Robin Weigert says that for the actors playing the Kurc family in the Hulu limited series, “We Were the Lucky Ones,” one thing that helped them all bond was developing a love for the game of tennis. It was a passion everyone developed at the same time. “[In Romania] We were going to these great clay courts they have all around. Georgia Hunter would play and it wasn’t just the cast. It was whoever might be there with a passion for tennis,” Weigert tells Gold Derby during our recent webchat (watch the exclusive video interview above). But tennis wasn’t the only fun way that the cast members bonded. “I hosted some poker games at my apartment and taught a bunch of them how to play and we went to the Therma together, which is this amazing water park in Romania.”
“We Were the Lucky Ones,” which is currently streaming on Hulu, is an adaptation of Hunter’s novel about the Kurcs, a Jewish family in Poland that gets separated all over the world as World War II plays out in Europe and their determination to be a whole unit again. Weigert plays Nechuma, a seamstress and the matriarch of the family. Along with her husband, Sol (Lior Ashkenazi), they seek to keep their family as intact as possible while also maintaining their Jewish identity. The series also stars Joey King, Logan Lerman, Sam Woolf, Hadas Yaron, Amit Rahav, Eva Feiler, Moran Rosenblatt and Henry Lloyd-Hughes.
Weigert is no stranger to the Emmys. In 2004 she scored a nomination for Best Drama Supporting Actress for playing Calamity Jane on the HBO western series, “Deadwood.”
Obviously, making a series about the Holocaust was going to be filled with emotional moments that could be difficult for the actors to shoot. But for Weigert, the toughest scene was when the Nazi’s come to the family’s apartment and tells them they have half-an-hour to collect their belongings and vacate the premises. She needed to play the scene with restraint but she kept “exploding with emotion” and would have to reshoot the scene with Ashkenazi, who played her husband. “Every time he took my hand at the door, before we opened it to see what was on the other side, I would just kind of erupt with and we’d have to start again. Um, because I thought that single gesture, whatever it is out there, that we’ll be facing it together, that was so huge for me.”
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