All The Light We Cannot See Interview: Stars On Preparing For Their Intense WW2 Era Roles

Netflix’s All the Light We Cannot See is adapted from Anthony Doerr’s novel of the same name and takes place in the midst of World War II. The series focuses on two teenagers, Marie-Laure LeBlanc (Aria Mia Loberti) and Werner Pfenning (Dark‘s Louis Hofmann), who find hope despite the despair that surrounds them. Marie-Laure is a blind girl in Nazi-occupied France, while Werner is a German boy in the Nazi army.

The show also stars Lars Eidinger as Reinhold von Rumpel, Hugh Laurie as Etienne LeBlanc, and Mark Ruffalo as Daniel LeBlanc. Though All the Light We Cannot See honors its source material, several changes were made to fit the structure of the series. Some important changes include a pivot to more protagonists, making more space for differing perspectives, and sprinkling in more hope in the final act than the novel did.

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All The Light We Cannot See’s Louis Hofmann Already Starred In One Of Netflix’s Most Underrated Shows

Louis Hofmann may seem the latest acting revelation playing Werner in All The Light We Cannot See; however, he has already starred in a Netflix show.

Screen Rant interviewed Aria Mia Loberti and Louis Hofmann about their preparation for All The Light We Cannot See, how much they knew about the story beforehand, and what they learned from working with Hugh Laurie.

Aria Mia Loberti & Louis Hofmann Talk All The Light We Cannot See

Screen Rant: All the Light We Cannot See is a story of hope, love, and innocence. I absolutely loved this series, and you guys crushed it. Tell me about your characters a little bit and what attracted you to this project.

Aria Mia Loberti: Gosh, that’s a really loaded question for me. I had never considered acting. I always really wanted to do it when I was little, but I stifled the dream inside and I never even dreamt about it. And someone sent me the casting call and I said no. And then I was having a bad week, so I decided to just try it. I never thought anyone would see my tape, and now a lot of people have.

But no, I really loved the book, and I went into it with just this mentality of finding myself through reading some lines from a book that I loved. And I never thought that it would take me into portraying a character that’s so iconic and meaningful, not just to me and to my mom, who has also read the book, but to so many people around the world. And I think what really connects me to her is we really don’t have anything in common. I wish I did because she’s just a remarkable person. She’s filled with so much patience and hope, and our way of experiencing the world is so vastly different from one another.

I think what really anchored me as an actor who was just learning how to do my craft for the first time, was unpacking those layers. And there’s a quality that I really aspire to about her; this patient, quiet love, and really trying to dig into that and dig into her connections with her characters. Learning how to be an actor for the first time through a leading role like this – such an epic, intimate, and beautiful series – has been the greatest privilege of my life. But working with such wonderful people is just icing on top. It’s amazing and such a wonderful way to start out in this industry. I’m really grateful.

Louis Hofmann: I hadn’t read the book beforehand, but I loved it. As soon as I got the part, I read the book and loved it. I thought it was very inspiring, and it helped me so much in creating the character. I think what drew me to the character was this constant trying to do good by other people while being constantly put down and indoctrinated into this evil. But he doesn’t subscribe to it, which I thought was beautiful. I think it was [about] being put down and constantly standing back up again, which I really connected with; fighting for the good and trying to do good.

Aria, before you got the role, you actually expected not to, so you prepared a speech for Shawn. “There are moments that a person changes and things won’t ever go back.” And I think those are one of those moments for you. What was your initial reaction after hearing that?

Aria Mia Loberti: I don’t know because I blacked out, I think. They’ve sent me the video. It was like a 10-minute-long phone call, and I really did not remember what happened. I remembered crying a lot, and then my guide dog jumped into my lap because I was crying so hard. Then I remember Shawn asking me if I was okay, and then I really just was like, “I need my mom.”

He called my parents’ landline because I couldn’t remember. I was so blacked out that I couldn’t give them cell phone numbers, and the only thing that I could recollect was what they teach you when you’re little for emergencies, which is like your parents’ landline. And so Sean called my parents’ landline and told them, and I don’t remember really any of this. I don’t think my parents do. I’ve watched the video back. We are both completely incoherent.

After I got off the phone, I called my best friend and I called my parents and we talked and we were just screaming and crying, and just never expected this to happen to me. And then I made two dozen chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, and I just ate them by myself and cried and then read the book over.

Louis, one of the things that stood out to me when I was doing research on this was you actually learned how to build a radio in 56 seconds.

Louis Hofmann: Usually, my prep for characters is quite intellectual, but I’m such a big fan of when I can do something physical for the character. It doesn’t necessarily mean I have to work out or anything like that, but just something physical, something that the character spends time with, and with this character was building radios. I came to Budapest quite early and just practiced understanding how radios worked and building a radio.

Eventually at the end of the week, I was able to build one in 56 seconds. It wouldn’t work today, because there’s too much traffic up in the air, but it would’ve worked back in the days, I swear to God.

Aria, I want to talk about preparation for the role, simply because Mark Ruffalo said that you were one of the most prepared people he has ever seen.

Aria Mia Loberti: I knew the script. You could say I knew it inside and out. I also read the book. I’d read it multiple times leading up to. I didn’t know that I was going to do this with my life, but I had already read the book multiple times, so I obviously reread the book. I had a lot of spreadsheets. I would make spreadsheets of book passages, and then the sort of scene number that would correlate to the book passage, and anything that I wanted to convey about the character. I had a lot of spreadsheets. I wrote fan fiction from her perspective. I had a playlist, which I know Louis also had. And then I paired music with scents, so I would have essential oils and stuff like that, and I would just try to ground it through her life.

I didn’t know how to build a character. It was my first time. I’m like, “What makes us? What do I recollect about moments in my life that have changed me?” And it’s usually a sound or a song or a smell or something someone said to me. So I tried to build it sort of psychologically, but I’m an academic by training. I’m not an actor by training. So I’m like, now that I’m an actor, I feel like I should use everything I learned. And it’s been very valuable. But then you get to set and you just let it go, and what stays in your muscles, it’s cool.

You guys get to work with Hugh Laurie in this, who plays Etienne. He is phenomenal. What did you learn from working with him?

Louis Hofmann: Very dark humor. Very, very dark humor. He’s got the greatest humor. He’s the sweetest person on the planet, or one of the sweetest persons on the planet. I think it was some sort of precision that he had in the way he worked with the lines and the words and the language, and that precision was something I was very in awe of. And I think that’s something I particularly learned from him. But he was just an amazing person to have around, and just to really fool around, as well

Aria Mia Loberti: Yeah, he’s really funny, especially the characters he plays more currently. I know his past work is very rooted in comedy, but I think people may expect him to be quite a dark brooding figure like Etienne is, but he’s just really funny. It does go into gallows humor a lot, but he’s just this bright, warm person, and his eyes tell a whole story. So he could say something really serious and you can see the humor in his face. And he’s just a really special person and wonderful to work with. And he was a great mentor to me, because like I said, this was my first time, and every person gave me something special, and our scenes together were so tight. Our character work had to be so tight. I just learned so much about developing a character and telling a story through behaviors and through the space between the words from him. He’s just a wonderful person.

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.

Check out our other interview with Shawn Levy and Steven Knight.