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Logan Lerman has been an actor for more than two decades, starting at age 5, and he\u2019s been sent a number of scripts about the Holocaust. They read as exploitative to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s always rubbed me the wrong way,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018No, that doesn\u2019t feel right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But the story of the Shoah he now stars in, \u201cWe Were the Lucky Ones,\u201d felt different to the performer best known for his work in films like \u201cThe Perks of Being a Wallflower\u201d (2012) and \u201cFury\u201d (2014).<\/p>\n
Based on the novel of the same title by Georgia Hunter, the eight-episode series premieres Thursday on Hulu. It tracks the members of the Kurc family as they are dispersed throughout Eastern Europe, where they live, and elsewhere when the Nazis invade. Lerman, 32, stars as Addy Kurc, a musician who has been living in Paris and finds himself unable to get home to Radom, Poland. His journey takes him to Casablanca and eventually Rio de Janeiro, all while he is unaware of the fates of his beloved siblings and parents. As the title would imply, this is less a story of loss than it is of survival.<\/p>\n
While Hunter\u2019s book is fictional, the Kurcs are named for and based on her maternal grandfather\u2019s family, and their sagas were derived from her extensive research into their experiences. A co-executive producer of the series, she shared that background with Lerman as he set out to play Addy, who is based on her grandfather. But the actor reached into his own personal history as well, channeling his own grandfather, who was also a Jewish refugee during World War II. The result is a performance that combines both family histories, paying tribute to Hunter and Lerman\u2019s ancestry in the process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI also wanted to do it for the reason that I was like, \u2018Oh I want to show my grandfather this,\u201d Lerman said in a video call.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Max Lerman, Lerman\u2019s paternal grandfather, ended up in China after fleeing Germany. He died last year, but his grandchild grew up hearing his tales.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was always a blur to me, because I didn\u2019t know what was real or what was fake and made up for the imaginative bedtime story I was told as a kid,\u201d Lerman said.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cLearning about it as I got older, it was complicated, emotionally understanding it, the emotional truth of it for my grandfather.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Lerman said he thought about his grandfather throughout filming and incorporated some of his mannerisms into his performance. It\u2019s the kind of deeply felt tie to the material the creators of \u201cWe Were the Lucky Ones\u201d looked for when they cast the Kurcs, all played by Jewish actors. (Other stars include Joey King, Robin Weigert, Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Lior Ashkenazi.)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t prescriptive about what Jewishness meant,\u201d the showrunner Erica Lipez said. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting to have a mix of people who are religious, those who are not, those who don\u2019t practice, those who have family connections but haven\u2019t been raised in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lerman said he generally doesn\u2019t feel strongly about whether Jewish parts are played by Jewish actors, but \u201cI understand that people will connect with it differently knowing that, though.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lerman has played explicitly Jewish characters only a few times before, including in a 2016 film adaptation of Philip Roth\u2019s novel \u201cIndignation,\u201d directed by James Schamus. Most recently he starred in the Amazon Prime Video series \u201cHunters,\u201d a revenge fantasy about a group fighting Nazis in the 1970s. While \u201cHunters,\u201d which ran two seasons and ended last year, covers some of the same thematic material as \u201cWe Were the Lucky Ones\u201d \u2014 including the lingering scars of the Holocaust \u2014 Lerman saw the two as worlds apart, given the campy tone of the Amazon series.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was looking to do something very different,\u201d he said. (He added that \u201cHunters,\u201d with its silliness and over-the-top violence, was much less grandfather-friendly.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Because Addy was such a meaningful character for Hunter, who was present for much of the shoot, Lipez said that they looked for someone who would \u201ctake great care\u201d with playing him. They also knew they wanted to hire an actor with musical talent, who could play Addy\u2019s real-life compositions for the show. While Lerman isn\u2019t known as a musician, he plays the piano and has \u201cmusic in his DNA,\u201d according to the director and executive producer Thomas Kail, best known for directing \u201cHamilton\u201d on Broadway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Hunter knew her grandfather only later in his life, after he had changed his name to Eddy Courts, and by the time she was 10 or 11 years old, he was \u201cquite sick\u201d with Parkinson\u2019s, she said. She didn\u2019t learn about his wartime experiences until after he died. Still, she shared with Lerman details that wouldn\u2019t make it onto the screen in an explicit way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that he made everything in his house by hand, that he only spoke French at the dinner table, his little mannerisms,\u201d Hunter said. \u201cI think it was really important to Logan to peel back the layers on his character and understand who he was. It was so important to me that Logan was open to that kind of information, because it just meant he cared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hunter said he nailed the portrayal, adding that there were similarities between the actor and her grandfather. \u201cThey share so much of that soulfulness, that charisma, that confidence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Lerman said that Hunter\u2019s presence on set yielded \u201ca different level of connection to the material\u201d than he had previously experienced on a job. But he never felt constrained by having Hunter and her mother on set \u2014 both had cameos in the series \u2014 to watch him portray their ancestor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Instead, he was reassured by them that he could bring his interpretation to the material, including the sarcasm and humor of his own grandfather. The performance stands as a homage to both men, and it was made more poignant still when Lerman\u2019s grandfather died, at 95, a week after the production ended.<\/p>\n
\u201cI talked to him about this a lot,\u201d Lerman said. \u201cAnd I was really excited for him to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n