‘Tattooist of Auschwitz’s Cast Had Mental Health Support While Filming

The Big Picture

• The Tattooist of Auschwitz
  is based on the true story of Lale Sokolov, a Jewish prisoner forced to tattoo other Jewish prisoners during WWII.
• Tali Shalom-Ezer and Claire Mundell discuss the series, its complexities, and why they chose to adapt the novel.
• Mental health support was provided on set due to the emotionally intense nature of the series depicting Holocaust horrors.

It seems as though nearly every streaming service is trying its hand at adapting novels based on the horrors of the Holocaust, including Peacock which is set to premiere The Tattooist of Auschwitz on May 2. The series stars Jonah Hauer-King and Anna Próchniak as lovers who meet amid the soul-crushing terror and uncertainty of Auschwitz, and Jonas Nay as one of the cruel Nazis at the concentration camp. Ahead of the premiere, I had the opportunity to speak with series director Tali Shalom-Ezer and ClaireMundell, who secured the rights for the book back in 2018, before going on to executive produce the series.

Based on Heather Morris‘ critically acclaimed novel by the same name, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is based on true events relayed to Morris by the late Lale Sokolov (played by HarveyKeitel and Jonah Hauer-King), who survived Auschwitz alongside a fellow prisoner who would eventually become his wife. In addition to the budding romance between Lale and Gita (Próchniak), the Peacock series also showcases the deeply uncomfortable “friendship” Lale formed with a volatile Nazi officer by the name of Stefan Baretzki (Nay) whose cat-and-mouse torment is his only gateway to spending time with Gita.

Tali Shalom-Ezer and Claire Mundell spoke about the importance of mental health on set—especially with a series like The Tattooist of Auschwitz—and why they provided it to the cast during and after filming, Mundell shed some light on why Hollywood is telling so many stories set during the Holocaust right now, while Shalom-Ezer discussed which scenes were the most difficult for her to film. You can watch the full interview in the player below or scroll on to read the full transcript of our conversation.

Why Mental Health Is Important on All Projects

COLLIDER: Tali, this is such a beautiful series, but I was curious if there were any specific scenes that were perhaps the most challenging to direct or to get the emotions right and capture in those moments?

TALI SHALOM-EZER: I think that, to me, scenes that included nudity were more difficult, just on a personal level. It can be a bit confronting for me to see a group of almost dozens, almost 100 women naked. And also very violent scenes when people are being humiliated. Of course, we’re doing a drama, and it’s not real, and they are actors playing the guards, but still. We were building this scene, and we were building this world, and we built all the sets and the barracks. So, that was quite confronting and difficult for me.

You bring up a really good point. Even just watching this show, there’s so many emotions, and I feel like I need a therapist to talk to afterwards because there’s so much horror that I’m being confronted with just watching this. On set, how did you handle those real extreme emotions that are being explored? Were there any onset therapists or time to kind of take a moment in between those takes?

CLAIRE MUNDELL: Yes, absolutely. We had mental health support throughout the production, in pre-production, and all the way through the shoot, and in fact, post-production. There will be mental health support available for everybody long after the show finishes, because I think crews and cast, we tend to just get into a mode where we do our job, and we push aside the processing of the scenes that we’ve been recreating. I think with this particular project, everybody was very aware that, however difficult it is for us, we’re just telling a story here. But we tried to create an environment where people felt supported and where we could share with each other how we were feeling. But also, the mental health support is vital on all projects, I think, but particularly something of this nature.

SHALOM-EZER: I think that the crew and cast, they were so committed, and they really saw the importance of the story, even the supporting artists. Many of them had a personal connection to the story, like families, like Holocaust survivors. Many of the cast members have family members who are Holocaust survivors, also, from the crew. So, I think it was so important to everybody. So it kind of connected us in a way that we could support each other.

Why Is Hollywood Focusing on the Holocaust Right Now?

Claire, I had a question for you. There are so many incredible, harrowing series right now that focus on the Holocaust. There’s The New Look, We Were the Lucky Ones and now The Tattooist of Auschwitz. I was wondering if you knew why Hollywood was kind of looking at this period of history right now to examine it on screen.

MUNDELL: We started our journey six years ago, back in 2018. It was hard to predict the context that we would be in now and the amount of projects that would be made. But I think there is something that happens cyclically in the arts. There’s a zeitgeist that is real, and that is definitely true of this project. I mean, when we found the book, we were very clear from the beginning — and Jacquelin Perske, our head writer and fellow executive producer, was very clear — that the way to tell this story was to cut between the story of Lale and Heather meeting and Lale and Gita meeting, because they’re two love stories of slightly different natures, but they’re united by the act of telling the story and bearing witness.

Obviously, it connected with the readership globally, because to date, the book has sold well in excess of 13 million copies, which means, if you consider there are two books per household, over 20 million people have read that book, and that’s unbelievable in this day and age. So, I don’t know. I think collectively society, somehow the arts respond to the need, the unconscious need within populations, and there obviously was something needed at that time.

Absolutely. I really like the way that the series constructs the two sides of the story and stays true to the story of Heather talking to Lale, and getting the story and the oral history aspect of it. Can you both talk about that decision to show both sides of the story in parallel with each other?

MUNDELL: It was a really early decision to develop the story in that way because the only reason the story exists as a novel is because Heather took the time to sit with an elderly man that she didn’t know and to listen to his story, and to enable him to process what had happened to him. 60 years later he was still feeling the effects of trauma and all the things that had occurred in his life. His wife had just died, and he wanted to share the story of their love, I think, before he left this world. He wanted people to know that love is still possible even in the darkest of situations. So, it felt like that was a way to dramatize his trauma and to try to explain to an audience what that must feel like. Because I think very often with these stories, when the camp was liberated and the gates opened, people might assume that was the end and everyone lived happily ever after. And of course, we know this is not the case because the legacy of trauma is for the rest of someone’s life. So, that felt like a way to tell that story and also to kind of dramatize the survivor experience, because as we know, there are so few survivors still alive, and in some time to come, there will be no survivors alive. We hope this is a way of explaining how important it is to hear each other’s stories.

SHALOM-EZER: I think that there is something unique about Lale and Heather’s relationship. So many Holocaust survivors are not able to share their story with anyone; I know it from a personal level. My grandfather is a Holocaust survivor, and he never shared with us his story. I think that for us, for Claire and I, it was very interesting to focus on that — how this story unfolds, how Lale is going back to his traumas and trying to build a new narrative, and trying to create meaning from all the events that he remembers in a very fragmented way. That process, it’s a healing process. I think for both of us, it was very fascinating to explore.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is set to premiere on Peacock on May 2, 2024.

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