the princess diaries volume viii princess on the brink

That’s another reason why I’d shied away from second world war stories – because it’s always all about men. Was it refreshing to tell a war story from a female viewpoint? There’s something very ahead of its time about that. And Otto Frank was a man 20 years her senior but they were best friends. She didn’t want kids and didn’t have them until much later in life. When she fell in love with her husband, Jan, he was still married, but separated. We could also improvise, which added to the naturalism. It wasn’t that classic dusty period drama-type speech. We were allowed freedom with the way we spoke. But A Small Light’s scripts removed those hurdles. Language is a barrier, the costumes feel very rigid and I found it hard to access characters. I often find myself feeling quite distanced from them.

Previously I’d shied away from period drama. It was one of my main reasons for taking the job. The series feels fairly contemporary for a period drama. I did my duty as a human being and was just helping friends in need.” When I was younger, there was stuff I probably didn’t want to do, but was too scared to say no Miep’s mantra for the rest of her life was: “Please don’t call me a hero. She had this unwavering sense of justice and did the right thing without hesitation. She was an ordinary young woman in an extraordinary circumstance. That was my springboard for working on this.Īlongside Reese Witherspoon in The Morning Show. I visited the Anne Frank museum, obviously, but also went to Miep’s old apartment and cycled the same routes as her. It’s a city that operates in a very specific way – everyone cycles everywhere, it’s built on waterways – so I immersed myself in how it feels to live there. The first thing I did was get my butt over to Amsterdam. I was offered the role on Holocaust Memorial Day, which felt kind of special, but was genuinely like: Who is that? Nor did I know about the occupation of the Netherlands and the Dutch resistance.

I’d read Anne Frank’s diary as a kid, and I’m Jewish myself, so you grow up with this weight of history running through your family, but I knew nothing about Miep Gies. Were you familiar with Miep Gies’s story ? She now plays Hermine “Miep” Gies in miniseries A Small Light, based on the true story of the young woman who hid the Frank family during the second world war and preserved Anne’s diary. On TV, she’s starred in The Morning Show and Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love. Subsequent film roles include The King of Staten Island and Mary Shelley, where she met her fiance, actor Douglas Booth. In 2016 she was Bafta-nominated for The Diary of a Teenage Girl and shortlisted for a British independent film award for playing Princess Margaret in A Royal Night Out. I sobel “Bel” Powley, 31, was born in west London.

The princess diaries volume viii princess on the brink