An interview with Johannes Zeller

What was it about the character of Ewe Rossler that attracted you to the role?
Mr Rossler is a very sensitive character. He is open-minded, easy-going and has been a great character to play. He is under incredible pressure and manages to suppress the fear and anger he is feeling, but there is a point where he just explodes. Everything that he has been feeling comes to the surface and it’s a huge turning point in the story.

Describe the Rossler family - where do we meet them in the story?
We meet the Rossler family in October 1939, Germany. Adolf Hitler has been in government since 1933 and the effects of his politics are being felt. I think the Rosslers were a fairly social and creative family, at least before the effects of war really struck. My character, Ewe Rossler, is married to Claudia Rossler (Victoria Mayer) and they have two children. Their son, Klaus (Bruno Alexander) decides to join the army and the family is devastated - they don't want to let him go.

They also have a daughter Hilda, who is much younger and suffers with epilepsy. Hilda’s illness is another point of difficulty for the family and we follow how they try to keep her safe and out of public view. Whilst the Nazi party were in power, anyone with a long-term illness was at risk and they don’t want to risk losing another child. Protecting Hilda becomes a huge priority.

This drama really focuses on the personal experience of the characters and how the war affected their day-to-day lives. How is this achieved within the scripts?
World On Fire offers both a historical view of the war on a spiralling, international scale, as well as focusing on the details of the character’s everyday lives. It is fascinating to follow these character’s destinies and how the conflict filtered down to every corner of society. I have really enjoyed reading the scripts, getting to know all of these characters and following each of their stories. Every character in World on Fire has such a spirit of freedom and humanity to them.

Describe the relationship between Mr and Mrs Rossler?
Ewe and Claudia’s relationship is under a huge amount of pressure, and it becomes clear that they handle this in very different ways. Claudia’s approach is to try and maintain a sense of normality and pretend things haven’t changed, but Ewe wants to focus his energies on getting fitter and stronger to face what might lie ahead. They love each other very much but what happens in their storyline eventually places them under huge strain with tragic, unspeakable consequences.

The shooting style for World on Fire is hand-held, close-up and draws the audience into the action. What do you think this brings to the drama?
I have been able to watch some of the footage and it’s really exciting. You are close up, seeing the characters’ faces and you feel part of their private moments. It doesn’t feel like a big sweeping war drama. We have focused on the details that make up the fabric of our characters’ lives: the music, the clothes and the culture. You really get an understanding of the human beings within the story and it’s brilliant.

Do you think this drama will give the audience a greater understanding of what life was life during the Second World War?
I hope that if the audience take anything from this drama, it is to realise that there is always another way and a different path available. It takes courage but it is possible to do the right things and to make brave decisions.

What are the main themes that you think the audience will take from this drama? What do you hope the audience will connect with?
I think the key themes in World on Fire are hope and fear, and I hope that if the audience takes anything away from this story it is that your identity is something worth fighting for. We have a number of young characters, and so young actors in lead roles, and I hope this will bring a young audience to this story. I think that it is key for us to show the young audience that every person has elements of good and bad within them and they are free to make their own choices about which direction they take; but also to show that the pressure from the enemies, the Nazi Party, was immense and had such a huge following.

It will be interesting for a younger generation to see how these power structures gain traction and allow danger to become mainstream. It’s important to be able to identify this so we can ensure that it is never allowed to happen again.

Were you surprised by some of the decisions Mr. Rossler takes?
I wasn’t surprised because I believed that he had a greater plan. He is committed to saving his daughter, and joining the Party seems like the only option available to him at that moment in time. He will do anything to keep her safe and the party is just a cover.

Did you do your own research for the role?
Peter Bowker’s scripts are so rich, everything I needed to prepare for the character was on the page. However, I wanted to understand more about the period and so spent a lot of time in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. It was difficult to find literature about ‘ordinary’ life during such an extraordinary time as the Third Reich, but I managed to find some useful books and have been reading them every evening. I still found it helpful to get a sense of the dark and fearful energy that existed at the time. It’s helped me to understand the climate my character was living in.

What relationship does the Rossler family have with Nancy Campbell?
The Rossler family have a very special relationship with Nancy. Nancy is bright and brings a new energy into the family. She is also tough and smart. Nancy is a gift to the family, but this gift also has its problems. Nancy’s involvement with the Rossler family attracts attention and that is dangerous.

Do you have any personal connections to the Second World War that this experience has unearthed?
My father was forced to join the German army in 1944. He is Austrian, and was 17 when he was forced to enrol. He never spoke about this period of his life to me but his colleagues, his buddies, meet every year or so to catch-up and talk about their experiences. My father wanted to get rid of the rifle. He has spent his life living with the fear that was instilled in him during that time. My father put all those memories and feelings in a capsule in his mind and put it away as so many others did. So the 20th Century is an important point in my family’s history.

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