Manchester actor Poppy Waxman speaks to JLife about her TV debut in the upcoming CBBC Newsround documentary: Anne Frank – A Life in Hiding.
Hi Poppy, so tell us about yourself?
I’m 17 and I’m from Gorton Park on the borders of Salford and Prestwich. I attended King David Primary School and continued onto the senior school before leaving last year to focus on my acting career. I’ve done theatre, but I’ve never done any TV before. I’m in an amazing programme called the Royal Exchange Young Company and I’ve previously performed in shows with Junior Stage 80 and The Jewish Theatre Company.
How have you found being on camera rather than the stage?
On stage, you’re heightening everything and projecting to the back of the room, whereas in front of the camera, you’ve got to internalise everything as the camera picks up so many little details. You are that person, and you need to reflect that in every gesture, it could be a blink or a movement of your shoulder – every move you make says so much more to the audience.
Can you give us a sneak peek into the upcoming documentary?
It moves in and out of documentary and drama, with a focus on the period Anne Frank spent in hiding during the Second World War. It’s not an overview of the story, so much as a focus on the personal aspects, with the Holocaust as a backdrop. It concentrates on how she felt and explores her relationships with the people around her, predominantly her sister and her mum. Usually if the work is two hours long, you can focus on the whole of the story – but being only half an hour, it looks at how Anne found a safe space within her diary, took comfort in other people and developed her own ways of survival.
How did the creators try to make the programme appeal to a younger audience?
One thing we really wanted to focus on during the filming process was the fact that she was just a regular teenager, because I think people forget that. We tried to show children that she shared the same hopes and needs as they hold today, despite the 75 years between them. With the countless retellings of her story in the history books, I feel she is in danger of becoming mythologised and dissociated from her girlhood.
Tell us what it was like to step into the shoes of a person of such historical renown.
Obviously because I went to a Jewish school, I’ve grown up with the story, so the experience of inhabiting her as a character was unreal. Before I stepped into the role, she was just the girl from the history books, but as I’ve played her and researched her, I almost feel like I’ve got to know her.
I visited the attic in Amsterdam when I was 12, and seeing it for myself really helped me understand the context of everything and seeing the physical dimension to what she went through. When I found out I got the part I read through her diary and also read a book from the students who were at school with her. I wanted to know what she was like from other people’s perspective, because you can’t get a fully objective picture of someone from just their voice. I tried to build up a picture from all different sources to really understand her personality, right down to her mannerisms.
How did you attempt to convey Anne’s personality?
I tried to make everything come from a young girl’s perspective, because, yes, she was in an awful situation, but she was also a teenage girl who had crushes on boys and fights with her mum. I’ve really tried to capture the little things about her that make up who she was as a person, like the fact she was jealous of her sister, found her mum annoying, and was definitely her father’s girl.
Did you discover you shared similarities with Anne?
There are a lot of parallels with themes I’ve encountered as a girl of her age. We’ve got a lot of similar characteristics, not least physically. When I was filming, I realised I was a very similar height and build. But also, she’s a really strong female, not just for her brave actions – but in personality and opinions.
Were you faced with any challenging decisions as your role took shape?
I had to make a choice between focusing on the practical aspects of facing an incredibly tough life in an attic, or looking at it from the view that she was probably just trying to make the best of her time there. I had to ask myself what would she have done, how would she have behaved, who would she have put herself around? Rather than focusing on the wider narrative, I tried to narrow it down to the moments like when she would cry, not because of her situation, but because her mum made her eat her vegetables!
‘Anne Frank: A Life in Hiding’ will air the week of Holocaust Memorial Day 2019. Date and time TBA.
