In the midst of the horrors of the Holocaust, Lali (Jonah Hauer-King) and Gita’s (Anna Próchniak) love story in The Tattooist of Auschwitz, based on Heather Morris’ novel, defies the odds. Lali is assigned to tattoo fellow Jews coming into the Auschwitz concentration camp, and that’s how he meets Gita. When they lock eyes for the first time, it changes their lives forever. From then on, Lali and Gita are determined to make it out of Auschwitz alive so they can be together.
“We knew that first scene where they meet, we knew it was an important moment partly because of what it means for the story in the series, but also because it’s a real-life moment that happened to two people,” Hauer-King tells TV Insider. “We wanted to treat it respectfully. Their whole relationship is stolen moments. They’re in so much danger and those moments, those looks, those touches of a hand occasionally, they mean so much to each other, so we really wanted to lean into that.”
Hauer-King and Próchniak have a powerful chemistry despite not sharing the majority of their scenes while their characters are at Auschwitz. The actors initially met over Zoom while doing chemistry reads for Lali and Gita. Right away, Hauer-King knew that Próchniak was “perfect” for Gita.
“She brought so much humanity, and she’s such a brilliant actor,” he says. After she was cast, the actors began “spending as much time with each other as we could, and it’s like an instinctive thing. It’s hard to really capture or articulate sometimes, but I just felt very comfortable around her. I felt very safe with her. We’re doing really challenging scenes, going to really vulnerable dark places, so you want to be able to trust your character and your partner and I really did.”
As their love deepens, Lali is inspired by Gita’s unrelenting strength amid the tragedy around them. “Something that I love about Lali, which I think he probably finds in himself having met her is just this total compassion and commitment to others and also strength,” he notes. I think Gita is really strong and really robust and has so much integrity, even in this terrible, terrible place. I think she brings that out of him. I think Lali, before this awful experience, he’s sensitive and he’s vulnerable, and all kind of wonderful characteristics. But I think she brings a real strength out of him and is a real support to him.”
Hauer-King acknowledges that Lali and Gita are a “beacon for each other” and a “small glimmer of hope” for them to hang onto. “But the part of it that I find so extraordinary is that they were able to survive, and then they live the rest of their lives,” he says. “But it’s such a traumatic thing to have happened, and even though it’s incredibly bonding on one level that you have to go through so much to try and come out of that place and in some way process it, which I think is probably impossible. All of the emotional changes and all of the physical changes and moving [to a new] country, moving [to a new] continent, trying to build a new life, the fact that they were able to hold on to each other through all of those things made me think that they have something really special going on there. There’s something in their love that’s quite unique.”
The Little Mermaid alum admits he had read The Tattooist of Auschwitz before he was cast as Lali. “It was such a unique story, and I fell in love with Lali and Gita and was so invested in them,” he says.
The emotional transformation to embody Lali in the Peacock series was a journey for Hauer-King. “I think to try and prepare for something like this, you’re trying to put yourself in somebody’s shoes, like in any other role, and a lot of the time that’s about your own empathy and your own lived experience that you’re trying to relate to someone else,” he begins. “And it’s surprising sometimes how far that can stretch. But in the case of this, it really started to burst at the seams because it’s such an unimaginable thing to have happened and what Lali went through is so unimaginable. It felt quite daunting knowing how to really step into it. But a big part of that was just preparation and research, reading everything I could find, both about the history generally and the context, but also about Lali specifically.”
Hauer-King shaved his head to play Lali, which he thought would be “the easiest part” of stepping into the character. “It was really surprising when I came to do it, how much of a moment it felt like I was having,” he admits. “In another context, it’s just a haircut. But I think when I looked at myself in that room and I was having it done, and all over the walls are these images of people from that time, and the association of why people’s heads were being shaved and removing people’s identity or trying to, it became really poignant, especially because everyone was doing it. So all around me men, women, short hair, long hair, all this hair just falling to the floor. It definitely felt quite moving.”
The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Series Premiere, May 2, Peacock