Anna Daniels
Where did you guys shoot?
Primarily in the New York area. So, production was based in Brooklyn. The period in the ’70s we shot in Manhattan quite a bit. We shot the flashback scenes in Jersey and upstate New York, and then we went to Budapest for a week right at the end of production.
What’s it like being on a recreation of a concentration camp, psychologically?
It’s intense. It’s really intense and I certainly came at it with my own background, but you don’t need to be Jewish to understand the core of Auschwitz and the Holocaust. And I think everyone felt the weight of it on those days.
The reality is with a production of this scale, the sets were so fully realized and the wardrobe was so perfect and everything was done so well that, as an actor it’s in some ways it’s a gift. You’re really immersed in it and you can really go to places that I think would be harder to get to if you don’t have that immersive environment. But also, it’s intense. It made for some really heavy days. The scenes are heavy to begin with and then when you really feel like you’re there It really has a weight to it.
The first scene that you see me and Annie Hagg in, in the pilot, is in the Lodz ghetto and it’s this just massive scene with all these extras and they dressed up multiple city blocks to look like this town in Poland. And there are German shepherds attacking people and barking and people screaming and things being drawn off of balconies and you really just feel it in your bones. It was a crazy first day on set. There’s really no other word than intense. It was incredibly intense. And those were tough days, but we went to great lengths to kind of tell this story as honestly as we could.
Are there any scenes or sequences that you’re particularly proud of or that were especially challenging for you as an actor?
It’s tough. It was all challenging in its own way because it’s just the nature of these kinds of scenes, the way they kind of fit structurally into the whole of the show. Every scene is so intense. There is no flashback that was just a casual scene. I think having Annie there always dialed me in. We got to this place where, when we were in the scene, we were in it together and it was like we were flying.
I would say that first day on set, shooting that scene in the Lodz ghetto, if you watch the show, if you watch the pilot, you’ll see that it’s actually shot in a “oner,” which means that there’s no editing, it’s just a continuous take with the camera. And that was a challenging scene in any circumstances, but to have that be my first day on set and there’s acting to be had little bit in German and a little bit in Polish…. Really, it’s just this huge moving piece of choreography and timing. That was a challenging but thrilling experience.
How long did it take you guys to get that shot?
We shot almost all night. Call was a little bit before sundown, so we could do hair and makeup and wardrobe and stuff. And then, by the time everybody’s ready, all the extras are ready, everything’s in place, the sun had gone down, we did a bunch of takes. So, we shot most of the night.
A lot of times when you’re chasing daylight, as they say, when the sun’s about to come up, a lot of times you’re racing to get that shot in. And we actually finished with a good couple of hours until the sun came up. At that point, it had been a really long night, but there was something really gratifying about knowing, okay, if we needed to keep going, we could have. And that was really cool. That was really cool.
Written by: Looper
