This story about Bel Powley and “A Small Light” first appeared in the limited series/TV movie issue of TheWrap awards magazine.
Like many of us, Bel Powley read “The Diary of a Girl” by Anne Frank when she was at school. But she was less familiar with the woman responsible for the newspaper’s global conscience: Miep Gies. Otto Frank’s secretary, Gies, helped hide the Frank family from the Nazis for two years in Amsterdam and kept Anne’s diary safe after the family was arrested in 1945.
“I know a lot about this part of the story, the great historical and political background, but I didn’t know anything about Miep or the Dutch resistance,” Powley said. So playing Gies in the National Geographic limited series “A Small Light” was an overwhelming experience, but also deeply rewarding. “It’s very rare in one’s career that everything falls into place for her,” said the actress, who broke out in 2015 with the acclaimed independent film “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” “This was a job where every box was checked. So I’m trying to absorb this moment. It could be another 20 years before I enjoy my work as much again.”
What made you want to do “A Small Light”?
BEL POWLEY Oh my gosh, so many things. I am Jewish, so I feel personally connected to this part of the story. But in the past of my career, I’ve steered away from period pieces because I often feel quite disconnected from them. But when I read the pilot for this, I was struck by how contemporary it felt, how contemporary Miep felt. She was a very modern woman for the time. But also, it was the tone that the showrunners [Tony Phelan and Joan Rater] We were going, where we spoke in a modern language. It just has this looser, more naturalistic, less bound feel.
There has been a lot going on about the Holocaust, Anne, and World War II. And in my opinion, a lot of it is told from the point of view of men: men at war, men in the trenches. Or it will be heartbreaking stories about the camps. Those are incredibly important stories to tell, but they are the stories we know so well. What I found so attractive about this version of this part of the story was that it has a lightness about it. He just felt very human, not just like he’d been taken out of a textbook.
That also caught my attention, that no matter how heroic Miep was —and that is undeniable— she was an ordinary woman and she appears here without a sanctity filter. And Anne Frank is a fickle teenager in love who quarrels with her sister and her mother.
Exactly. You know, people still had to navigate their marriages during this time, people still had to raise their children. Anne was probably going through the most intense moment anyone goes through. The age of 13 to 15 is literally when you are transitioning from a girl to a woman. It’s also a coming-of-age story for Miep, who is a young woman in her early 20s. We were trying to get people to think about this part of the story and the parallels to the present by focusing on really relatable attributes.
This is the first TV project in which you are the star. You are the face of the show, in advertisements and billboards. How did you feel?
Scary. And exciting. I felt a great responsibility going into this show because yes, I was the lead. But also, it was a great responsibility because [I’m playing] a real person, and it was a very intense part of history that means a lot to so many people. So, yes, I felt pressure. I think maybe the fact that Miep was an ordinary woman made it a little easier for me to put myself in the shoes of this real person because she’s so relatable. And that, by the way, is how she wanted it. She toured the world after the war and would end her talk with her mantra, which is where the show’s title comes from: No one should think that she has to be special to help others. Anyone, even an ordinary housewife, a teenager or a secretary, can turn on a small light in a dark room.