Bel Powley and Susanna Fogel Team Up for Disney+ Holocaust Limited Series “A Small Light”
After breaking out with her portrayal of an aspiring cartoonist who keeps an audio journal in 2015’s “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” Bel Powley is set to pay tribute to one of the world’s most famous diarists. She’s...
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Bel Powley and Susanna Fogel Team Up for Disney+ Holocaust Limited Series “A Small Light”
Powley in "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"After breaking out with her portrayal of an aspiring cartoonist who keeps an audio journal in 2015’s “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” Bel Powley is set to pay tribute to one of the world’s most famous diarists. She’s signed on to lead Disney+’s “A Small Light,” a National Geographic limited series that’s based on the true story of “a Dutch woman who risked her life to shelter Anne Frank’s family from the Nazis for more than two years and then preserved Anne’s diary,” per Deadline. Susanna Fogel is directing the pilot and additional episodes.
“A Small Light” tells the story of “20-something secretary Miep Gies (Powley), who didn’t hesitate when her boss Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) asked her to hide him and his family from the Nazis during World War II. For the next two years, Miep, her husband Jan (Joe Cole) and several other everyday heroes watched over the eight souls hiding in the secret annex,” the source details. “It was Miep who found Anne’s diary and preserved it so that she and Otto could later share it with the world. The series title comes from something Gies said late in her life: ‘I don’t like being called a hero because no one should ever think you have to be special to help others. Even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.'”
Former “Grey’s Anatomy” scribes Joan Rater and Tony Phelan are serving as showrunners.
“The Morning Show,” “The King of Staten Island,” and “Mary Shelley” are among Powley’s other credits.
Fogel, whose most recent feature credit is 2018’s “The Spy Who Dumped Me,” has directed episodes of “The Flight Attendant” and “The Wilds.” Her upcoming slate include “Cat Person,” an adaptation of Kristen Roupenian’s viral New Yorker short story that explores consent and gender dynamics, and “The Mentor,” an action pic about two women pursuing an international fugitive. “CODA’s” Emilia Jones stars in the former.
