It was back in 2022 when Sky announced that the best-selling novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, was to be turned into a limited TV series. The TV series is an adaptation of the novel and inspired by the real-life story of Lali and Gita Sokolov, who met while prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust of World War II.

Jonah Hauer-King portrays Lali in his younger years, from being deported to Auschwitz to meeting and falling in love with Gita. In the months leading up to the show landing on screens, Jonah Hauer-King spoke to Sky about his role in The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

“As soon as I heard that The Tattooist of Auschwitz was being adapted, I knew I wanted to be involved. It’s a rare thing to have the opportunity to tell such a vitally important story. Having read the book, it was hard not to feel daunted; I was honoured and excited, but extremely aware of the huge responsibility we all had to bring Lali’s story to the screen in a respectful and authentic way.”

“One of the first things I did was get on a plane to Kraków to visit Auschwitz. I’d been as a young man and found it completely overwhelming, but it was important to go back there in preparation. I needed to see the camp through a new lens, through Lali’s eyes. From there, Naomi Gryn, (the Historical and Cultural Consultant) sent me an amazing list of research material to listen to, to watch and to read, so I just dived in. From that point, it was about finding the right balance between understanding the historical and socio-political context, reading survivors’ accounts, and trying to research as much as possible about Lali himself and his experience there. He gave hours of testimony at different points which helped me to understand him. The final piece of the puzzle was talking to Heather Morris. I met her on a number of occasions and was able to ask all kinds of questions about Lali. This was truly special - she really gave me a sense of his kindness, his humour and his spirit. Older Lali is played by Harvey Keitel.”

“It’s phenomenal! A huge privilege. I grew up with his films. He brings all of Lali’s charm, cheekiness and gravitas. There were also 65 cast members from all over Europe; Auschwitz was a place of many nationalities, ethnicities, and religions and having that kaleidoscope in the show gave it an epic scale.”

“Every aspect of it, in all honesty. I knew it was going to be very difficult not to bring a lot of my own baggage and preconceptions and even inherited trauma from these events. It is an unavoidably sensitive and painful period of history, and trying to bring it to screen felt overwhelming. But Heather gave me some great advice, which was to start by simply understanding Lali when we first meet him. Focusing on this young man from Krompachy, Slovakia, who was working in the fabric section of a department store in Bratislava. A man who was kind, and funny, and charismatic. Who had a love and appreciation for fashion. A man who wanted to fall in love and go to Paris. A family man. This was a helpful and grounding starting point, and acted as a small window into understanding him and what he then had to endure.”

“We were lucky in that we had a lot of time before filming to start working together - researching, rehearsing, and plotting the different emotional and physical beats through the whole series. We shared many survivor accounts that felt particularly meaningful and pertinent to Lali’s own experience. We discussed the need for me to undergo a physical change, which involved shaving my head and losing a lot of weight. Shaving my head was strangely one of the more difficult moments, but we were very lucky to have our very caring and sensitive hair and make-up designer Francis Hounsom, overseeing it all. Doing it in a different context would probably feel fairly innocuous, but the association of how and why people were made to look this way made it very poignant.”

“There were many, but I will never forget arriving at the Auschwitz set for the first time. I was driving from unit base where we would get ready every morning, and the camp suddenly loomed into view. The production team did an exceptional job in terms of its scale and detail and authenticity. It was quite alarming seeing the barbed wire fences coming towards me. It will stay with me for a long time.”