Interview: The Cast and Creatives of ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ on Telling a Powerful Story of Survival

Based on the New York Times bestseller by Georgia Hunter, We Were the Lucky Ones is an uplifting story of one family’s incredible persistence in the face of unimaginable circumstances. Five adult siblings and their parents are separated on the eve of World War II and the Holocaust, scattered across the world as they cling to the hope of finding their loved ones again someday.

Awards Radar had the chance to speak with members of the cast as well as showrunner Erica Lipez, director Thomas Kail, and author Georgia Hunter. Everyone had strong praise to share for the collaborative experience of the project, which in some cases involved notbeing together.

Henry Lloyd-Hughes recalled that “you would see someone in the hotel at breakfast, or see someone coming out of a trailer, and you knew that you had that experience on episode one together. But you had no idea what they had been doing.”

Amit Rahav added that “we missed each other on set while filming, which was very helpful to film it and was very helpful to the characters because we did have so much fun filming the first episode, the pilot, and the rehearsals were so involving, and we had a lot of laughter. After that, we just got separated, both on the show and in reality, and I think it really emerged and helped one another.”

Logan Lerman emphasized that “Our foundation was so strong. The first two months or so of production, preproduction, rehearsals, we were together all the time. I think everybody shared a passion for this story.”

Speaking to what drew her to the role of playing matriarch Nechuma, Robin Weigert expressed that she “wanted to have these big feelings of this mother with these children. This love, this incredible, against-all-the-odds kind of love that draws the family together. I felt that it would be a beautiful experience as an actor, but I also gravitated to it as a human being… I wanted to take this deep plunge into that kind of love.”

Sam Woolf was drawn in from the start: “I thought it was maybe the best writing that I had seen, when I first read those episodes, and I was also very drawn to a character that reminded me of my dad. That felt very emotional, and then we met Georgia, who’s such a light, a shining light of a person. We get to tell this woman’s family story?”

Watch the full conversations below:

The first three episodes of We Were the Lucky Ones are now streaming on Hulu. New episodes debut weekly on Thursdays through the series finale on May 2^nd.