A Small Light Star Bel Powley Reflects On Retelling Anne Frank's Story

Bel Powley discusses starring in National Geographic's gripping series A Small Light as Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family.

The National Geographic limited series A Small Light is nearing the end of its run, with just one week left until its story is complete. The series has earned rave reviews from critics and viewers alike, and at the tail end of its season still holds a 100% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. A Small Light's telling of the story of Miep Gies, Anne Frank, and the Secret Annex is a modern telling that, for many, may make the events it depicts and the people involved in them feel more relatable than ever before.

A Small Light's focus on Miep Gies, the woman who hid the Franks, feels like an especially strong choice thanks to the casting of Bel Powley in the lead role. Gies was an incredible woman who shrugged off the title of hero or savior, and Powley embodies the humanity in Gies in a way that is stunningly natural and always compelling. Despite strong work in films and shows, including a standout performance in The King of Staten Island, Powley's turn as Miep Gies marks her biggest starring role yet and is sure to lead to many more unforgettable roles.

Related: 10 Best Movies About The Holocaust

Bel Powley spoke with Screen Rant about the pressures and challenges of starring in A Small Light, the series’ unfortunate modern-day relevance, and more.

Screen Rant: The series has been out for a little bit, and you're coming into the last week. Have you heard from people and gotten any reactions from those who have seen it?

Bel Powley: Yeah, I have. It seems to me like people are liking it, and people appreciate, tonally, what we were trying to do with this kind of contemporary day-to-day lens. That was kind of the main thing that I really hoped would translate when we were making the show, and it seems to me from talking to people that it has, so I'm very pleased about that.

That, I think, is such a special thing about this. Even as the show progresses, there are still moments of joy, even when things get dark. As an actor, is there ever emotional whiplash having to do such heavy scenes and then jump into something that's a little happier?

Bel Powley: No. I've been asked this before, actually, and the truth is it makes it easier because that's how humans are in real life. If it was just doom and gloom and heavy all of the time, that's not how I think that we operate. This lightness and darkness lends [itself] more towards this naturalistic, contemporary tone that I can personally connect with.

I think that having all lived through the pandemic--although it's not nearly as bad as what's going on in our show, but it's the only thing I can relate to in that it was a really terrible time for the world--I'm sure we can all admit that at moments when we were locked in our houses, we tried to make light of the situation, and we laughed. I think that it's really in human nature to do that, so flitting between that in filming [not only] provided emotional respite for me, but also just felt more natural.

You've done so many projects, but I think this was one of your first times being front-and-center of a show like this. Did the fact that this was a real story and these were real people make it easier for you to step into that? Or did it just add to the pressure?

Bel Powley: I'd say it probably added to the pressure. As you said, this was a big deal for me. I've been the lead of a small film before, but not of an eight-part series on NatGeo, Disney+, and Hulu that's also based on a historical time that's incredibly important to a lot of people, [where I'm] playing this incredible real person. All of those things added up to a lot of pressure, but I think I handled it okay. I have to say, being--this is in inverted commas--'number one' on the call sheet on a show like this does come with responsibility, I think.

I really did try and lead the show and lead this group of actors in an ensemble, collective group [kind of way], where we were all emotionally there for each other. This was the kind of show where no one was in their trailers and, like, not talking to each other. We were all on set at all times, just sitting around chatting. Because of the subject, I think it required us to really act as a team, and it was definitely kind of up to me as the lead to spearhead that, and I really tried to do that.

Then, in terms of playing a real person in this part of history that is very important to a lot of people, I think it was a fine line between doing the right amount of research--out of respect, but also because it was useful to me--but also just not letting that become too overwhelming. I think then it would have driven me into the ground. [It was important] remembering that Miep didn't want to be called a hero. She didn't want to be put on a pedestal. She really wanted to be seen as a kind of every woman, [and] she wanted us all to see ourselves in her. So, just taking it and being present, and running with it--I think that's how I approached it.

What do you think was the most helpful thing for you in terms of preparing to do all of that?

Bel Powley: It was really helpful for me to just go to Amsterdam. I'm from London, we were filming in Prague, and Amsterdam is just such a specific place, I think. It's a city that is built on waterways, everyone cycles around, it's not like any other city, and it really operates in the same way now as it did in the '40s, so it was just really important for me to go there and immerse myself in the feeling of that place. That's what I found most useful because I did it on my own before we started filming; [it was] kind of calm-before-the-storm kind of vibes. I cycled a few of Miep's cycle routes, I visited the Anne Frank House, and I just kind of soaked up that incredible city, and I think it really helped me to get into the right headspace.

Beyond that, I did other bits of research. I focused mainly on Miep's book that she wrote in the '80s called Anne Frank Remembered; it was later made into a documentary that won an Oscar, actually. So I focused on that, and then a couple of transcripts of a few interviews that she did. But the workload was so heavy that I kind of had to do all that in the beginning and then just throw it away, because then, honestly, for the next five months, I was just walking around with, like, 10 binders of our scripts. Obviously, you shoot out of order, so I had to just stay on top of the work at hand.

Because you're kind of the same age that Miep was when she helped the Franks go into hiding, how much has being on set, researching, and going through this experience made you look inward and wonder what you would do in the same situation?

Bel Powley: So much. It made me wonder what I would do in that situation from the moment I read the pilot, and that's really what made me want to do this project. I was like, "Whoa. This is a period piece [where] I'm reading the first 60 pages, and I already feel like I'm in it, and I'm there, and I'm connected to it." I think that that's so rare. I've often shied away from period pieces because I feel distance from them. I don't know if that's to do with [the] clothes or the kind of prim and proper language that sometimes is used, but with this, I was like, "Whoa. Bang. I'm there."

So, I have thought that from the moment we started filming and the moment I started prepping this job. "What would I do?" I can't tell you what kind of experience it is being on these sets. Our set in Prague of Opekta and the Annex is a direct replica of the real thing, so you're in a scene, and then you're like, "Oh my God, this actually happened. This was really real. I'm not just in a TV show." It's just such a strange experience.

It really translated for me, and I really hope that people can kind of connect what happened then and what we're showing to what's going on in the world right now [with] the refugee crisis. I just hope it makes people wake up and realize that, you know, we all can turn on a small light in a dark room. Not to sound saccharine or whatever, but we can, and playing this character has kind of really brought that home for me, and I hope it does for everyone else too.

This may be a silly question, but is it at all surreal to have a normal backstage environment when there are people dressed in Nazi uniforms everywhere?

Bel Powley: It was odd at the beginning, but then obviously you're on like a five-month shoot, so of course, it's something you get used to. What I can tell you was weirder was being in a show where we'd gotten used to the fact that, yes, we have people dressed as Nazis all around us, and in our script there's a lot of Nazi rhetoric, but then [having] all the Kanye West stuff happening and seeing the same rhetoric coming out of the mouth of like someone today right now, who is a celebrity.

That, for me, was the weirdest experience that day, when all of that Adidas stuff was going on. It was actually really unsettling and really just quite horrible. You get used to seeing people dressed as Nazis, because making a show about this part of history, you get used to that. But then seeing it in the real world... the comparison is very strange, and not nice.

We know where the Anne Frank story goes in real life and there are only a few episodes left in the season, so we kind of know what's going to happen. Can you talk at all about what it was like to film the final episodes of this series?

Bel Powley: I found episode eight really hard to film. Episode seven is all in real-time: what happened the day that the Nazi officers raided the annex. That was horrible to film, but also we filmed it in this really interesting way where Tony, who directed it, wanted it to be like a play because it's all in real-time. We came in before on the weekend, and we played out the whole entire thing a few times from beginning to end, the whole episode. Even though, obviously, there are bits that are filmed in different rooms, we [did it that way] so that everyone was aware of what was happening in real-time. So it was an interesting experience because we were filming it in this really different way.

Then, episode eight is a really deflated episode, because it's the episode that they find out that Anne and Margot have died at Bergen-Belsen. By that point, I had become so close to Billie and Ashley, who play Anne and Margot. One of the last scenes of the whole series is Miep, after she's found out that they're dead, going to Jan and telling him and breaking down, and, yeah, it definitely wasn't difficult to break down. I just couldn't stop thinking about the young women that I'd been spending time with over the last five months, who were very similar ages to Anne and Margot. It was really hard.

We also were filming in a train station--basically, Jan was working at the train station, helping to repatriate people who had come back after the camps were liberated--[and] we were filming with a lot of extras, a lot of whom had actually shaved their heads for the role. It just all felt very, very real, and bought it all home. That, for sure, was one of the most difficult scenes for me to film.

I also want to touch on Liev Schreiber, because he's incredible in this, and you have such a great on-screen relationship. Obviously, that was a really important relationship in Miep's life--was there anything particularly special to you about working with Liev on the arc of that relationship?

Bel Powley: He's definitely [one of the] the best actors I've ever worked with. He's so fantastic. We immediately got on like a house on fire, so it was very easy to play these scenes with him. No one actually knows what [Miep and Otto's] relationship was really like, [though] I've read Miep's book and I know she was very fond of him, and vice versa. In my eyes, it was an incredibly contemporary relationship in that I really think they were, like, best mates. I think that in the '40s, for a young woman to have that close of a friendship with a man 20 years her senior... there's something really interesting and modern about that. I really leaned into that, and it definitely wasn't difficult to do that with Liev.

I didn't realize this at the time because I was so in it, but having stepped away from it and having watched the series now, I think [Liev's] quiet, stoic, very introverted performance is so clever. It looks so good opposite my performance of Miep, which is [that] she was chaotic, and she was outspoken. I just think that those two performances married together in a way that is great--which sounds weird to say about my own work, but they're some of my favorite scenes, and I think he's just unbelievable.

Based on an inspiring true story, Miep Gies was young, carefree and opinionated — at a time when opinions got you killed ― when Otto Frank asked her to help hide his family from the Nazis during WWII. Told with a modern sensibility, A Small Light shakes the cobwebs off history and makes Miep's story feel relevant, forcing audiences to ask themselves what they would have done in Miep's shoes; and in modern times, asking if they would have the courage to stand up to hatred. Some stood by, Miep stood up.

Check out our other A Small Light interviews:

The final two episodes of A Small Light premiere May 22 on National Geographic, with the whole season available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu the following day.