Contenders TV: 'A Small Light' Interview with Bel Powley & Joan Rater

A Small Light star Bel Powley and creator, writer and executive producer Joan Rater joined Deadline’s Contenders TV event Saturday to discuss the Holocaust-centric series and the importance of highlighting a different aspect of the era onscreen.

The eight-part Nat Geo series debuts May 1st with two back-to-back episodes, with new episodes streaming the following day on Disney+ and Hulu. A Small Light tells the story of Austrian secretary Miep Gies (Bel Powley), a twentysomething who didn’t hesitate when her boss Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) asked her to hide him and his family from the Nazis during World War II. For the next two years, Miep, her husband Jan (Joe Cole) and several others help watch over the eight people hiding in a secret annex. Miep found Anne’s (Billie Boullet) diary and preserved it so that she and Otto could later share it with the world.

“Endangering your life [in such a way] could get you killed,” Rater explained Miep’s bravery in sheltering Otto and his family. “And she said, ‘I don’t need to think about it. It’s what anyone would do.’ And we know not anyone would because not everyone did, but she did. So, it’s a story about a very ordinary person who stepped up [and] became extraordinary when history happened to her. She stepped into history.”

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Powley shared her experience of taking on the mantle of such an important historical figure: “The responsibility of playing this woman who lived and did so much in her life [was] a huge responsibility; it was also about just the weight of the part of history that we were depicting the Holocaust and the Second World War. It’s a very heavy and important part of history, and it was very important that we got it right to allow people to really connect and relate to this story. One thing I had to always remind myself of is that she never wanted to be called a hero. She never wanted to be put on a pedestal. Her mantra for the rest of her life after the war is the title of the show; it’s actually based on a famous quote that she would say over and over again. And she would say anyone, a housewife or a teenager, can turn on a small light in a dark room. She really thought that she did her duty as a human being, which was helping people in need. So just reminding myself that she wanted us all to see a bit of ourselves in her. That helped to take the pressure off, I think. Because that’s how I think that’s how she wanted it.”

Check out the panel video above.

Deadline Contenders Television is sponsored by Apple TV+, Coverfly, Eyepetizer, Final Draft, Los Siete Misterios, Michter’s, and Village Roadshow Entertainment. Partners include: Four Seasons Resort Maui, The American Pavilion, Julia Wong Designs and Pampring.