Last month at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Tribute Awards gala, Shawn Levy received the inaugural Norman Jewison Career Achievement Award named in honor of the legendary Canadian filmmaker. The honor recognizes Canadians in the film industry who have made a global impact with their careers.
Levy’s impact has spanned feature film and television as he’s served in such roles as creator, director and producer–as well as the founder of 21 Laps Entertainment. He’s extended his creative reach even further as demonstrated at the Toronto fest where the first two episodes of the Netflix series All the Light We Cannot See debuted. Levy exec produced the limited series, directing all of its episodes. Set to premiere on Netflix come November 2, All the Light We Cannot See is based on Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same title (adapted by writer Steven Knight) and follows the story of Marie-Laure (portrayed by newcomer Aria Mia Loberti), a blind French girl, and her father, Daniel LeBlanc (Mark Ruffalo), who flee German-occupied Paris with a legendary diamond to keep it from falling into the hands of the Nazis during World War II. The series movingly explores the worlds of Marie-Laure and Werner (Louis Hofmann), a German solider, whose paths cross in occupied France. We find that these two characters on opposite sides of the war have a unifying bond–radio broadcasts they listened to as children featuring a professor who inspired them and provided a sort of sanctuary for their hearts and minds during tumultuous times.
The cast also includes Hugh Laurie, Lars Eidinger and Marion Bailey.
As for what’s next, Levy like the entire industry awaits what he hopes will be a settlement of the SAG-AFTRA strike with actors securing a fair and equitable contract. When that happens, he will resume his directing duties on Deadpool 3, which was postponed halfway through production due to the strike. Levy also will look to find a way to direct a minimum of one episode for season 5 of Stranger Things, the groundbreaking series created by the Duffer brothers and for which Levy is an exec producer via 21 Laps (also the production company behind Deadpool 3 and All the Light We Cannot See).
Beyond all that, Levy is actively involved in varied projects, including the development of a Star Wars movie.
Levy’s other directorial credits include the blockbuster Night at the Museum franchise, Real Steel, The Internship, Date Night, This Is Where I Leave You, and Free Guy.
21 Laps has an overall TV deal with Netflix which includes not only its most streamed series, Stranger Things, but also Netflix’s most streamed movie, The Adam Project (which Levy directed)
Additional 21 Laps films and series include the Academy Award-nominated Arrival, as well as The Spectacular Now, Cheaper By The Dozen, Shadow and Bone, Last Man Standing, The Boogeyman and Unsolved Mysteries.
Upcoming for 21 Laps is the Lionsgate feature film Never Let Go starring Halle Berry, the Netflix limited series The Perfect Couple starring Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber, Alexander and the Terrible, and No Good Very Bad Road Trip starring Eva Longoria for Disney+.
SHOOT caught up with Levy to discuss All the Light We Cannot See. Remarks have been edited for brevity and clarity.
SHOOT: Please provide some backstory. What drew you to All the Light We Cannot See? How did you become involved in the project?
Levy: I read the book long ago [at the end of 2014, the year it came out]. I raced into work in early January [after New Year’s break] telling anyone who would listen that I was in love with this book and would do anything to turn it into a movie or a show. But the rights had long been snatched up by another producer–at Fox Searchlight.
Years later, there were rumblings that it was too daunting to compress 500-plus pages into two hours. We told then novelist, Anthony Doerr that we would do right by the source material. That we would look at an emerging format, the limited series, which wasn’t bound by run time. He took the leap of faith with us.
In 2019 we get our hand s on the rights. Along with Netflix we began the development process, bringing in the brilliant writer Steven Knight [of Peaky Blinders fame, and a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominee for Dirty Pretty Things]. His only condition was that he write all the episodes alone and personal. There was no writers’ room. This was a real auteur adaptation by Steve who had a strong vision.
SHOOT: Tell us about casting for the character of Marie-Laure–with Nell Sutton getting the role of her as a child, and Aria Mia Loberti as a young adult. I understand that you sought an actor who was blind or had impaired vision.
Levy: Authenticity in casting would be creatively right and make it possibly better–by virtue of having a girl and a young woman who experienced the world in the same way that Marie-Laure experienced her world.
It’s not like there are hundreds of such candidates [blind or low-vision actors] represented by talent agencies. There are very few, if any, at many agencies. We put out an open casting call on the internet. Hundreds of self-recorded submissions came back, running the gamut between aspiring actors and first-timers. Two of those first-timers were Nell and Aria.
SHOOT: What drew you to Nell and Aria?
Levy: Nell is vibrant, warm, funny and an instantly lovable little girl. I was smitten with Nell the first time I saw here.
Aria had never auditioned, much less acted before. I was struck by her fierce intelligence. She’s an academic, a Fulbright scholar, a PhD candidate in rhetoric. The sharpness of her intellect and seriousness of her mind were instantly palpable–such important traits for Marie who is not only a strong and optimistic woman in the midst of war but also relied upon to use the radio to convey coded messages to the Allies, leading to the liberation of France. Aria had the smarts and intelligence.
SHOOT: What’s your biggest takeaway or lessons learned from your experience on All the Light We Cannot See?
Levy: The takeaways are different from any job I’ve ever done. They’re not simply creative and professional. They are very much personal. It allowed me to understand and spend time with two girls who are legally blind and whose experience is utterly different than my own–and from anyone I’ve every known. I developed a deeper understanding and an empathy for the experience of being blind. It changed the way I directed. I normally use gestures and facial expressions for (to communicate with) my actors. When the usefulness of those tools are neutralized by the actors not seeing me, it forced me to be much more thoughtful about my words, to choose them in a concise and expressive way. The value in an economy of words, a note in a sentence or two rather than a paragraph of two. It affected and improved the way I do my job.
SHOOT: What also struck me about All the Light We Cannot See was the power of radio, particularly for those who cannot see. We hear and feel the power of the radio broadcasts going back to when Marie-Laure and Werner were youngsters–and then when Marie-Laure as a young adult is broadcasting secret messages to the Allies. Did that enter your thinking about the use of sound to tell this story?
Levy: The novelist told me this was a story about radio, the power and impact of this medium when it first arose. It’s a two-sided blade with the power to inspire and inform on one hand, with noble outcomes–and on the other hand, the power to spread hate and propaganda. Joseph Goebbels [Hitler’s minister for public enlightenment and propaganda] said that the Nazi party would never have risen to power without the radio. This tool of technology conveys both information and disinformation. It’s profoundly powerful.
Overall sound was important to our story. We wanted our show to have as rich a sonic soundscape as a visual landscape.
