An interview with Parker Sawyers

Where does Albert fit in as one of the ordinary people in this drama who shaped our world?
Albert provides a literal and metaphorical sound track to the setting of World On Fire. He also adds a bit of colour and flare, along with a yearning to be oneself amidst treacherous and precarious times. He still finds a means to express himself through music and his lifestyle.

What was it about the script and the part that felt fresh and engaged you?
I haven’t read for many period dramas, but I have watched them and I love The Crown which is focused on the Royal family, so the story and characters are for the most part focused on them. Or I will catch myself wondering what the valet Thomas' dreams are, in Downton Abbey. In World On Fire I feel a sense of Albert’s dreams and goals for the next three years, seven years and his dreams of moving to America. You get a sense of people’s hopes and dreams and very real ambitions of their own, which are interrupted by events that are not in their control.

What do you think the audience will particularly relate to in the drama? Is it relevant now?
It felt very alive and not a story from a book that you pick up and have to read for history class. There is a real texture and fabric to this story. Our lives criss-cross with each other and we are all in it together. They are all concerned with what could happen, and it reminds me of our current situations regarding climate change and what could happen if we don’t take heed. Albert is a realist and can see something coming, whereas Webster thinks everything will be fine. So I think there is a lot that one can draw from modern life.

How do we meet Albert and what is the world he is living in.
Albert is a local superstar in Paris. He is a jazz saxophonist and leader of the band at the Club that is just jumping. He is a young Kanye West in a happening club, packed full of dancers, and he is in control of the party. Webster comes in and is just in awe of this guy who is cool, comfortable in his skin, French and a charmer. We first meet him when Webster enters the club and lays eyes on him. When we were filming it we had lots of dancers on set and musicians on stage and it felt so, so real. Everyone smashed it and it was very easy to step into the time period.

Describe his relationship with Webster and where does it start?
Albert suffers an injury and knows Webster is a doctor. It’s a bit of an excuse but he does actually need help to mend the wound. Webster and Albert fall in love and Albert challenges Webster to be himself. What else do you have to lose? Albert can feel a negative energy in the air and he is of the mind that he would rather have than have not. There is a genuine beautiful connection between them and a real sense of that moment when you fall head over heels in love with someone - love at first sight. Albert pulls Webster up on his view of what racism can be or how black people are treated. Having said that these two do fall in love for their souls and not their exterior colour.

Did you have much time in rehearsal to find your character’s heart, and what was it like to work alongside Brian J Smith?
Brian and I didn’t have that much time together in rehearsal; just a couple of days really. He’s one of those people that is just so wonderful and you fall in love with him anyway he’s so comfortable in his own skin and a terrific actor. He is super talented and super sweet and when you are in the scene with him you don’t want to fail. He is an adorable man.

Describe the style and tone of the show?
At the beginning, before we started working, I received a video teaser trailer / mood board containing footage of kids running around, with dirt on the faces, throwing rocks and running past Nazi soldiers. Adam, the director, wanted to depict people in their day-to-day lives not just avoiding the bombs and the executions, so that included people walking down the street, trying not to hold hands. Of course gay people existed back then and they were affected by the war and politicians inactivity too. The mood in the trailer felt very modern, with the colours and the music too. The deep bass is there and the tickle of the piano - you hear everything when you hear it live… it makes your heart beat. You can feel these people and so I hope that comes across in the show.

What other research did you undertake?
I did a lot of research and preparation for the part and had to perfect my French accent. I play instruments and it takes a lot of practice to become proficient so I spent a lot of time alone. I figured Albert learned English from other musicians and people visiting Paris so it’s not like he sat down and learned English in school. He was also an immigrant who grew up in Paris and he feels French and is French. I just really wanted Albert to feel this underground community is where he completely feels at home with himself, he’s around these likeminded individuals in the club and then sees this beautiful doctor that he falls naturally for. That was really interesting for the characters.

What was it like filming the more challenging scenes of racism, where the pig’s head was left outside their apartment?
I borrowed stories from my grandparents when they were growing up during the civil rights movement. They were born in 1928 and 1930. My father was born in 1943 and I revisited all these stories I was told when my folks would come home and find some burning symbol on the stoop. Or a shoddy deals you knew was unfair and I could feel my ancestral trauma during the filming of the show. It was the natural feelings would be anger, unfairness despite being a little bit used to it. So the little power Albert has, for example over his heart, he really delves into it.

When he is transferred to the camp Albert seems more accepting of his fate than Webster is...
That was a really hard scene to shoot. It was really cold and freezing and I didn’t have a coat on so I had to stop myself shivering and along comes Webster who is wearing a coat so it did feel very unfair. Webster can walk out of there and Albert can’t understand how Webster cannot see what is going on around him. It’s that American spirit of ‘we can do it’.

When you are in those moments of authenticity how did you feel at the end of the day’s shoot? Did it stay with you? How far have we come in terms of humanity?
We have immigrant camps now days that are little short of concentration camps and when you think about what’s gone before in those camps, there were people of beauty and intelligence who were wiped out. It makes me think about how one human can do that to another. These people never had a chance to live or flourish as humans.

Three words to describe World On Fire?
Colourful, layered and authentic. These are human stories and we are affected by one another’s potential and the potential of those that didn’t get a chance to live.

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