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00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - Hi, I'm Sean Levy, the director and executive producer

00:08 of "All the Light We Cannot See",

00:10 a new limited series based on this man's

00:13 Pulitzer Prize winning bestseller,

00:15 "All the Light We Cannot See".

00:17 - And hi, I'm Anthony Doerr.

00:18 I wrote the novel "All the Light We Cannot See"

00:20 that Sean made this amazing series out of for Netflix.

00:23 - This material is sort of hard to summarize

00:25 because it's quite epic and the sprawl of it

00:28 is part of what appealed to me

00:30 and I think to millions of readers.

00:32 Set in World War II, the story follows the path

00:36 of two young people, a blind French girl named Marie Laure,

00:41 who with her father Daniel have to leave Paris

00:45 when the Nazis invade France and they go to live

00:48 with family in Saint Malo, a coastal town in Brittany

00:52 on the edge of France and it intercuts between Marie

00:56 and the young German boy named Werner,

00:58 an orphan who is taken from an orphanage as a young kid

01:03 and recognized to have a genius with radios

01:05 and of course, he who controls the airwaves

01:08 controls a lot of power and so while the Nazis

01:12 want to indoctrinate him and use his talents,

01:14 he resists and tries somehow and succeeds

01:18 to keep his soul pure and it's about

01:21 these intersecting narratives.

01:23 - Oh gosh, I think there's so many relevant things

01:25 about this project that I hope as readers watch,

01:28 I'm sorry, as viewers watch what readers felt

01:31 in the novel about this new technology

01:34 coming into the world, radio, and how it was used

01:36 both as a tool of control and disinformation

01:39 and as a tool of resistance and creativity.

01:42 I think you can see both characters exploring that

01:45 and I hope viewers will feel that's what we're dealing

01:47 with right now, all these new technologies

01:49 really disrupting power structures in the world

01:52 and how do we address them.

01:53 I think it's also about seeing into the soul

01:56 of your enemy and understanding that there's humans

01:59 on both sides of conflict, that it's too simplistic

02:02 to say, oh, this side's wrong, this side is right,

02:05 that in a huge conflict like the Second World War,

02:07 there are so many little stories about humans,

02:11 these kids that just want to be curious,

02:13 they just want to learn, that are swept up

02:15 in this enormous thing beyond their control.

02:17 - I think it's also, I mean, certainly we see now

02:20 with social media the fact that technologies

02:23 that connect people can also divide people.

02:26 And this book, this story is very much about that idea

02:29 and I think we've seen that very evident

02:32 in our current era.

02:34 We're also, we were making this in Hungary in 2022

02:39 when once again, tragically history repeated itself

02:43 and a neighboring country invaded Ukraine

02:47 and we dealt with millions of people fleeing

02:50 for their lives and reacting to a circumstance

02:54 not of their choosing.

02:55 And so the dark side of human nature,

02:58 it never leaves us and we need to look at it

03:01 and I think we need to let the light in

03:04 if you'll allow the analogy, which is fitting

03:07 for this title, but just looking at the persistence

03:10 of hope and hopefully the persistence of humanity

03:14 in the face of inhumanity.

03:17 Adaptations are hard, right?

03:18 We can kind of start with that reality.

03:21 It helps when you have a partner as we did with Netflix

03:25 where there was no mandate on number of episodes,

03:28 running time, literally we were able,

03:30 thanks to the flexibility at Netflix,

03:33 we were able to say to Stephen Knight, our screenwriter,

03:36 it can be three episodes, it can be eight.

03:39 Make it as long as this story wants it to be.

03:42 And ultimately it ended up being four episodes

03:44 and I think that our goal and our kind of metric

03:48 in what to keep and what to lose was do right by this novel

03:52 because there's a lot of book fans, I think you're one.

03:55 I'm one.

03:56 I came to this as a fan.

03:58 So I was gonna be goddamn sure to honor this source material

04:03 and that meant character rich, epic tapestry,

04:08 authentic to the times and as rich with ideas and feelings

04:13 as Anthony's book was.

04:15 There were things like the character Friedrich

04:18 that didn't make, who were in early drafts of the script

04:20 and ultimately I should add, the other thing we wanted,

04:23 the other thing that was always on our mind

04:24 was Anthony's book with its short chapters

04:28 and cross-cutting of these two narratives, it's kinetic.

04:33 And I didn't want one of these shows,

04:36 and we've all seen them where it's longer

04:38 than it needs to be, less relentless and captivating

04:42 than we want it to be.

04:44 I wanted it to be dense storytelling

04:46 and anything that didn't serve that engine was suspect

04:50 and some of it survived but most of it didn't.

04:53 - Sean and his set designer Simon

04:56 did such an extraordinary job with the details

04:58 of the period and that was so moving to me

05:01 'cause so much of the research of writing a novel

05:03 is like what does the kitchen look like?

05:04 What's in her dresser?

05:06 Does a blind girl have any support in France in 1938

05:09 when she's growing up?

05:10 And every set, when you walk into them

05:13 and when you see them on the screen,

05:14 you're just transported into that world.

05:17 Like Madame Monnique's kitchen is just so alive.

05:19 You can see just the decades of black char

05:23 on all of her pots and that stuff is so moving to me

05:27 'cause it takes so much effort,

05:28 such a keen eye for detail that Sean

05:31 and his whole team brought to the sets.

05:32 - And you do that, by the way, for two reasons.

05:34 You do it for the viewer

05:35 because they can feel that authenticity

05:37 but you're also doing it for your actors

05:39 because when your actors are sitting in these rooms

05:42 that feel of that time, it transports them to that time.

05:46 And so it just helps the reality

05:47 of what all of us are working towards.

05:49 Yeah, early on in pre-production,

05:51 I had to make a choice about how to approach casting

05:55 and specifically the casting of Marie,

05:57 who's a character who is blind.

05:59 And I just had this very strong feeling

06:02 that it should be played by someone

06:05 who has lived that authentic experience.

06:07 And so we sent out a global open casting call.

06:11 I don't think I've ever done it quite that wide

06:14 and quite that loudly

06:16 because you're looking for a needle in a haystack.

06:18 It's not like there are agencies

06:20 that represent hundreds of low vision and blind actresses.

06:24 - Multiple countries.

06:25 - Yes, we looked in multiple countries

06:27 and we got hundreds upon hundreds of submissions,

06:30 one of which was from this PhD student,

06:34 this Fulbright scholar who laid down a reading.

06:39 And it's not just her acting debut.

06:40 This was her audition debut.

06:42 Aria has never even auditioned.

06:46 And somehow there was a presence to her

06:49 and an intelligence to her

06:52 that came through in the midst

06:53 of a numbing number of auditions.

06:56 And I brought her in again.

06:58 And then I talked to her over Zoom again and again.

07:00 And I think that Aria just, she loved the book.

07:04 This book was, as I'm sure you know, Anthony,

07:06 very meaningful to the blind community when it came out.

07:08 And so Aria had been a fan of the book.

07:10 And the day that I told Aria she got the lead in this

07:13 was a day I'll never forget.

07:16 The portrayal of blindness, and please jump in, Tony,

07:18 if I fail to touch on something important,

07:21 the book does it really, really well.

07:24 And the book was based on your own experience and research.

07:28 But when you cast a blind young woman to play the lead,

07:32 you're getting the benefit of her lived experience.

07:35 So for instance, the book might describe

07:38 Marie goes up to the couch

07:40 and feels the edge before sitting down.

07:43 Well, Aria would rehearse that scene and say,

07:46 "Well, how long have I been in this room?

07:48 "Because if I live in this house

07:50 "and I've sat on that couch 500 times,

07:53 "and if I don't live with anyone who could move objects,

07:58 "I don't need to feel where the couch is

08:00 "because I've mapped the space through my experience."

08:03 That's just one of hundreds of things

08:07 that I learned from Aria and gave the show this authenticity

08:12 that frankly, some people might miss the tropes

08:15 of how blindness have been portrayed

08:17 in films and television, because I can't name a time

08:20 where a blind girl and a blind young woman

08:23 are playing a blind character at two different ages

08:26 and representing their own experience in this way.

08:28 And so that's just one example where the book got it right,

08:32 but now we're collaborating,

08:33 which is what you hope happens with your cast,

08:35 where it's a partnership.

08:36 And Aria is teaching me about the portrayal

08:41 of that experience that I can only guess at,

08:43 we can only guess at,

08:45 empathetic however we might want to be,

08:47 but we don't live it.

08:48 So to work with someone who has was invaluable.

08:51 - Yeah, we shouldn't forget Nell either,

08:53 who was seven years old and plays the younger Marie.

08:57 She's probably on screen maybe 20% of the time as Marie.

09:00 - But memorably.

09:01 - And she is phenomenal.

09:02 Oh my gosh, completely blind and so moving.

09:06 Every time she's on screen working with Mark,

09:08 she was just like, they had this amazing,

09:09 really touching fatherly bond together.

09:13 He was so kind after, as soon as Sean would stop rolling,

09:16 he's always helping her down off whatever she's standing on,

09:18 helping her back to her family.

09:19 It was so sweet.

09:21 And to your other question about metaphorically,

09:22 of course, I'm playing with that so much in the novel.

09:25 And I think Sean executes that beautifully.

09:27 Werner in many ways is the less capable character.

09:30 You have to walk with Marie, with Aria,

09:33 you have to walk this really careful line

09:35 because she's extremely capable.

09:38 So you want to honor her disability almost as an ability.

09:41 She's really quite capable.

09:43 And the moral blindness that Werner's a big part of,

09:46 I think comes through really nicely in the film.

09:48 In many ways, he's the blind character until the end.

09:51 - Switching gears now to "Deadpool 3", what is happening?

09:56 - Well, like the rest of our industry,

09:58 or at least large swaths of it, we are paused.

10:02 We were halfway through filming "Deadpool",

10:06 co-starring Wolverine.

10:08 It was a joy every day.

10:10 And that chemistry is, I have to say, spoiler alert,

10:13 it is as relentlessly awesome as we had all hoped it would be.

10:18 But we are halfway through filming, we shut down our crew,

10:23 and the rest of us are awaiting a fair and equitable deal

10:27 that ends these strikes and puts our industry,

10:29 and certainly inclusive of our movie, back at work.

10:32 I would say this, when making "Deadpool",

10:34 I, again, I spoke about this earlier,

10:36 I only know how to make something that I love.

10:39 And so long before I loved Ryan Reynolds, I loved "Deadpool".

10:44 I love "Deadpool".

10:45 "Deadpool 1" is, to me, like a perfect movie.

10:49 And so I was not gonna mess with the DNA of that franchise.

10:53 Our movie is raw, audacious, very much R-rated.

10:58 We went to great lengths to not shoot it on sound stages

11:03 with digital environments.

11:04 The internet has proven that

11:06 by revealing pictures of our shoot.

11:08 Thank you, internet.

11:09 But no, we wanted something that felt grounded, real.

11:14 But you put Hugh Jackman in his most iconic character,

11:18 alongside Ryan Reynolds in his most iconic character.

11:22 I would say it's more a descendant of "Midnight Run"

11:27 and "48 Hours" and "Plane, Trains, Automobiles"

11:30 than it is a descendant of "Airplane".

11:33 (upbeat music)

11:36 [MUSIC]

All The Light We Cannot See | Deadline Studio at TIFF

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