Oscar nominee Mark Ruffalo and Emmy nominee Hugh Laurie have signed on to star in the Netflix limited series All the Light We Cannot See. The four-part limited series is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller by Anthony Doerr and has Shawn Levy on board to executive produce and direct. Peaky Blinders‘ Steven Knight is adapting the novel for the series and will also executive produce.
Netflix previously announced blind actress Aria Mia Loberti will play the lead role, “Marie-Laure.” The limited series will mark Loberti’s acting debut.
The casting announcement included descriptions of Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and Aria Mia Loberti’s characters:
- Mark Ruffalo will play “Daniel LeBlanc,” the principal locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Caring and clever, he’s determined to give his blind daughter Marie as much independence as he can while also protecting her – and the secret gem they carry – from Nazi occupation.
- Hugh Laurie will play “Etienne LeBlanc,” an eccentric and reclusive World War I hero suffering from PTSD. Etienne LeBlanc is a nervous shut-in who records clandestine radio broadcasts as part of the French Resistance.
- Aria Mia Loberti plays “Marie-Laure,” the blind teenager at the heart of the story, whose path collides with Werner, a German soldier, as they both try to survive the devastation of World War II in occupied France.
The series will be produced by Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps Entertainment (Stranger Things). Dan Levine is on board as executive producer, and Joe Strechay (See, The OA) is an associate producer and Blindness and Accessibility Consultant.
All the Light We Cannot See was published in 2014 and spent 200+ weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.
The All The Light We Cannot See Book Synopsis, Courtesy of Simon & Schuster:
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance.
Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
