An interview with Julia Brown

Who is Lois?
Lois is a 21 year-old working-class girl from Manchester who lives with her father, Douglas and her brother, Tom. She works in a factory during the day, but is passionate about singing and has another night job as a singer in a band. She works two jobs in order to keep paying the bills for the family. She’s an everyday working-class girl who wants to pursue her passion.

How would you describe Lois’ relationship with her family?
Lois’ relationship with Tom is quite difficult at times because they lost their mother at a young age. Lois was 14. Prior to that they were best friends and inseparable, but with their mother’s death Lois had to take on the role of mum in the house, which meant their relationship suffered. Her dad, Douglas, suffers from PTSD and he struggles when the war begins, coping with memories coming back to him. She is trying to keep the ship afloat for the family, but also misses that sibling relationship she used to have with her brother when they were younger, and could have fun and not worry about keeping the house going.

How did you feel when you read the script?
What’s so lovely about Peter’s writing is it’s not overstated. It’s about the themes of family and love, and watching how peoples’ lives can change so dramatically in the face of the circumstances that they all go through individually. There is something so beautiful in that, because his writing is through humour, and the humour illustrates the fragility of some of the relationships. I think that’s a lot more relatable for today’s audiences because they can just observe these characters as normal people with normal relationships, and how quickly their lives can change with the start of the Second World War.

Peter described it as honouring ordinary people who did quite remarkable things at an extraordinary time in history. Is that something that resonates with you?
The characters don’t seem to be complicated. They don’t notice their own resilience because they’re in the circumstances that they are in, and they have to get on with things. Individually they all do their bit in a different way and don’t consider themselves to be heroes.

For people of my generation, it would be quite easy to separate ourselves from that time, however when you watch Peter’s characters come to life you can actually recognise yourself in them because they’re just everyday people going about their lives. They confront adversity with grit, humour and that sense of having to work through things to get to the other side. Just like we do today.

Tell us a bit about Lois and Harry’s relationship. Where are they when the story begins?
When the story opens, Lois and Harry are sweethearts and they are in this fiery, passionate but fairly sweet and innocent relationship. Peter explained to Jonah and I that the pre-context to the story is that they have maybe met at a political rally. They come from drastically different backgrounds: Lois is a working-class girl and Harry is an Eton and Cambridge-educated young man. However they share this passion for politics that draws them to each other, and Lois encourages his rebellious streak.

What’s it been like to work with Jonah Hauer-King?
Working with Jonah was brilliant, he's a really warm and kind person. When we sat down for our first rehearsals together, he came to the table with so many ideas and we were able to create a backstory together. Peter (Bowker) was quite open with us and allowed us to almost create our own love story in the lead up to starting work. It was so important getting that rehearsal time beforehand to build the chemistry.

What is Lois’s relationship like with Harry’s mother Robina?
Lois’ relationship with Robina is not an easy one because they come from such different walks of life. Robina looks down on Lois and doesn’t think she is an appropriate match for her son. Lois is impressive in the way that she sticks up for herself and doesn’t really care what Robina thinks, because she knows her own worth and value. She knows that the bond she has with Harry is a special one and so she doesn’t let Robina take her down.

Harry has obviously kept his two worlds apart until Jan turns up. What happens at that point?
For Lois, the first few months of the war are obviously nerve-wracking. All of the characters are desperately trying to figure out what their life is going to look like, but Lois was separated from her Harry, with months of him not writing to her, so she was lost. All the different scenarios go through her head, so when Harry brings Jan back to Manchester Lois starts to wonder why he has a small child in tow. There are little clues in some of the things that he’s saying and more not saying. She goes through all the scenarios in her head without wanting to grasp onto the worst one, which is the fact Harry might have found somebody else.

What’s Lois like as a performer and a singer?
Lois is a jazz singer, and sings with her best friend Connie in a band called the Victory Vs. It is her one passion in life that she allows herself to indulge in because it’s a form of escapism for her. She’s always keen to put on her best performance and give a good show. She’s usually an engaging and bubbly person and she likes connecting with people through song. For a few hours in the evening, she is able to switch off all the responsibilities she has to face at home.

Did you have to learn many songs for filming?
I was so excited as I used to sing when I was younger. The songs are beautiful, and I recognise them from my grandparents and the modern takes of them over the years. I started with a month of rehearsals working with a brilliant musical director called Matt Smith. To begin with we spent time focusing on finding Lois’s style, and because I’d never sung jazz before Matt was trying to teach me how to free up my voice and use decorations. Then we started tackling the songs and it has opened up a whole repertoire of music for me, which has been a really fun aspect of the job.

What’s your favourite song?
My favourite song is Dream A Little Dream. The funny thing about that was when I auditioned, they asked me to sing a snippet of a song that I liked and I sang that one because my granny used to sing it to me when I was young. She sang during the Second World War as a young girl and it was crazy and lovely that when I finally got the part and the script, I got to perform it.

Were any of your family involved in the Second World War?
Both sets of my grandparents were alive during the Second World War. On my mum’s side, my grandfather was in the Home Guard and he lived on a farm, while my dad’s side were in Ireland. It’s been incredible to get this job and have all these stories coming through from my grandparents on both sides. When I met with Peter (Bowker) after I got the role, he showed me photos of his family and the real people that some of the characters are based on. It was such a wonderful feeling to think that some of these stories were coming to life. There will be so many people around that country that will be able to relate to the characters and remember stories from their families too.

How do the characters feel for you?
The characters are all so raw and truthful, and depict so many different walks of life that are shown in such an honest way. It’s not trying to focus on any subject in an overtly dramatic way. We are just trying to tell simple stories with real characters that are living through a terrible time in history yet packed with adrenaline and adventure.

Can you tell me a bit about Lois and Connie’s friendship?
Peter told me that Lois and Connie are loosely based on his grandma and her best friend. It was really special to understand that this was a real friendship at the time, especially between a white woman and a black woman. They’re both so bubbly and a great support system to each other. Lois doesn’t have many friends and Connie is the one person that can see right through her, she knows everything that’s going through her head because she knows her so well. To see them working together in the factory and then at night transform and sing on stage is very exciting. Yrsa Daley-Ward who plays Connie is just wonderful. I’ve made a great friend in her.

What sorts of conversations did you have about creating the look for Lois, and what is it like wearing these beautiful costumes?
Nic, our costume designer, said all along that he wanted me to be comfortable in what I was wearing and to feel like I am the character.

Adam Smith, our director, was also involved in the choices and it was so important that she had her two looks. Her day to day is working-class, simple and understated. At the time fashion wasn’t disposable and it wasn’t cheap. Women probably couldn’t afford to have very many outfits. They’d maybe had three dresses and a few cardigans in their wardrobes.

When she goes to see Robina and is trying to impress her, Lois wears a spotty two-piece. It’s as if she’s trying to fit in with Robina’s surroundings and background. Her performance dress is the most beautiful emerald green tight ballgown, and a chance for Lois to be sexy and embrace her elegance. She uses that as a tool on stage, especially when she’s feeling more vulnerable. Nic made sure that we wore 1930s pieces that were all originals sourced from Paris. It was wonderful to wear real pieces from the time that were kept in immaculate condition.

What were the locations like?
World On Fire is so different to every production that I’ve been on before, and the fact that every department has, to the finest detail, brought the 1930s to life has been wonderful. When I am performing on stage, and the band around me are all in 1930s costumes with the room decked to the nines, it’s so easy to feel like you were there.

Do you think an audience who may not know about this period in time will be able to relate to this story?
What was so interesting for me when I was reading the scripts was that I was thinking about how so many people of my generation don’t quite understand World War Two or know much about it.

I’m 21, and although we learnt about it in school, it’s easy to detach yourself from it because it seems like such a long time ago. It really wasn’t though - these were our grandparents. What’s so wonderful about this series is that it’s not trying to be a drama about war, it’s about people, families and love and so many different walks of life being in difficult situations and having to survive. For people that might not think they would be interested in a World War Two drama, they will certainly be interested in ordinary people that they can relate to in all different ways. There is definitely something for everyone.

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