You can’t say that the producers of “All the Light We Cannot See” – the epic four-part Netflix limited series adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning, World War II-themed novel from author Anthony Doerr – made it easy on themselves. Whereas they could have used CGI and visual effects to create fake backdrops, instead they opted to take the large production on location to Budapest and the South of France. And as executive producer Dan Levine explains, it was also decided that they go after authenticity in casting. That meant pursuing blind performers to portray both the child and adult versions of protagonist Marie-Laure, who is actually blind in the story. “It was easily our biggest challenge of the show,” Levine admits. “There is no body of blind or low-vision actors to pull from. So we had to reach out to all the blind organizations and we had to do it in England, in Australia and in the United States and cast a very wide net. But it was really important to us.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
The casting process wound up generating “thousands and thousands of submissions,” Levine notes, “and then (executive producer and director) Shawn (Levy) and I had to go through hundred, looking for a needle in a haystack.” They found their needle. In fact, they found two. The first was eight-year-old Nell Sutton, a blind girl plucked from a tiny town in Wales, to play the young Marie (the lynchpin of the series). “We were so blown away by Nell that it made us realize we needed to cast a blind actress (to play the older Marie) as well.” Enter Aria Mia Loberti, a legally blind Fulbright Scholar studying for her PhD at Penn State when she decided to send in a video audition. “It was a really bold and I think historic decision,” he observes. “She’s the first blind actress or actor to be a lead in a (mainstream) movie.”
And that’s not all. In the case of both Sutton and Loberti, the term “actor” was a stretch – because neither had ever acted before. Talk about taking a huge gamble on a massive project. “So we had to teach them how to act,” Levine recalls. “We had to teach them how to navigate a set, what a take is, where the camera was – with audible signals, like snapping fingers. I mean, there eas tape on the floor, but they can’t see the tape. Aria was a real savant. She would always arrive a half-hour early to the set, walk through it, feel it, and then she would memorize it. It was amazing to watch her prep. But I mean, plus, both Aria and Nell had to learn accents. So these were great challenges.”
Yet by any measure, Sutton and Loberti nailed it. Loberti wound up nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for breakthrough performer. They were certainly fortunate to have a couple of pros named Hugh Laurie and Mark Ruffalo in the production to draw guidance and support from. “They’re consummate professionals,” Levine says. “I’ve always admired them from afar, so to see them work up-close was a dream come true. And to boot, they were the world’s nicest human beings. I’ve got to say, a career highlight for me is having a post-wrap martini with Hugh.”
In terms of traveling to Europe to shoot on location rather than generating the looks on computer, Levine asserts that the decision to shoot there was “an ongoing battle just because we had a certain budget and it would have been easier (not to go). There were a lot of conversations in particular about, ‘Do we need to go to Saint-Malo? Let’s just shoot in Budapest and we’ll throw in a beach backdrop.’ We really fought for (going there), and I think you can feel it, the enormity of the beaches and the rampart walls protecting the city. I don’t think you can fake the sense of history. I know that the actors just being in the environment could work off of that.”
“All the Light We Cannot See” follows the story of Marie-Laure, a blind French girl, and her father Daniel LeBlanc (a charming Ruffalo), who flee German-occupied Paris with a priceless diamond in order to keep it from falling into the hands of the Nazis. The pair are relentlessly pursued by a cruel Gestapo officer (Lars Eldinger) who seeks to possess the stone for his own selfish ends. They soon take up residence with a reclusive uncle (Laurie) who transmits clandestine radio broadcasts as part of the resistance. Marie-Laure’s path ultimately collides with Werner (Louis Hofmann), a brilliant German teen who is enlisted by Hitler’s regime to track down illegal broadcasts. The tale interweaves the stories of their lives, both separately and interconnected, over the course of a decade.
The parallels of the story with the invading Russian forces during the current Russia-Ukraine War were lost on no one during the production, Levine assures.
“I think there was a certain amount of gravitas that it brought to the show that we’re dealing with the survival of the human spirit during war. I think it gave us an added responsibility. There was this pervasive feeling that really was symbolic to what we were shooting.”
All four installments of “All the Light We Cannot See” are streaming on Netflix.
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