Meet Heather Morris, author and story consultant for the TV series The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Ahead of the release of the show, Sky spoke to Heather Morris to discuss the upcoming TV show.

“It was a dream come true for me. I was thrilled because this was now a full circle. This is what Lali and I had dreamed of. I had written his story all those years ago as a feature film, but when I was approached with a view to it becoming a six-part miniseries, there was no hesitation. Being able to tell Lali and Gita’s story over six hours rather than two was brilliant – I knew that it would be explored properly.”

“Well, of course we didn’t consider an older actor because Lali isn’t an old man in the book. However, had he seen Harvey in the show, Lali would have thought he was looking in the mirror. It was unsettling to see how perfectly Harvey captured Lali. Harvey told me that he was using a voice coach to get his version of Lali’s accent, but what he got in fact was Lali’s accent to a tee. His mother was Romanian and his father Polish, so he grew up hearing eastern European accents. Oh my gosh, he nails it! We sat in a hotel in Bratislava and he asked how Lali walked and how he sat, so I had to slump in my chair!”

“I was initially resistant to being a character in the TV series. Firstly, I quite like my privacy. Secondly, I wasn’t sure how the millions of people who have read my book would react when Melanie appears in the series playing me. I wasn’t concerned, I just wasn’t sure how the new narrative would work – but as soon as I read the scripts, it was clear that it worked very well. She watched everything she could find about me and thought it was going to be a very difficult role to play because she’s nothing like me. I don’t think I’m noisy, but she’s quieter. It’s also the first time she’s ever played a character who’s still alive, so she was feeling concerned until she met me and I was able to reassure her that there was nothing she could do that would in any way offend or upset me. She is a honey. Just delightful.”

“I spent time one-to-one with Jonah [Hauer-King], which was amazing. He was so invested in wanting the story to be told properly; like Harvey, he asked all these questions about Lali’s behaviour. We all appreciate our Jonah time and relish it, because he is so dedicated to his work. I had a wonderful session with Jonas [Nay] while I was on set in Bratislava.

“He’s another amazing young man. I couldn’t help him very much in terms of telling him how to play a person as evil as Baretzki.”

“I spent an intensive week with Jacquelin Perske. After that week, Claire [Mundell] came to me and asked if they could bring me and old Lali into the script. Prior to that, Jacquelin had been given the book and was told to meet with me to discuss how to adapt it – clearly I must have over shared for them to create two new characters for the series. They were really good at providing me with the drafts of the scripts as they were written and responded beautifully to my suggestions.”

“Yes, there are not enough words in the dictionary for me to express my gratitude to Claire Mundell, Adrian Burns, and the team at Synchronicity Films, for their passion, devotion and attention to creating a project I am so proud to have my name attached to.”

“It was, but I knew I had to do it. I wanted to do it. Here’s the thing: I was with Lali two hours before he died. I knew he wasn’t going to see the sun come up the next morning. He was unconscious, so I got to do all the talking, which was very novel since I’d done pretty much all the listening for so many years. The very last thing I said to him was, “It’s time to go and join Gita. I will never, ever stop trying to tell your story.” It was a promise that I will never let go of.

“I initially tried to sell the script around the world, but no one was interested. It was the wise words of my sister-in-law that ended up changing everything: she got fed-up with me complaining about getting nowhere and told me to write a book. I have since thanked her many times.”

“It was way more confronting than I even considered it could be. I was on the set of a story that I had written about, that I thought I knew so well. But to then see the cast and supporting artists with their heads shaved – and to see the conditions in the barracks – was very confronting. The scale of the set was incredible. I had to sit in a room quietly after that and look at the monitor and try to regroup.”

“This is a work of fiction based on the memory of one man. It is not the story of the Holocaust. My novel is not an academic, historical account. So many survivors have thanked me for telling Lali and Gita’s story – they see it, in many ways, as their story too.”

“I get thank you letters every day of the week. Today, for example, I had an email from a 39-year-old lady in Germany. It’s really humbling because I can’t comprehend how this book has touched people’s lives to the extent that people say their lives have changed or that they actively want to change their lives. It’s an awful lot to take in.”

“Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Lali and Gita survived and Lali shared their story. Many others have told their stories too; you can only thank them and ask them to keep telling their stories so that new generations learn about it and grown-ups don’t forget about that evil period of history.”