Bel Powley “didn’t know anything” when she was cast as Dutch Resistance heroine Miep Gies in “A Small Light,” the new 6-episode NatGeo and Disney + series.
In 1942 Amsterdam when the Nazis took began rounding up Jews to send to death camps, Otto Frank’s family went into hiding in a hidden attic above his business they called the Annex. Their story became known after the war when Otto, the family’s sole survivor after they were discovered, published his daughter’s “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
Anne’s diary was found and saved by Miep Gies (pronounced Meep Geez) who had worked for Otto and kept them fed when they hid in the Annex. If discovered, she would have been executed on the spot.
“Obviously I had read the ‘Diary of Anne Frank’ when I was younger, kind of educationally,” Powley said in a Zoom interview. “And I know a lot about this part of history. But I didn’t really know anything about Miep Gies. So I had a lot of learning to do.
“And the more I discovered what she accomplished, I was astounded and impressed, just in awe of this incredible women. She’s an inspiration and I feel very honored to have played her.”
“A Small Light” begins in the early 1930s, before war and occupation, where the Miep we see is not a revered saint, much less a portrait of courage but pretty much a party-hearty person.
“When she was younger, she was a party girl. She loved dancing. She liked to go drinking with her friends. She really was,” Powley, 31, learned, “an ordinary person in quite extraordinary circumstances. I felt very connected to her, just as a young woman, immediately.”
Which is why there’s humor and sexuality in the darkness of “Small Light.”
“What would be the point by putting someone on a pedestal and making like a dusty, sepia-toned version?” Powley asked. “We’re showing the story in a very relatable young woman who just was put in an insane circumstance and did incredible things that’s going to make people think, ‘What would I do if I was in that situation?’
“And that’s the point. If we’re going to rehash this part of history, then let’s do it in a different way. Let’s do it in a way that makes us think about the current situation of the world where we live in the biggest refugee crisis the world has ever seen.
“There are more displaced people now than there were during World War II. So it couldn’t be a better time to hold a mirror up and think, ‘What should I do?”
“A Small Light” airs the first two episodes Monday at 9 p.m. on NatGeo and streams the next day on Disney+