Coming to Sky Atlantic and streaming service NOW this May, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a new limited series based on the best-selling book by Heather Morris. The series is the story of one man, Lali, a Slovakian Jew, who, in 1942, was deported to Auschwitz, the concentration camp where over a million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.

Melanie Lynskey, star of The Last of Us, plays Heather Morris in the drama series The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Her character appears in the scenes with Lali in his later years, when he finds the courage to tell the world his story and recounts his past to aspiring writer Heather.

Read on to hear from Melanie about playing the role of Heather Morris in The Tattooist of Auschwitz:

“I hadn’t read the novel at that point, so it was the quality of the beautifully written scripts. Heather was incorporated into the story through her conversations with Lali, which showed what a beautiful, trusting relationship they developed. She was able to draw stories out of him that nobody had been able to – Tali [Tali Shalom-Ezer, Director] described Heather as being the world’s best therapist. I loved the way the scripts explored how we tell our stories: the parts we choose to keep to ourselves; when we are comfortable sharing and opening up about the darkest, most shameful parts of ourselves. I also love the way literal ghosts from the past come to visit Lali in his Melbourne apartment as he’s telling his story.”

“I’ve played a real person before and it’s terrifying, but I’ve never been able to talk to the person beforehand. So meeting Heather was wonderful. She’s a life force, so energetic. Before we started the shoot, she sent me a beautiful email pointing out that she’s a very different person today than she was 20 years ago, when she embarked on this journey. She didn’t have a ton of confidence, she was gentler but, following the success of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, she had to learn to become a public person. She gave me her blessing to create a character that was some parts me, some parts of her when she was interviewing Lali, and some parts of her now. Reading the novel also influenced my portrayal of Heather; I understood how spending three years talking to someone multiple times a week means you hear pretty much everything. Wearing the blonde wig helped too – Frances [Hounsom, hair and make-up designer] did a beautiful job of making me look like Heather without it looking as though I was completely in a costume.”

“Massively important. I don’t think there can be enough stories. Firstly, we are living in a very scary time in which there are people who deny the Holocaust ever happened. It’s insane and disgusting. Secondly, what the prisoners went through in Auschwitz is unimaginable. I felt like I had a pretty solid knowledge of what happened during the Holocaust, but there were things in The Tattooist of Auschwitz that were new to me, that shocked me. Tali reminded us a million times that we weren’t telling the story of the Holocaust; all you can tell are different survivors’ stories, or those of the people who didn’t make it / you are never going to get the full picture because the scope of it is horrific.”

“It’s a reminder of how horrific the Holocaust was, but also an incredible story of a survival and a beautiful love story.”