'All The Light We Cannot See' Receives Four Emmy Nominations

Summary

Podcast Summary: “All The Light We Cannot See” Receives Four Emmy Nominations

Podcast: All Of It
Host: Alison Stewart (WNYC)
Guest: Shawn Levy (Director)
Date: September 13, 2024

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Episode Overview

This episode spotlights Shawn Levy, the acclaimed director of the Emmy-nominated Netflix series “All the Light We Cannot See,” adapted from Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The conversation delves into Levy’s creative process, the challenges of adaptation, authentic representation, and the series’ resonant themes of war, hope, and human connection. The discussion explores not only the technical artistry behind the show’s Emmy-nominated aspects but also the personal and ethical considerations that shaped its making.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Taking on a Historical and Emotional Adaptation

• Levy discusses preparing for a series rooted in the WWII era:
  • Unlike his work on projects like “Stranger Things,” adapting a narrative set in 1930s-40s France and Germany required extensive research and a commitment to “authenticity.”
  • Immersed himself in film, photographs, and period literature to capture the right atmosphere.
  • Emphasizes striving for “as much authenticity as I could…from casting…through every detail of the production design.” (02:42)

2. Creative Guidance and Influences

• Relied heavily on his production designer, Simon Elliott, for historical nuance.
• Drew inspiration from films such as “The English Patient” and “Saving Private Ryan,” remarking how these influenced his directorial choices but he sought to make “a different kind of story.” (03:40)

3. Life Imitating Art: Filming Amidst Current Events

• Filming in Hungary coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:
  • Many extras cast as French refugees were themselves Ukrainian refugees, shifting West to escape war.
  • “It was haunting…those echoes of history. But it also reaffirmed…the possibility to create a piece of entertainment that was also really timely and resonant in its themes.” (04:51)

4. Authentic and Accessible Blind Representation

• Sought advice from consultant Joe Strechay, who is blind, to ensure accurate depiction:
  • Joe evaluated the set for hazards and advised practical, safe scene adaptations for blind actors (e.g., using twine to mark positions, guiding hand movements for audience clarity).
  • Example: “Joe would come up after a take and point out...the camera doesn't see your feet…let's also use the back of your hand to feel for the door frame so that the audience understands how you are understanding the space.” (06:19)

5. Working with New, Blind Performers

• Actresses playing Marie (Nell Sutton as a child, Aria Mia Loberti as adult) had never acted before and are blind.
• Levy finds “real authenticity” with new actors lacking habits or “artifice.”
  • “You have an absence of trickery, an absence of kind of indicative little tools of the trade…often a performance that feels more visceral and more real.” (08:04)

6. Sound Design as Narrative Device

• Sound vital to the storytelling, reflecting Marie’s experience:
  • “I wanted the soundscape to be as vivid and as dimensional as possible…We dialed up the granular detail of every sound so…the audience could have a vicarious sense of how this heroine is experiencing” her world. (10:22)

7. Directorial Decisions: Leadership and Inclusive Casting

• Faced with the challenge of casting legally blind or low-vision actors for the lead:
  • “That was the biggest decision because I knew it would be the hardest thing to do…But I knew that it would also inform every frame of this story.” (12:01)
• Highlights leadership as the art of inspiring—not commanding—large teams, especially under tight production constraints. (13:16)

8. Father-Daughter Dynamic: Personal Parallels

• Levy, a father of four daughters, drew from personal experience for the intimacy between Marie and her father:
  • “The intimacy and the bonding is done through shared activity, not necessarily through words or lectures…something physical where…father and child…it has a closeness.” (14:49)
  • Shared a humorous and touching story about participating fully in his daughters’ tea parties, embracing the role of “Belle from Beauty and the Beast.” (16:12)

9. Empathy for the Enemy: Portraying Werner

• As a Jewish director, navigating how to guide audiences to empathize with Werner, a German soldier:
  • “It’s one of the great achievements of the book…that you really understand, empathize and sympathize with both characters…how critical it is to see the other as more than a label…” (17:23)
  • Modern parallels: Need for humanism amidst polarizing times.

10. The Enduring Power and Double Edge of Radio

• Both the novel and adaptation underscore radio’s immense role:
  • “We experience something in a more pure and intimate way when the eyes are not distracted, when all it is is sound.” (19:06)
• Radio as both a force for connection and a tool for misinformation.

11. Stunt Work and Disabled Representation

• Combined practical and visual effects for realism (e.g., explosions, combat).
• Lead actress Aria Mia Loberti insisted on performing her own stunts:
  • “I want to do all the stunts myself because no blind performer has ever played the lead in a major production like this. And I want to show everyone that we can do the job…And she did.” (20:43)
  • All stunt work for Marie done by Loberti, including demanding underwater scenes.

12. Adapting a Beloved Novel: Balancing Fidelity and Medium

• Addressed fan concerns about adaptation versus the novel:
  • Cited Anthony Doerr’s support for creative freedom:
    • “Tony said…‘You need to do your thing because your form, your medium is completely different.’”
  • “The book is the mountain…We’re not trying to replicate the mountain. We did a painting of the mountain and that’s how I view this show.” (22:51)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On authenticity:
  “I wanted to tell this story based on this book that I adored…But I wanted to do it with as much authenticity as I could.” – Shawn Levy (02:42)

• On sound as storytelling:
  “We dialed up the granular detail of every sound so that the audience could have a vicarious sense of how this heroine is experiencing…her world.” – Shawn Levy (10:22)

• On the challenge and impact of inclusive casting:
  “The decision to cast, or at least to try my very best to cast low vision or legally blind people for this lead role of Marie, that was the biggest decision because I knew it would be the hardest thing to do…” – Shawn Levy (12:01)

• On empathy across divides:
  “One of the themes of this story is how critical it is to see the other as more than a label…” – Shawn Levy (17:23)

• On adaptation:
  “The book is the mountain that will outlast all of us…We did a painting of the mountain and that’s how I view this show.” – Shawn Levy (22:51)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:11 – Introduction to Shawn Levy and the Netflix adaptation
• 02:42 – Levy on historical preparation and authenticity
• 03:40 – Mentorship, production design, and film influences
• 04:51 – Filming during Ukraine war; real-world echoes
• 06:19 – Blind consultant Joe Strechay’s contributions
• 08:04 – Casting new, blind actors and the authenticity of their performances
• 10:22 – Importance and approach to sound design
• 12:01 – Casting decisions and the importance of representation
• 13:16 – Leadership lessons on set
• 14:49 – Father-daughter relationship and personal influences
• 16:12 – Tea party memory: “full-on…Belle from Beauty and the Beast”
• 17:23 – Navigating audience empathy for Werner, contemporary parallels
• 19:06 – The power of radio in storytelling
• 20:43 – Stunt work, practical effects, and inclusive action scenes
• 22:51 – On adapting the novel and honoring both mediums

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Tone and Style

The conversation maintains a reflective, personal, and respectful tone, blending practical filmmaking discussions with philosophical threads about empathy, representation, and timely relevance. Alison Stewart’s questions are insightful and open, prompting candid, detailed responses from Shawn Levy, who is warm, enthusiastic, and honest about both challenges and rewards.

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This episode is essential listening for fans of the novel or the series, students of adaptation, or anyone interested in the art and ethics of inclusive, resonant storytelling in today’s cultural landscape.

Transcript

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Narrator/Announcer]

Learn more about online [e-mail].

[Alison Stewart]

This is.

All of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Shawn Levy is the director of Deadpool and Wolverine.

It earned $400 million this summer, but.

We talked to Shawn Levy about his labor of love and the adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel all the Light We Cannot See. The series is being recognized with Emmy noms for its cinematography, original score, sound editing and visual effects. The Netflix limited series follows the story of two young people on opposite sides of World War II, brought together by radio. Marie is a young blind woman living on the coast of Nazi occupied France. Her father is missing. Her uncle, part of the underground resistance, has been gone for days. Alone in the house, Marie continues an illegal radio broadcast that helps funnel information to those fighting the Nazis. Among those listening to her is a young German named Werner. Werner.

[Shawn Levy]

Werner. Werner.

[Alison Stewart]

Among those listening to her is a young German man named Werner. He grew up in an orphanage and displayed prodigy like genius for making and fixing radios. He was snatched from the orphanage by Nazis, sent to grueling military training, and given the task to intercept and eliminate broadcasts. And that includes Marie's transmission. But her voice has captured his mind and offers him a glimmer of hope. He has a serious choice to make. When director Shawn Levy joined me on the show to talk about all the light we cannot see, I started by asking him how he prepared differently for this project than other projects.

[Shawn Levy]

Yeah, it was really different. I kind of sometimes joke that technically my show Stranger Things is a period piece as well, but it doesn't really count because I had my adolescence in the 80s, so I had some basis for that moment in history. But this being set in the 30s and 40s and being set In France and in Germany. It was. It was just a, frankly, a delicious deep dive into research, much of which was reading, photographic evidence, film reels. And I just wanted to. I wanted to tell this story based on this book that I adored, like millions of us. But I wanted to do it with, with as much authenticity as I could. And that extended from the casting that you just mentioned all the way through every detail of the production design.

[Alison Stewart]

Who did you reach out to for advice when tackling something like this?

[Shawn Levy]

You know, it's interesting, I guess mentors shift. I've had many in my career and I didn't so much reach. I certainly leane heavily on my production designer, Simon Elliott, who. Who really was so fluent in the design and the nuance of design of these times. He was a major and kind of critical guide through, through this project and beyond that. I revisited certain films that inspired me, whether it was the English Patient or Saving Private Ryan. So while I didn't have to call Spielberg, for instance, I was able to kind of get renewed inspiration from his work. And it also helped hone how I wanted this story to be a different kind of story, even though it shared traits of being a World War II set drama.

[Alison Stewart]

History bumped up against reality. You were filming in Hungary when neighboring Ukraine was invaded by Russian forces. What was it like filming the story about war and refugees and resistance while similar events were playing out so close by?

[Shawn Levy]

Yeah, that was, it was haunting, frankly, because we were filming a big chunk of this in Hungary and we were filming sequences where you have the invasion of Paris by the Nazis. And so it's themes that show refugees, French refugees just flowing west to escape an invading neighbor from the east. And while we were filming those scenes, some of the people who played French extras, French refugees, were themselves Ukrainian refugees who identically had just streamed west to escape a current day invader from the east. So it was. It was kind of astounding, those echoes of history. But it also reaffirmed what I thought might be possible with this project, which was to create a piece of entertainment that was also really timely and resonant in its themes.

[Alison Stewart]

The lead character, Marie, is blind. And we'll talk about the actors who play Marie in a moment. But I wanted to ask you about a consultant who worked on the project. I think it's Joe Streche. Hope I'm saying his last name right.

[Shawn Levy]

That's right. You are saying it exactly right.

[Alison Stewart]

He'd been blind since 19 and he works with creatives to ensure accuracy and authenticity in stories with visually impaired and Blind characters. Sean, what's an example of how he helped shape a scene or a moment in the series?

[Shawn Levy]

I'm going to try and be concise. For one thing, Joe came and basically reviewed our workplace well in advance of the actors to make sure that it was safe. So, for instance, you might normally put down a little sandbag on the ground to tell an actor where to stop for optimal lighting. Joe pointed out, well, that's a tripping hazard for these young girls and women who are themselves blind. Let's use a piece of twine wrapped in tape so it's got a lower profile to the ground. So some of it was just kind of educating us about accessibility and safety in the workplace. But an example in the scene might be, for instance, Aria, who played Marie. She uses her feet a lot to map space. So she might walk a scene and feel the edge of a rug. That would signal to her that the stairs are imminent. Jo would come up after a take and point out to Aria, aria, the camera doesn't see your feet. The camera is framed at your waist. So let's also use the back of your hand to feel for the door frame so that the audience understands how you are understanding the space. So just a real kind of interface between a blind performer and an audience that would be sighted and how to convey one experience to the other.

[Alison Stewart]

Aria is the young woman who plays Marie as a child actor. It's Nell Sutton, I want to say hers first.

[Shawn Levy]

Yes.

[Alison Stewart]

Working with someone who's brand new to film. First of all, what excites you about that? And also, what challenges you about that?

[Shawn Levy]

Yeah, I have worked with a lot of new actors, certainly, usually they're young, their kids, whether it's Stranger Things or the Adam Project or the Night Museum movie, that series. So I enjoy it because when you get someone new, you know you're signing up for a steep learning curve, and it's your job to be this actor's guide as they kind of climb that. That curve, that hill. But what you get as a trade off is you get real authenticity. You have an absence of trickery, an absence of kind of indicative little tools of the trade that, frankly, a more experienced actor might rely on, but which a new actor doesn't know yet. And. And I have found that the result is often a performance that feels more visceral and more real. And that's a beautiful upside.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah. I was talking to Alexander Payne last week about the Holdovers and his lead he found at Deerfield Academy and a similar situation where a young person who doesn't have any bad habits yet. Or habits. I'm saying habits. Let's just call them habits.

[Shawn Levy]

It's habits and it's artifice, and it's all those layers that we as directors often have to strip away. But if you get someone brand new, those layers of artifice and those habits don't exist. And of course, as you alluded to, this was then compounded as a unique experience because nell, who was 7, and Aria, who was a graduate student, both of them had never acted before. So they were complete rookies, but they're also both blind. And so it made the experience even more singular.

[Alison Stewart]

My guest is Shawn Levy. He directed all the Light We Cannot See, which is now streaming on Netflix. There are four episodes. Sound design is really important, obviously, in this series because Marie is blind. The character is blind. She has to. Sound is her guide. We need to understand that. Could you tell us a little bit about what went into the sound design? Some of the questions that came up, some of the answers. Answers you came up with.

[Shawn Levy]

Yeah. Well, I'm glad that that stood out to you, because early on, even though this is a visual medium, it's a television series, I wanted the soundscape to be as vivid and as dimensional as possible because this is how the protagonist is experiencing the world, or at least it's one of the ways. And that way would be heightened by virtue of no sight. So we dialed up the granular detail of every sound so that the audience could have a. Just kind of a vicarious sense of how this heroine is experiencing, say, the fluttering of a leaflet into her window or the crunch of glass under her feet. And we also use sound as a defining principle in selecting props that Marie might have in her room, because suddenly you're picking those key props not based on what they would look like on a windowsill or a desk, but what sound would they make when a breeze comes in? And so every creative decision was made through this kind of sonic lens of subjectivity, given the nature of our protagonist's experience in the world.

[Alison Stewart]

Decisions. Directors have two big jobs. They have many big jobs, but two of the biggest jobs are leadership and decision making. What's a decision you made that maybe was when you really had to sort of mull over that was challenging, that you weren't quite sure, but in the end was the right choice?

[Shawn Levy]

Well, I feel like you've maybe directed before, first of all, because what you just underscored is so rarely, so rarely called out, which is so much of being a director. And the thing they just can't teach you in film school is those two things. The need to be a leader, the need to be decisive on this one. Honestly, it was this fundamental casting decision. I had acquired the rights to this book because I loved it. Then I read the adaptation and I loved it and I knew I didn't want to share and I, I would. I decided to direct them all myself. But then the decision to cast, or at least to try my very best to cast low vision or legally blind people for this lead role of Marie, that was the biggest decision because I knew it would be the hardest thing to do because you're just not finding those actors in the normal, typical ways. And I knew that it would also inform every frame of this storytel. And that's exactly how it turned out. And I guess that's sometimes how it is. The hardest decision becomes the most important.

[Alison Stewart]

When was the time you had to bring the leadership?

[Shawn Levy]

Oh, I get. There's a moment every day. Every day there's a moment where you realize, okay, I don't have nearly enough hours left in the day and I really, really want to get a certain number of shots to tell this story right. And you have to a. You have to not just instantly give up those shots. You have to know when to be tenacious. But then you have to rally your crew and your cast, which can number on the project like this 200 people a day standing on a set and you know, you need them to find another gear. And they're not going to find that gear by being bossed around or bullied. I found they're going to find it most readily if they're inspired and you want to kind of sweep them up into your wave of passion and enthusiasm. And so that's one. Especially when you're shooting outside and the sun is setting and there is no coming back tomorrow. That's a key leadership moment that every director I'm sure is familiar with.

[Alison Stewart]

In all the light we cannot see. There are the big themes of war and there are these big epic scenes, but also there are the sort of the micro tender. It's really important to this story, the relationship between Marie the blind girl and her father, who's played by Mark Ruffalo. You're a girl dad times four. You have four daughters. What is something from your own experience as a father of four girls that helped you work with your actors playing father and daughter?

[Shawn Levy]

Well, for one thing, I knew when I cast Mark because he had done my movie, the Atom project, he brings so much innate, soulful warmth. So you're halfway there if you have Mark Ruffalo playing a dad in your movie, I confess. But for me, the book gave us this gift, which is this notion of a father who builds a wooden model of a city so that his daughter, who is blind, can become empowered and navigate the world with confidence. And it reminded me of so many moments in my own experience as a parent where the intimacy and the bonding is done through shared activity, not necessarily through words or lectures or life lessons, but through something physical where the proximity to each other coexisting in the same space, father and child, it has a closeness. And you're experiencing that connection through a shared doing and not always necessarily through what is said. And I think that's a beautiful thing in that relationship in real life. And it's something I wanted to bring across in this show as well.

[Alison Stewart]

If you feel comfortable sharing what's something that one of your daughters got you to do, you know, one of those shared experiences, cross legs and tea party bows in the hair that you're like, all right, I'm just doing this to make them. We're making a memory here.

[Shawn Levy]

Yeah. Well, I remember early on, I was a newish, youngish parent. I think I had two, two of my daughters then, and my wife had to go across the country to help care for a sick grandparent. And within 40 minutes of my wife's absence, I was full on, dressed as a princess. The girls did my hair, the girls did my makeup. The girls did my nails. And, you know, we're sitting cross legged on an uncomfortable floor having a tea party, and I am full on, like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Photographic evidence does exist. Thankfully not on the Internet.

[Alison Stewart]

My guest is Shawn Levy. The name of the miniseries is all the Light We Cannot See. It is streaming now on Netflix. There is a huge challenge in this story. I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but for people who aren't familiar, Werner, the young man, is in the Nazi forces, and there's this hard line to walk, to ask people to, on some level, understand his life and the choices he has to make. You are.

You are Jewish.

What was your approach on how to lead the audience to at least accept Werner?

[Shawn Levy]

Yeah, it's one of the great achievements of the book that you really understand, empathize and sympathize with both characters, Marie and Werner. And I guess I took that as a bit of a north star because, of course, what the Nazis did was abhorrent. Just as the resurgence of antisemitism currently is repugnant but this is a story of two people. And in fact, I always thought, I always felt strongly that one of the themes of this story is how critical it is to see the other as more than a label, as more than the uniform on their back or the side of the border they're born on. And this is obviously a very timely reminder that we need to fight more than ever, frankly, because our culture and our times are so polarized right now. We need to vigilantly hold on to our humanism and that ability to see somebody else as a fellow human and not as an easy label that is reductive and not the whole story of who someone is. So I found that the book was a beautiful reminder of this, and I tried to honor that in carrying that theme through the show and through the portrayal of Berner's character.

[Alison Stewart]

There's so much about the power of radio which, of course, made us all geek out here. Why do you think radio and audio is powerful?

[Shawn Levy]

Well, I'm glad that you all geeked out there because I was intrigued. I was so fascinated when Anthony Doerr, the novelist, visited the set. I asked what the starting point of the story was, and it wasn't the French and the German. It wasn't a blind character. It was radio. It was the power. And you said it beautifully in your intro. It's. It's almost like we experience something in a more pure and intimate way when the eyes are not distracted, when all it is is sound. And it feels so private and so intimate, the connection we make with pure sound. And this, of course, is what radio captures and exploits, and it's this magnificent tool of enlightenment it has been throughout history. It still is, but it's also, as you pointed out, a very pernicious tool of misinformation. And to quote both the book and the show, where. Where you can be bombarded with opinion rather than fact. And so I. I thought that there were some really interesting reminders about the power of radio and about the double edge of that power.

[Alison Stewart]

I'm going to go to the other end of the spectrum. Stunts. There are a lot of stunts in this film, a lot to see. Explosions, gunfires, fires, bombs, water. Tell me a little bit about the stunt work for the show. Something you specifically, something you knew you had to really get right.

[Shawn Levy]

Well, I'm gonna tell you two, and I'll be quick. I knew what I had to get right is the coexistence of visual effects and practical effects. So, for instance, when you have a character without spoiling anything is running along the rampart of Sam Alo during a bombing raid. There are many digital explosions taking down buildings, but there are many real explosions. And I make sure to use practical effects wherever possible because it declares the bar of photorealism that the visual effects have to match. So you need that seamless blend. And then the one that really shook me and impressed me was when we shot the sequence in a grotto where a Nazi officer named Von Rumpel is threatening and being quite violent with Marie. Aria came up to me early on, and she said, I know that the way you normally do this is a stunt double, but I think it's really important if you can keep me safe. I want to do all the stunts myself because no blind performer has ever played the lead in a major production like this. And I want to show everyone that we can do the job and we can do all of the job. And she did. Every stunt for the Marie character is done by Aria herself.

[Alison Stewart]

Wow, that fight underwater, that's intense.

[Shawn Levy]

Yeah, yeah, it was intense. And we did keep her safe. We rehearsed it extensively, but it was so important to Aria and to me, in turn, show not disability, but the capacity to give a full performance. And really, that's what Aria did.

[Alison Stewart]

This is obviously adapted from the Pulitzer Prize winning novel. And it's interesting, the fan reviews online. There's a group that never read the book, and they're just in love with the series. And then there are some people who read the book who are like, hey, this isn't the book I read. What were your conversations like with your screenwriter, with your team about, wow, we have a beloved book, but we also, we are filmmakers and we don't have time to do 500 pages worth of a book.

[Shawn Levy]

Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. There is, you know, people who have not read the book. The reaction has been incredible. And we've gotten a lot of really positive reactions from book fans as well. But they definitely are nitpicking the areas where we did what our job was, which is an adaptation. We lucked out early because Anthony Doerr, who I approached before we wrote a word of this and before I hired Stephen Knight, the screenwriter, to do the writing, Tony said, look, this is a different medium. I work alone in my basement and I spent a decade doing it. To make this book, you need to do your thing because your form, your medium is completely different. So he was really empowering and encouraging to retain the heart of these characters and themes, but to not feel handcuffed to every event and every outcome and our Screenwriter Steven Knight worded it beautifully the other day. He said, the book is the mountain. The book is the mountain that will outlast all of us. It will always be there. We're not trying to replicate the mountain. We did a painting of the mountain and that's how I view this show.

[Alison Stewart]

That was my conversation with Shawn Levy, director of the Emmy nominated series all the Light We Cannot See. And that is all of it for today. All of it is produced by Andrea Duncan Mao, Kate Hines, Jordan Loff, Simon Close, Elle Malik Anderson and Luke Green. Megan Ryan is the head of Live Radio. Our engineers are Juliana Fonda and Jason Isaac. Luscious Jackson does our music if you missed any segments this week, catch up by listening to our podcast, available on your podcast platform of choice. If you like what you hear, please leave us a nice rating. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you and I will meet you back here next time.

[Narrator/Announcer]

A BetterHelp ad Louis Capaldi partnered with BetterHelp to get word out about how important therapy can be.

[Louis Capaldi]

I struggle most weeks to like get up, get myself up and ready and go to therapy or, you know, whatever. Like even like opening the laptop to talk to my therapist sometimes can be really difficult, but I do it because I realize how important it is for me to continue to feel good. I felt the best I felt in a long time through therapy.

[Narrator/Announcer]

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