Even with all the preparation that Joey King did for “We Were the Lucky Ones,” nothing could have prepared her for meeting the descendants of the Kurc family. Anna, the daughter of King’s character, showed up on set while filming was happening in Malaga, Spain. “It was this very emotional, beautiful moment. The first thing she said to me when she me, she outstretched her arms and she looked at me and she said, ‘Mama,’” she reveals to Gold Derby during our recent webchat (watch the exclusive video interview above). The gesture brought tears to King’s eyes. “She had not met me yet, hasn’t seen any of the work I’ve done to portray her mother yet, yet is here giving me this warm embrace and confidence that says, ‘Yes, you are playing my mother and I’m so excited.’ It just felt like a real big green light for me.”
“We Were the Lucky Ones,” which is currently streaming on Hulu, is an adaptation of Georgia Hunter’s novel about the Kurcs, a Jewish family in Poland that gets separated all over the world as World War II plays out in Europe and their determination to be a whole unit again. King plays Halina Kurc, the youngest sibling of the Polish family, who attempts to flee Poland and later joins the underground seeking to shelter Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland while also trying to keep various parts of her family together. The series also stars Logan Lerman, Robin Weigert, Lior Ashkenazi, Sam Woolf, Hadas Yaron, Amit Rahav, Eva Feiler, Moran Rosenblatt and Henry Lloyd-Hughes. King was last at the Emmys in 2019 when she was nominated for Movie/Limited Actress for “The Act,” which also earned her nominations at the Golden Globes, SAG Awards and Critics’ Choice TV Awards.
Filming a limited series about a Jewish family fighting to survive during the Holocaust provided a number of moments where King and the rest of the cast got very emotional. There were scenes that had an emotional heft but due to the movements in them didn’t hit the actors as hard, while other scenes that didn’t hit as hard did have the cast crying in between takes due to the context of it all. King stresses that it’s incredibly important for her as an actor to make sure she truly takes in all of these feelings in order to make the performance more authentic. “The least we can do is feel that emotion and be emotional while portraying such horrific events because we get to go home every night and lay on a warm bed and so the least we can do is feel the uncomfortable feelings that come along with filming something like this.”
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