As a child, I adored my grandfather. I knew he beloved chocolate (the darkish type) and hated ketchup. I knew he loved a very good pun and will converse seven languages — across the dinner desk it was French. I knew his Steinway was his joyful place, and that he made lots of the issues in his dwelling by hand (just like the curtains that hung in his lounge, woven on a loom he inbuilt his basement).
What I didn’t learn about my grandfather was that he grew up certainly one of 5 siblings in a city in central Poland referred to as Radom; or that he was raised within the Jewish religion; or that he, his dad and mom and his siblings had been Holocaust survivors. These had been truths I realized at 15, a yr after he died, because of a highschool English project and an interview with my grandmother Caroline.
The invention sparked lots of questions. Six years later, my curiosity was additional piqued at a household reunion, the place I discovered myself sitting round a desk listening to tales concerning the struggle. They had been in contrast to any I’d ever heard earlier than — a child born in Siberia, a hike over the Austrian Alps, a mother-daughter escape from the ghetto. On the finish of the evening, my great-aunt Felicia, who was a yr outdated in the beginning of the struggle, regarded round at her cousins and stated, “It’s a miracle that we’re all right here at the moment. We had been the fortunate ones.”
It was at that Kurc household gathering that I spotted somebody wanted to write down our story down. Ultimately, I made a decision that somebody could be me. I set off with a digital voice recorder and a stomach stuffed with butterflies, my mission a easy one: to do the story justice. 9 years later, my novel, We Have been the Fortunate Ones, was born. It landed on the New York Occasions best-seller checklist and my agent started floating it for display adaptation, the prospect of which was each thrilling and terrifying. What if it fell into the incorrect palms? What if it was produced in a approach that didn’t really feel genuine to the historical past, to my household? After which Tommy Kail referred to as.
Tommy and I am going again. He and my husband, Robert, met as youngsters at summer season camp. My earliest recollections of Tommy are from the summer season of 1999, when he joined us at our household dwelling on Martha’s Winery. He and my father would spend the afternoons in seaside chairs, discussing theater and movie. (My dad was an actor and author and, Tommy says, an inspiration as he contemplated his personal path within the arts.)
Tommy and I’ve spent the previous 25 years cheering one another on in our respective careers. When he referred to as to ask if I’d wish to associate with him to convey We Have been the Fortunate Ones to the display, I cried, then laughed, and instantly agreed to it. To have the ability to work with an expensive, remarkably gifted pal felt like a dream. Tommy launched me to Erica Lipez, who took the story into her coronary heart simply as he had — I knew from the second we met that the venture had discovered its dwelling. We pitched and we pitched some extra, and two years later, Hulu took the leap.
Tommy, Erica and I agreed early on that we didn’t need our present to really feel shiny or sepia-toned however, relatively, vivid and colourful and fashionable. We wished audiences to reside alongside the Kurc household, to see the world via their eyes, to inform their story with as a lot honesty and authenticity as attainable. This dedication trickled down into every of our departments, and naturally to the solid. I heard it time and again all through manufacturing: “Thanks for bringing us this story. We’re going to do all the things in our energy to do it justice.” The chorus was fixed, the imaginative and prescient paying homage to my very own.
We filmed the majority of the collection in and round Bucharest, Romania. I arrived just a few days earlier than we kicked off our 123-day shoot, rolling straight from my red-eye to a desk learn — and boy, was it surreal to stroll right into a roomful of tv family members for the primary time! We hugged. We cried. We laughed. They requested questions. I advised tales. I confirmed them photographs. The following day, we visited the Kurc household condominium collectively. James Merifield, our set designer, teared up as he confirmed us round, and all of us acquired actually quiet. I ran my fingers alongside the patterned wallpaper, the etched-glass doorways, the linen napkins on the eating desk. There wasn’t a single element neglected. It felt like we’d stepped again in time. Like my family members had been proper there with us.
On our first day of capturing, I acquired to set early, my abdomen as soon as once more a barrel of butterflies. I used to be handed a name sheet and needed to sit down after I noticed the 250 names on it. I knew the venture had taken on a brand new life, however nonetheless I used to be greatly surprised by how many individuals would put their fingerprint on it. Tommy gave a welcome speech. He referred to as motion. I held my breath, and as I stood behind the screens because the cameras began rolling, I noticed for the primary time what the collection was going to be. The colour, the lighting, the costumes, the set — it was all so stunningly lovely. The scene of my grandfather ready on the Polish embassy in Paris for permission to get dwelling to his household in Poland was simply how I’d imagined it.
Now that the present is out, folks typically ask if there are any huge surprises concerning the adaptation, if there may be something I want we’d completed in another way. I attempt, I actually do, to think about one thing. However reality is, I can’t. I used to be concerned from the writers room to postproduction — I realized a lot within the course of and loved each second of the collaboration. I slept effectively at evening realizing my household’s story was in essentially the most succesful palms.
I suppose if I had been granted one want, I’d convey my grandfather Addy again for a day, so we might watch the present collectively. I’d level out the snakeskin pockets Logan Lerman, who performs Addy, carries — a precise reproduction of the one my grandfather stored — and I’d present him a photograph of his marriage ceremony day, so he might see how exactly Lisa Duncan and her costume workforce re-created the outfits. I’d watch his face as he listened to 2 of his compositions, “Checklist” and “Lullaby,” organized for the collection by the good Rachel Portman and Jon Ehrlich. I’d freeze on the frames of our household cameos, of me and Robert and our two boys ››as Addy sprints down a avenue in Rio to gather a telegram with information from Poland, and of my mom (his center youngster), standing behind him, carrying the real-life brooch his personal mom, Nechuma, as soon as wore, as he waits at a pier for a ship to come back in, carrying the household he hasn’t seen in eight years. I’d inform him what I’ve been advised: that it doesn’t typically occur this manner in Hollywood, that it’s uncommon for such a private venture to get off the bottom. I’d inform him how grateful I’m for Tommy and Erica and for the a whole lot of orbits that collided on the proper time in the appropriate place to be able to make it work. And I’d ask him what he thinks. If he appears like we did the story justice. I’ve a hunch his reply could be sure.
This story first appeared in a June standalone difficulty of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.