won for best writing in a miniseries or special.

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“A Small Light,” which will also its first two episodes on National Geographic Wild and Lifetime on May 1 and stream Tuesdays on Disney + and Hulu, is also poised to be a strong contender for Emmy nominations. Bel Powley who portrays Miep and Liev Schreiber who embodies Otto Frank recently talked about the ambitious project with the Washington Post’s Geoff Edgers.

“Obviously, this is a part of history that everyone knows a bit about,” noted Powley. “Everyone knows about Anne Frank’s diary and everyone knows about the Holocaust. It’s also a part of history that I think has been rehashed in a lot of film and television. So, it was important to me that if I was going to take on this role it had to be different and fresh.” She added she was “blown away” by the script and “how contemporary it felt and how relatable these people felt and how connected I felt to Miep.”

Miep never saw herself as a hero. “My story is a story of very ordinary people during extraordinarily terrible times,” she wrote in her memoir. “I learned this from reading her book a few times…you do really get a sense she was avery vivacious, funny, confident and outspoken young woman,” said Powley. “Her mantra until the day she died was you don’t have to be special in order to help others. It’s where the title of our show comes from. It was a quote that she ended all of her talks with-‘No one should ever think they have to be special to help others. Anyone, even an ordinary secretary housewife or teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.’”

Schreiber felt the same way. He had just come off eight years doing Showtime’s “Ray Donovan” and not very eager to work. “But spending time with my kids on the couch trying to figure out how to explain the war in the Ukraine to them, this script came to me. I thought, ‘Well, that’s a pretty great example of how these things find a way of repeating themselves and what sort of signs to look out for.”

The actor believes that “A Small Light” is extremely relevant today. “I think it’s especially important now because of what’s happening in the world…the worst refugee crisis in history. We have a ground war in Eastern Europe and Ukraine and pretty divisive political themes all over the place. Authoritarian regimes are popping up. I think it’s important to remind ourselves how we dealt with these things in the past because I think some of those solutions, certainly the routes that people like Miep Geis goes, are truly extraordinary and worth reminding ourselves that we’re capable of that.”

Powley didn’t watch other movies about Anne Frank or watch other films about the Holocaust “because you don’t want to do a copycat thing because you want to have your own interpretation.” Besides reading Miep’s book several times, she went to Amsterdam to walk in Miep’s shoes. “I’d never been to the Anne Frank House. I got a private tour of it. That was obviously really invaluable. I also cycled a lot of Miep’s bicycle route. I cycled her route to work and I visited her old apartment and the Frank’s old apartment and just immersed myself in this iconic city.”

Schreiber found the “folks” at the Anne Frank House to be very generous “There’s tons of footage and documentary on Otto, as well as books and two docs.”  He learned in his research that Otto Frank was proud of his German heritage “That was a big part of his identity was tied into being German/ He’d served in their military. He was a banker. I think that piece of not being able to be German was very hard for him-that his Jewishness prevented him from being German. I thought that made a lot of sense to me, as an inroad to a character.”

Miep,  who died in 2010 at the age of 100, and her husband, would commemorate the loss of their friends every Aug 4. “In that dark time of the war,” she wrote,“ we did not stand on the sidelines,  but extended our hands to help others. Risking our own lives. We could not have done more.”

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