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“The greatest story never told.” That’s how Anna Winger described Varian Fry and the heroic efforts of the Emergency Rescue Committee during World War II. The showrunner heard the stories about Fry and the ERC long before “Transatlantic” premiered on Netflix thanks to an interesting connection from her father.
“My father told me the story, because he knew a couple of the people involved in it,” Winger revealed to The Hollywood Reporter. “He knew [anti-Nazi activist] Lisa Fittko in Chicago. They were part of the same organization that was protesting the Vietnam War in the ’60s. And he knew Albert Hirschman because they were both professors at Harvard in the ’70s. So when he and I were walking through Potsdamer Platz, maybe in 2012 or 2013, and he saw that there was a Varian Fry Street, he told me their story.”
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It wasn’t until a few years later, as Syrian refugees swarmed into Berlin, that the idea of bringing Fry’s story to life crossed her mind. One day, like fate, Julie Orringer’s “The Flight Portfolio” came across her desk, giving her another perspective on Fry. Winger immediately knew she had to bring this story to life, and “Transatlantic” emerged.
