Bel Powley tells Chris Evans about playing the 'relatable' woman who hid Anne Frank in new series A Small Light

Virgin Radio

21 Apr 2023, 10:58

Bel Powley joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch to talk about starring in brand new series, A Small Light. 

The eight episode series, which premieres on Disney+ in May, focuses on the real-life story of Miep Gies, who played a critical role in hiding Anne Frank and her family during the Nazi occupation in Amsterdam. Bel explained that Miep “was a young Dutch woman, and during the Nazi occupation in 1942, she was Otto Frank’s secretary, and he asked her to hide his family. And without hesitation, she said yes.”

Bel told Chris: “Over the next two years, she was the one responsible for keeping them safe and hiding them in the annex. And when they were sadly captured by the Nazis, she was then also responsible for finding Anne’s diary, and preserving it for Otto when he came back.”

Speaking more of Miep, the actor said: “She's a very relatable character. Our show has a kind of modern edge to it. We all know the story very well and we know the overarching political facts, and we really wanted to make people connect. So when you meet Miep, she's just, like, a young party girl in Amsterdam, going out with her friends, drinking too much. She's newly married and she's kind of just an ordinary young woman who's thrust into this extraordinary situation. We really wanted people to connect to her on a human level.”

In the first episode, Miep gets a new job as Otto Frank’s secretary, but her life is soon turned upside down when she is asked to hide her boss’ family from the Nazis. “His daughter Margot, Anne’s older sister, she suddenly got a call up from the Nazis saying that you need to get on this train, you're being sent to a work camp. But everyone knew what that meant, on that day, they pulled the plan up, and they said, ‘We're going into hiding today’.”

Alongside Bel, the cast includes Liev Schreiber as Otto Frank, Joe Cole as Miep’s husband Jan Gies, Amira Casar as Edith Frank and Billie Boullet as Anne Frank. On where A Small Light starts, Bel said: “You join it in 1933, which is when she met Otto. So by the time they went into hiding, she already knew the Frank family. She'd known them for nine years. They were really, really, really close. So you kind of see Amsterdam changes like during the Nazi occupation for two years.”

Speaking more about her character, Bel told Chris: “She says, ‘There's no way Hitler will come here, we’re neutral'. But we all like to think that about our beloved cities that we live in, but it actually can happen anyway. You see authoritarian regimes popping up all over the world. The war in Ukraine. It's all too real, this show. And that's why we wanted it to have this kind of modern edge, because we want people to think about now.”

The actor added: “I always say we don't speak in Downton Abbey speak. We talk in normal modern language, because we didn't want there to be any disconnect for an audience.”

Regarding how the narrative is based on true events, she said: “Every time we'd get a new script for a new episode, I'd call the show runner and be like, ‘Surely this bet can't be true?’. It feels like it's from a movie. But, you know, insane things happen to these people in this city at that time.”

Of the eight people who Miep helped to hide in the Annex, only Otto survived following their arrest by the Gestapo in August 1944. After Anne's death, it was Miep who found her diary and preserved it so that she and Otto could later share it with the world.

“The actor who played Anne in our show, Billie Boulet, her portrayal is so beautiful and touching and human," Bel said. "And that's really what we're trying to do with this show. Rather than just think about the political, historical, big backdrop, it is about, you know, the Franks were still parenting their kids and educating their kids, and they were stuck in the annex. My character was newly married, arguing with her husband. It's about those human experiences, as well as the kind of big political stuff that was going on at the time.”

Speaking more about Anne Frank, Bel said: “She was 13 to 15 when she was hiding up there in the annex. That's a really intense time for a young woman. Billy's portrayal of that, and the kind of truth in that, is really brilliant.”

She added: “When you're in a really terrible situation, you still kind of laugh and make the best of it. And we tried to show that side of it as well, rather than it all be kind of doom and gloom, because we do know how the story ends.

They lived in hope every day, they thought ‘We're gonna get out of it’.

Episodes 1 & 2 of A Small Light come to Disney+ on Tuesday 2nd May.

For more great interviews listen to  The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.