An interview with Borys Szyc

Who is your character?
Konrad is the boss of the post office, the huge beautiful building in Gdansk, or rather Danzig in those times, because that was the name of the city given by Germans.

How did you get involved in the project?
It was through Adam Smith and Susie, the DOP. They had watched Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War which I was in, and thanks to Pawel we get to play in this beautiful series by the BBC.

What was it particularly about Konrad that made you want to get involved?
Initially Konrad was written as a much younger guy than me, but they realised that they needed somebody who’s older than Gregorz. They needed a father figure for him, who will take care of him. Myself and Gregorz are attempting to escape, survive really, so all or most of our scenes were together. It is really interesting and nice for actors when your story unfolds like that because you always have a partner to show your emotions to, and in this we are fighting for our lives.

What is it about Peter Bowker’s scripts that make this a very human story?
The backbone of the script is that our characters are not all soldiers. They’re normal people, and that’s what I loved about the script - that we are depicting people who we normally don’t get to see in big-scale dramas. These characters are normal, ordinary people who had their own very ordinary lives. People were going about their business, everybody was going to work, coming back from work and taking care of their children. Suddenly, the whole world changed, and for many years. Here we’re going to tell all those little stories that happened all over the world during World War Two.

Did you do any of your own research or was it all in the script?
Growing up in Poland we learnt all about the war in school because it’s part of our history. Every kid knows about defending the post office in Gdansk. The script is a mix of reality and fantasy in order to tell the story. In real life it was a huge tragedy, they were all killed either during the fight or just after it. I think perhaps four guys managed to escape but they were caught after four days and executed. Therefore the script and our story imagines what could happen if two guys managed to escape and travel through Europe.

Can you tell us a little bit about the look and feel of this show might differ from other period dramas?
Susie, our DOP likes to be in the thick of the action and she’s always close to the explosions and the cast. For us as actors it requires another way of acting if the camera is so close to you. You don’t have to act too much you just have to have this feeling inside and it shows in your eyes.

How has it been working on such an international production?
It’s been really fun and it’s always nice to meet new people and learn about how different people work. The main difference between a Polish set and an English set is the silence. The English really respect silence. When Adam works, when he speaks very calmly and says silence please, there is silence. In Poland, everybody is talking all the time, and we should change it because it is a really good way to focus a set.

What do you think it is that modern audiences will love about this production?
Although this is a story about the war, we show the lives of ordinary people surrounded by this war machine. How they manage with the situation, how they try to survive. Those stories I think will be very touching for viewers.

Have you any stories from your own family in World War Two that you drew on?
My grandmother was involved in the Warsaw uprising. One day she left her house to get some food, the uprising started, and when she came back there was only half a house left. She climbed to the second floor to get some belongings from what was left from the apartment but was caught by Germans on the street and put onto transport to Auschwitz.

She was a beautiful blonde woman. On the way to Auschwitz there was a change of trains, and was walking towards the next train when a German soldier saw her, caught her and told her to run. This German soldier saved her life. She was running and running on foot for many days and eventually she was reunited with her husband, my grandfather.

What’sso powerful about World On Fire is that it shows good and bad on both sides. How is that reflected in your particular part of the story?
In my story we’ve got a scene with two very young German soldiers who catch us and you can see how frightened they are. These young boys who are told to fight, told that people on the other side are evil and bad but suddenly standing in front of them are young men looking back at them with the same frightened and scared eyes. That’s what Adam tried to show, that in war the lives of ordinary people are always the biggest sacrifice, the biggest collateral.

Character Descriptions

NANCY CAMPBELL

Played by Helen Hunt
American broadcaster and journalist NANCY CAMPBELL is addicted to war. She can’t stay away. It isn’t just the adrenalin, but the puzzle of war - the puzzle of human nature – she craves. NANCY, in Warsaw in 1939, crosses the border to Germany and spends the first eighteen months of the war in Berlin as part of the overseas press corps. Her ability to befriend her German neighbours as well as army officers sees NANCY report those stories at the very forefront of the Nazi regime; some they are happy to have broadcast to the world, while others, they are determined to keep hidden. No surprise then, that NANCY is driven by getting those forbidden stories out of Berlin - at huge personal risk.

ROBINA CHASE
Played by Lesley Manville
When her son HARRY, finds himself on the wrong side of the law protesting against Oswald Mosley, ROBINA CHASE despairs, only slightly comforted in the knowledge he is soon to travel to Warsaw for a job as a translator. After HARRY’S father died in the most tragic of circumstances, ROBINA was left to raise HARRY alone. She has done so with the sole aim of making him a man of great social standing, but so far, HARRY is proving only to disappoint. His love for two different women - both, in ROBINA's eyes, highly unsuitable - has far reaching consequences, and her frustration is exacerbated when HARRY returns prematurely from Poland, following the Nazi invasion, with a Polish refugee in tow. ROBINA - despite her will and better judgement - finds herself with a house guest she had never expected. Against the odds, the war is set to change this cold and austere woman, as much as it will HARRY.

DOUGLAS BENNETT
Played by Sean Bean
DOUGLAS BENNETT is a pacifist who was mustard-gassed in the First World War. He watches as his son and daughter go off to war, despite the fact that he is a pacifist. With both children away, he finds solace in unlikely friendships; with HARRY CHASE’s mother, ROBINA, and the young Polish refugee she has reluctantly taken into her home. DOUGLAS’s worst fear looks set to become reality when his son TOM finds himself aboard HMS Exeter, a ship that eventually faces German ship the Graf Spee in one of the first major battles of the war. Desperate for news of TOM, the uncertainty of his son’s wellbeing and the haunting horrors of his own experience of battle look set to overwhelm him, until unexpected news from his daughter LOIS gives him renewed hope for the future.

HARRY CHASE
Played by Jonah Hauer-King
HARRY CHASE is a young Englishman with a flair for languages, deceit and heartbreak. A talented translator, HARRY is in Warsaw Woking for the British embassy. Caught in an explosive love triangle between his Mancunian girlfriend LOIS BENNETT, and local Warsaw girl KASIA TOMASZESKI, when war breaks out, HARRY has choices to make, fast. With KASIA's life in danger, he knows that there is one place she would be safe: Manchester. But how will he explain this to LOIS, and, what's more, to his mother? Funny, handsome and clever, life has been easy for HARRY so far – but war changes this forever. An idealist, a rebel, perhaps HARRY always just needed a cause – and the cause is the war. The series will take him all the way from Warsaw to Dunkirk, as he learns to lead, to fight, and to find out what he truly believes in.

LOIS BENNETT
Played by Julia Brown
LOIS BENNETT is a Mancunian factory worker. At home she is the lone girl in a family of men with the responsibility of looking after her fragile father and a wayward brother. Despite opposition from his snobbish mother, LOIS is in love with HARRY. HARRY betrays her with KASIA whom he meets in Warsaw. His betrayal seems to simultaneously break her heart and open her mind. Later, she will reflect that it was as though love blocked out the rest of the world; once he had gone, she could finally see what she was missing. A talented singer, LOIS and her musical partner, CONNIE KNIGHT are determined to make their own contribution to the war effort. LOIS finds her place – and adventure – in the form of ENSA, the War’s Entertainment Corps, and heads off to perform for the troops in Northern France.

TOM BENNETT
Played by Ewan Mitchell
On the pull or on the make, TOM BENNETT brings nothing but trouble to sister LOIS and his father, DOUGLAS. With the police having caught up with him after his latest swindle, TOM avoids prison only by vowing to join the forces, when all the while he intends to dodge action altogether, as a conscientious objector. By the end of episode two, however, TOM has joined the Navy, and is about to face a personal and a military battle of equal, epic proportion.

KASIA TOMASZESKI
Played by Zofia Wichłacz
KASIA starts the war as a waitress in one of Warsaw’s many bars and cafés, already in a passionate love affair with the young English translator, HARRY CHASE, unaware that he already has a girl at home. Her father STEFAN and brother GRZEGORZ depart for Danzig to defend against the imminent German invasion, leaving KASIA with mother, MARIA and younger brother, JAN, at home in the city. Within days of the war beginning, KASIA’s family has each faced the cruel reality of this brutal conflict, and KASIA is faced with terrible choices between protecting her family and her own safety and freedom. KASIA joins the Polish resistance and her war becomes one of subterfuge, excruciating danger and constant fear of betrayal.

GRZEGORZ TOMASZESKI
Played by Mateusz Więcławek
GRZEGORZ TOMASZESKI is not built for battle. A naïve and loving teenager, he wants only to prove himself to his father. Entirely unprepared for the horror that awaits, GRZEGORZ heads to Danzig with STEFAN to defend the city at the outbreak of war, only to face tragedy before the day is out. Like his sister KASIA, life is set only to get tougher for GRZEGORZ, and the devastating battle at Danzig is just the beginning of his wartime anguish. He makes firm friends with KONRAD, a brave man more suited to the challenges conflict brings, and together they eventually flee Poland and make their way through Europe, in the hope their lives can be spared, as so many of their fellow countrymen brutally lose theirs.

WEBSTER O’CONNOR
Played by Brian J. Smith
When we discover WEBSTER in September 1939, he is working in the increasingly busy corridors of the American hospital of Paris. When France is threatened and occupied, despite the efforts of his aunt NANCY, WEBSTER stays in Paris and he fights. At first as a surgeon in a neutral hospital, and then a surgeon in a neutral hospital under Nazi occupation, WEBSTER finds himself fighting on all fronts; for his own identity and freedom, for his lover ALBERT’s freedom, and for those patients who, as of May 1940, are prisoners of war. With the help of friend HENRIETTE, a local French nurse, they begin a system of smuggling patients out of the hospital and beyond, all beneath Nazi noses.

ALBERT FALLOU
Played by Parker Sawyers
Jazz musician ALBERT FALLOU is deeply in love with American doctor WEBSTER O’CONNOR. When the Germans invade, ALBERT grows worried for his and WEBSTER’s safety, and for his own freedom as a Parisian of west-African heritage. When WEBSTER and his colleague HENRIETTE trial their plan to smuggle patients out of the hospital, ALBERT is keen to leave too, and turns to WEBSTER for help. WEBSTER is keen for them to stay put. Before long, however, ALBERT’s fears become their reality, and he is interned in a camp just outside Paris, where he defies their racial profiling by forming a classical orchestra of inmates.

STAN RADDINGS
Played by Blake Harrison
HARRY’s sergeant, STAN RADDINGS, is a working-class southerner with an enormous heart, sometimes concealed behind an unwittingly tactless exterior. A brilliant soldier, STAN is a committed, knowledgeable and loyal sergeant, and when, in their early days of battle, HARRY becomes overwhelmed by the task before him, STAN steps up to set him, and their unit, back on the right path.

HENRIETTE GUILBERT
Played by Eugénie Derouand
HENRIETTE is a nurse at the American hospital in Paris and WEBSTER’s closest ally there. She is a brilliant nurse and they’ve grown close over time. HENRIETTE, as well as being a little in love with WEBSTER is also hiding a more important secret. When war breaks out, and Paris falls to the Nazis, HENRIETTE conceals her Jewish heritage, working with WEBSTER to smuggle French prisoners of war out of the hospital under the noses of the Nazi authorities.

Programme Information

• Episode one
• Episode two