‘The Sopranos’ Star Toni Kalem Explores Family History in Adapting Lore Segal’s Wartime Novel ‘Other People’s Houses’ (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comEd Meza @edmezavar Writer, director and actress Toni Kalem (“The Sopranos“) is adapting Lore Segal’s internationally acclaimed 1964 semi-autobiographical novel “Other People’s Houses,” about a Jewish child refugee who finds asylum in Britain via the Kindertransport rescue effort.
The story follows a 10-year-old Jewish girl from Vienna who is sent to England as part of the 1938 children’s transport that followed Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria.
She spends the next several years living in wildly disparate households, from wealthy families to modest working-class folks, an experience that presents her with stark impressions of England’s class system.
For Kalem, best known for her portrayal of Angie Bonpensiero on the HBO series “The Sopranos,” adapting Segal’s book has also offered the opportunity to explore her own family history. “Like Lore Segal, my mother, a German refugee, boarded the Kindertransport as a young girl,” Kalem tells Variety. “Saying goodbye to her mother and living separately from her siblings once arriving in the U.K.
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