All The Light We Cannot See Interview: Shawn Levy & Steven Knight On Adapting The Complex WWII Novel

Based on Anthony Doerr’s beloved 2014 novel, Netflix’s adaptation of All the Light We Cannot See has been dominating the streaming charts with its World War II-centric tale. The story takes place during the real-life Battle of Saint-Malo and follows Marie-Laure Leblanc (newcomer Aria Mia Loberti) and Werner Pfennig (Dark‘s Louis Hoffmann), two adolescents whose paths cross in unexpected ways. The movie is directed by Shawn Levy (of Stranger Things and Free Guy fame) and written by Steven Knight (whose best work includes Peaky Blinders).

All the Light We Cannot See also stars Mark Ruffalo as Marie-Laure’s father, Daniel LeBlanc, and Hugh Laurie (House, M.D.) as her uncle Etienne. Other cast members include Lars Eidinger as Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel, Nell Sutton as the young version of Marie-Laure, and Andrea Deck (Homeland) as Sandrina. Despite negative reviews from critics, audiences have been loving the adaptation, with the series debuting at #1 on several countries’ Netflix charts and remaining there for the last week.

Screen Rant interviewed director Shawn Levy and screenwriter Steven Knight about their approach to All The Light We Cannot See, the casting of Aria Mia Loberti as Marie, and the shocking experience of filming as the invasion of Ukraine was taking place.

Shawn Levy & Steven Knight Talk All The Light We Cannot See

Screen Rant: All The Light We Cannot See is an incredibly moving World War II. Shawn, I think this miniseries proves that you are not limited by any genre. What was it about the novel that you connected with and that you knew how to approach this project?

Shawn Levy: Well, the truth is that even though I got known for a certain kind of storytelling, I’ve always wanted to try varying kinds of stories and tones. And so this was an opportunity to do a historic drama, but I thought that – even as it was stretching me into a new direction, different style, different aesthetics, very different approach to production, design, and cinematography – it was still at its heart a character story. It was still a character story with hope as one of its central themes.

And if you’ve seen anything I’ve made, I like to do different tones. Sometimes comedy, sometimes action, sometimes genre, but that streak of humanism is really important to me because I want to believe that even in the midst of truly s–tty circumstances, there is the possibility of humanity and of connection, and that those are make or break values in how we navigate this world. And that’s ultimately the theme of this piece.

Steven, you are the best of the best. You adapted this novel into a screenplay by Anthony Doerr. Can you talk about working with him as a collaborator? Did he provide any notes for the script, and did you lean on him for insight into the novel?

Steven Knight: I believe that the text, the novel itself, is the thing. To quote Shakespeare, “The play is the thing.” This is the object that needs to be interpreted. And so there wasn’t a great deal of back and forth between Anthony and myself. It was a handover of the material.

Then the important thing for me was that I needed to know the characters he created well enough to be able to set them free to do things that they didn’t do in the book, so that you can be confident that is what Marie would’ve done, that is what Werner would’ve done. And if you feel safe in that, then I think you are liberated, because I think an adaptation shouldn’t just be taking the bones from this creature and placing it in a different light It’s got to have its own life, its own energy, and its own oxygen.

Taking on something like this is a challenge because how will people respond, people who loved the book. But to be honest, the reaction I was most concerned about was Anthony’s, and fortunately, thankfully, he loves it. So, there we are. So that makes us happy.

This was an extensive casting search for Marie. Aria Mia Loberti knocked it out of the park. She is amazing. What qualities did she bring to the role of Marie that made her the perfect choice for the role?

Shawn Levy: Aria was kind of a miracle of a find. We saw over 1,000 auditions, many from people who were low vision or blind. Aria is legally blind, had never acted before, and had never even auditioned before. But she’s super smart. She has an inner strength that is formidable. She has a physical quality that jumps off the screen, just luminous eyes. She knew what she didn’t know, and she wanted to learn what she didn’t know.

And the truth is, whether it’s in acting, in journalism, in any line of work, if you start from a place of, “Okay, I don’t know how to do this. I’m telling you upfront, I don’t know. Help me get great.” That’s really a great place to start, and that’s exactly how Aria started our relationship. It opened up this corridor of honesty between she and I and, little by little, she learned the job while she was doing the job, which is no small feat. And I agree, I think the performance is incredible.

Steven, the core of this is really a father-daughter love story between Mark Ruffalo’s character, Daniel, and Marie. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Steven Knight: Yeah, I think that is the heart of the book, you’re dead right. And it’s a relationship. You don’t have to have been in a father-daughter relationship to understand love, because love is love. But, there’s a particular ordinariness about the exchanges between father and daughter. And it is, the thing to remember is that you are joining two characters and they’re living their lives. There’s not going to be huge amounts of emotion, empathy, sympathy, it’s just people living their lives. But, what the book gives as an absolute gift is the models that Daniel makes for his daughter to help her navigate her world. So he makes a model of the towns that she’s in and she finds her way with her fingers.

There could not be a stronger and more poignant metaphor for what not just a father, a parent will do for their child, which is what you’re doing is you are trying to teach them how to get around, how to navigate, how to live their lives. And to have that object, which was made by hand by the father, an object of love between two characters who are having an ordinary conversation, is an absolute gift for a writer because the work has been done by the carpentry in the model.

Shawn, you shot this in Budapest. You were making a series about a country that was getting invaded by another country from the East, while an actual country was getting invaded by another country from the East. You saw this in real-time happening on set. Can you talk about that profound experience?

Shawn Levy: Yeah, when you’re making a show about the evil that humans can do to each other, and while you’re making it, you’re seeing an example of that kind of aggression, it’s surreal and very, it just hits you hard. Particularly with us, because we’re filming scenes based on true events where the Germans invaded Paris, and in a single day you have hundreds of thousands – in fact, I think over a million people – just walk out on foot. Some of the extras playing Parisian refugees were themselves Ukrainian refugees who had left Kiev due to the invasion. The way that, literally, I’m telling this story using people who are living an echo of that history in real-time? That was just very impactful, and something I’ll never forget.

I also want to talk quickly about the performance of Hugh Laurie. He’s phenomenal. What did he bring to the role of Etienne that wasn’t on the page?

Shawn Levy: What do you think as the person who put down everything on the page?

Steven Knight: Well, no. When you get a talent like Hugh Laurie who he will take what you give and then grow it, and expand it, and make it more, and make it him as well, there are, as with any great actor, there are elements of Etienne that you just know are his. They are authentic. We were very, very pleased that he said yes to this.

Shawn Levy: He also has such a presence, the voice, the eyes. Plus he committed to this whole look with that beard and all of it. And, given that Etienne in the book and the show is this war hero who has been locked up inside his own trauma since the 1st World War, and slowly comes out of that wound, that shell, I just love taking a powerhouse like Hugh Laurie, but starting him up in a place of fragility, and slowly seeing that badass hero and that strength emerge.

About All The Light We Cannot See

Directed by Levy and written by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders), the series follows Marie-Laure (Aria Mia Loberti), a blind French girl, and her father, Daniel LeBlanc (Mark Ruffalo), as they flee German-occupied Paris while guarding a legendary diamond that they must keep from falling into the hands of the Nazis.