Louis Hofmann (‘All the Light We Cannot See’) on making these films to avoid Natzism from happening again [Exclusive Video Interview]

Louis Hofmann is an actor who has a certain Aryan look. There’s no getting around it. He’s used it to find work portraying Nazis. “I’ve portrayed quite a few Nazi characters,” the German-born actor says, “which doesn’t mean they’re all the same. I guess it’s very important to remind ourselves of what has happened and to keep making these films to avoid it happening again.” Hoffman is at it again portraying Werner Pfennig, a brilliant German teenager who is reluctantly compelled to assist the Nazi cause during World War II due to his technical skill with radios in “All the Light We Cannot See,” the four-part Netflix adaptation of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from Anthony Doerr. “I’m glad you sympathize with that human, whatever the uniform that he had to put on.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.

The series revolves around Marie-Laure LeBlanc (played by newcomer Aria Mia Loberti), a blind teen living in German-occupied France. Werner does everything he can to wash his hands of the Nazi cause but can’t escape his circumstances. “I think what I love most about him is his constant fight for the good and the moral compass that he tries to follow,” Hofmann emphasizes. “What makes it more interesting is when he needs to leave the road and make morally wrong decisions, and that his gift of knowing how to build radios is also becoming his burden. I like when something you’re really good at is being taken against you and you’re being taken advantage of. It’s a really nice struggle within yourself.”

Not that it’s easy to make a character driven by such inherent goodness and humanity seem interesting. Hofmann admits it was a challenge “to sort of make him not seem dull because he’s such a passive character, always reacting to something.” He was also transformed into a radio expert in reality, thanks to crash course from the “All the Light We Cannot See” prop master Marton Szalay in how to build a 1940s-style radio.

“When I talked to (executive producer and director) Shawn (Levy) when prepping to play Werner, the first thing he said to me was, ‘I want you to be able to operate a radio properly’,” he recalls. “And so I went to Budapest a bit early and then just basically spent a week with Marton, working on radios, understanding them, building them. And at the end of the week, I think after three or four hours a day in that week, I was able to build one in under a minute. The thing is, it didn’t work, but I promise you it would’ve worked if it was 1940 and there wasn’t too much traffic in the air.”

While the project’s star Loberti – a first-time actress – is like her character blind in reality and credits Hofmann with helping her to acclimate to their location set in Hungary, Hofmann downplays anything he did to assist her. “I just tried to be there for her as much as possible,” he insists. “She was so eager to learn every single thing and then picked it up so quickly. So that was great to watch her journey of becoming an actor. She didn’t depend on me that much…I mean, she’d never auditioned before, which is simply crazy. And then you get this huge job, and all of a sudden you’ve got the responsibility of a whole story on your shoulders. She managed it like it was nothing.”

Hofmann also had a great time working alongside Hugh Laurie. “He’s probably the kindest person on the planet and the person with the darkest humor,” he observes. “Really dark humor. So we got along really well. The way he can play with words. His voice is just so fascinating to me. He holds onto the words in such a beautiful way, and that was something I was really in awe of. Despite the pretty harrowing topic, we had great fun.”

In terms of what Hofmann hopes audiences tale away from “All the Light We Cannot See,” topping that list is the fact that “there’s always hope and it’s always worth it to fight,” he believes. “There’s hope and there’s light even in the darkest of times.”