We spoke with Liev Shreiber & Tony Phelan for the premiere of “A Small Light”

The name of Anne Frank and her legacy transcended generations. Surely we all saw, read or heard about the German Jewish girl who was in captivity with her family and different refugees during World War II. But do we know who was the woman who helped them hide and who found the diary with the famous writings? We are talking about Miep Gies, Otto Frank’s secretary. Stubborn, courageous and independent, together with her husband Jan and a group of people they took care of the Frank, van Pels and Pfeffer families, who lived hidden in a secret annex. His story is the focus of the new series “A Small Light,” presented by National Geographic and which can be seen on Star+. We had seen a documentary where she was interviewed extensively when she was quite old, but there was a light and a joy in her that was somewhat contagious. Then we visited the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam, and we were reading a plaque about how young she was, newly married and how she committed to helping her boss’s family survive,” series creator and writer Tony Phelan (“Grey’s Anatomy”) told Filo.news. We look at our son who is 20 years old and we think, how would someone like him think how to hide all these people? I mean, how does this happen? So it became very real to us. In a way that we wanted to communicate to people,” he continued.
According to the creator, the goal is that “A Small Light” awakens identification with Miep’s story in the public, so that they wonder what she would have done in her place and, in these times, we wonder if we would have the courage to face hatred.
Photo: Courtesy of the press“It has to do with Ukraine and the idea of all these kinds of authoritarian regimes that are emerging around the world right now, the idea of telling a very personal story that reminds us how it’s integrated into us as human beings to say yes to each other, it seems to have very good timing,” said Liev Shreiber (“X-Men”). who plays Otto Frank, in dialogue with this medium.” I think the importance of repeating it is that it seems to be repeating itself. I think these patterns of behavior in politics and social structures in civil society are still there I don’t think many of us would have imagined that we would be in a big war right now and we are, in more than one place. So remind us of some of the patterns and how we’ve responded to them in the past… I’m not a very optimistic person, but I think this is an optimistic story, what it says about human nature and what we’re capable of.” The cast is completed by Amira Casar in the role of Edith Frank, mother of Margot and Anne; Billie Boullet as Anne Frank Ashley Brooke as Anne’s older sister, Margot Frank; Andy Nyman as Hermann van Pels, Caroline Catz as Auguste van Pels, Rudi Goodman as Peter van Pelsy, Noah Taylor as Dr. Fritz Pfeffer; Eleanor Tomlinson as Tess, Miep’s best friend; Sally Messham is Bep Voskuijl, Ian McElhinney is Johannes Kleimany, Nicholas Burns is Victor Kugler, Liza Sadovy is Mrs. Stoppelman, Laurie Kynaston is Casmir and Sebastian Armesto is Max Stoppelman.” In Bella Joe’s case we had seen their work before, but none of them had done anything like this. I know they can do it and I think it’s going to be surprising and refreshing for the audience. And when you do it with someone like Liev, who played everything from Marty Baron in Spotlight to Victor Creed and the X-Men, you know he’s got the range to do it, and he’s going to bring all kinds of cool new things that you never imagined and that’s ideal, as a writer it’s what you want, to get on set and be surprised.” said the screenwriter.” There is romance and passion and a lot of humor and hope, but also people had to learn to be spies, to know how to keep secrets, even from themselves. There is action, adventure, there is everything, but underneath it all is real humanity and the knowledge that it is a real story.”

Original source in Spanish