Henry Lloyd-Hughes (‘We Were the Lucky Ones’) describes recreating a 1940s Siberian gulag [Exclusive Video Interview]
For Henry Lloyd-Hughes, shooting the scenes of “We Were the Lucky Ones” that take place in a Soviet gulag in Siberia were taxing to shoot but in “the right way” due to how it was shot. “All of those scenes, by and large, were shot chronologically, which meant that there was an intensity to that period of work for me that was physically challenging and mentally grueling, but in a way that I think was right for what we were trying to get across,” he describes to Gold Derby during our recent webchat (watch the exclusive video interview above). Those scenes also got a surprise boost from the weather in Romania in the form of an unexpected snowstorm. “They had set aside these cannons, like these hoses of snow to try and cover it to make it look like Siberia. Then two days to go and there’s a huge whiteout as far as the eye can see, up to inches. Tim Ives, the DP, he was just like over the moon and ripped up the shot list.”
“We Were the Lucky Ones,” which is currently streaming on Hulu, is an adaptation of Georgia Hunter’s novel about her European ancestors, 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. Lloyd-Hughes portrays Genek Kurc, a lawyer and the eldest of the five Kurc siblings. Initially, Genek and his pregnant wife make their way to Soviet territory but upon it being discovered they are actually Polish, both are declared enemies of the state and are sent to a Siberian work camp. The series also stars Joey King, Logan Lerman, Robin Weigert, Lior Ashkenazi, Sam Woolf, Hadas Yaron, Amit Rahav, Eva Feiler and Moran Rosenblatt.
Getting the look right for Genek was also incredibly important considering that he goes through the most drastic physical transformation of the five Kurc siblings. “He’s the most established in his career of the siblings so we were keen to show him at his polished best to begin with. It gave us real mileage to just really break him down. Let’s take it all the way to his face beaten up and he’s in rags pretty much.” Fortunately, due to a crafty bit of thinking from costume designer, Lisa Duncan, Lloyd-Hughes didn’t have to worry about undergoing a huge physical transformation on his own end. “Lisa was very clever and we made the clothes get bigger rather than me have to get dramatically smaller.”
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