Why ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ Hinged on Joey King’s Casting 

Hulu’s “We Were the Lucky Ones,” based on the book by Georgia Hunter, tells the true story of the Kurcs, a Jewish family who lived in Poland at the onset of World War II. The series follows the Kurcs as the events of the war and the Holocaust separate parents and children, tearing families apart.

As casting director Fiona Weir read the script for the first episode, showrunner Erica Lipez stressed that despite the grim setting, it ultimately was a celebratory story — and it was important she get the family dynamics right.

Speaking with Variety, Weir says Hunter, who based the book on her family experiences, turned out to be her most valuable source. “These were real people that she either knew or discovered, so there was lots to talk about in who these people were. And then, we had to create a group that organically felt like a family,” says Weir.

Weir assembled the cast of children — Genek (Henry Lloyd Hughes), Mila (Hadas Yaron), Jakob (Amit Rahav), Addy (Logan Lerman) and Halina (Joey King) — and tapped Lior Ashkenazi and Robin Weigert to play the patriarch and matriarch of the Kurc family.

But casting began with King. Says Weir, “Joey read the material and responded very quickly and said, ‘I want to do this.’ And everyone we cast said, ‘This material is important to me, I have a connection to this.’”

With King in place, Weir looked to find Addy, Hunter’s grandfather. “That was extraordinary to cast someone’s grandfather. We talked about his qualities and his relationship with Halina — they were really close. They loved one another and fought a lot. They had that lovely sibling connection. So, Logan Lerman was someone again who responded very quickly to the material and was clear that this was something he wanted to do.”

Next, Weir moved on to casting the parents. This was something she took incredible care over, and was given time by the studio to work on. “We were lucky in that it was post-pandemic where people weren’t getting back in the casting room. So, meetings were still over Zoom. We had crazy time differences with people in L.A., New York, London and Israel,” she says. “We could see how people reacted together on screen. And with Lior and Robin, I think, as actors, they were so confident that they really embodied the key qualities of those two characters. We knew that when we got them together that dynamic would really work.”

Once she had her parents and main siblings in place, Weir says the rest was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It turned out to be a global process as ended up casting from around the world. Says Weir, “Even though our family was from different parts of the world, Robin was from America, Lior, Amit and Hadas were from Israel, they had this commonality of connection to the story.”