In ‘Blitz,’ Steve McQueen shows wartime London through a child’s eyes

It was a single photograph that started Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen on the journey to make “Blitz.” As a Londoner, the German bombing raids on the city during World War II are never all that far from his mind. Reminders of it are everywhere.

But the spark of inspiration came from an image of a small boy on a train platform with a large suitcase. Stories inspired by the evacuation are not rare, but this child was Black. Who was he, McQueen wondered, and what was his story?

The film, in theaters Friday and streaming on Apple TV+ on Nov. 22, tells the tale of George, a 9-year-old biracial child in East London whose life with his mother, Rita ( Saoirse Ronan ), and grandfather is upended by the war. Like many children at the time, he’s put on a train to the countryside for his safety. But he hops off and starts a long, dangerous journey back to his mom, encountering all sorts of people and situations that paint a revelatory and emotional picture of that moment.

When McQueen finished the screenplay, he thought to himself: “Not bad.” Then he started to worry: Does George exist? Is there a person out there who can play this role? Through an open casting call they found Elliott Heffernan, a 9-year-old living just outside of London whose only experience was a school play. He was the genie in “Aladdin.”

“There was a stillness about him, a real silent movie star quality,” McQueen said. “You wanted to know what he was thinking, and you leant in. That’s a movie star quality: A presence in his absence.”

Elliott is now 11. When he was cast, he’d not yet heard about the evacuation and imagined that a film set would be made up of “about 100 people.” But he soon found his footing, cycling in and out of the little vignettes along the way of George’s odyssey with stunts, slaps and all. Elliott, for his part, preferred the days with stunts.

“It’s just more exciting,” Elliott said.

As his on-screen mother and co-star, Ronan, who remembers well the strange experience of being a child on a movie set, took him under her wing. Now, not only is he getting raves for his performance, he’s already booked another film (though he can’t talk about that yet). Another bonus: He’s fully impressed his teachers with his WWII knowledge.

Ronan told her agent she wanted to take a break after “The Outrun,” with one caveat: Steve McQueen. “He was like, ‘well, on that…,’” Ronan laughed.

“I was really excited by the idea that the love story that was going to exist in this kind of wartime epic would be a child and his mother,” Ronan said. “It was a story set during the Second World War that was going to stay on the ground. It was going to focus on the communities left at home and the ongoing war that they were facing every day that they stepped outside their front door.”

But McQueen needed a singer, and Ronan was an unknown quantity. They enlisted a vocal coach to visit her on a set where she was filming in Australia.

“I’ll never forget, I got a call saying, ‘Steve, she can not only sing, but it’s only going to get better,’” McQueen said. “I was very happy to call her back and say, ‘you got it.’”

Both Ronan and Elliott would get to sing alongside Paul Weller, the English rock star of the Jam and Style Council, in his first acting role as George’s kind grandfather. Rita also gets a solo showstopper in the original song “Winter Coat,” written by Nicholas Britell and Taura Stinson and inspired by McQueen’s own late father. She performs it during a live radio broadcast at the munitions factory where she works.

Showing that munitions factory was important to “Blitz.” In war movies, women are not often front and center. When they are, McQueen said, it’s a crying wife, or girlfriend, someone offering a cup of tea. This, he knew, was not the reality.

“Women (were) the emotional and physical backbone of the war," he said. "They were dealing with their aging parents. They were dealing with evacuating the children. And then they were going off to a munitions factory to make missiles and aircraft hangars to make planes."

Some critics have called “Blitz” McQueen’s most conventional, or traditional, movie. This, he thinks, is missing the point.

“There’s classical tropes, there’s classical situation. For lack of a better word, it’s a Brothers Grimm fairy tale to some extent,” he said. “But what it is showing is totally revolutionary. It’s using the conventional to show the unconventional.”

This means taking audiences inside place they’ve never been: The tube station at Stepney Green where East London residents took shelter from the bombs; the munitions factory; the ritzy Café de Paris, where another class of Londoners enjoy oysters and champagne to the music from the house band playing “Oh Johnny” as the bombs fall; and the tube shelter where a flood killed 66 people.

“Blitz” also introduces audiences to people they’ve likely not heard of: Mickey Davies (played by Leigh Gill), a man known as “Mickey the Midget” who turned the Spitalfields Fruit and Wool Exchange into a shelter; and Ife (Benjamin Clémentine), a Nigerian air-raid warden who bonds with George, who was also inspired by a real person.

Everything in “Blitz” was drawn from historical fact. And most of it is seen through the eyes of a Black child. George, McQueen said, is not Oliver Twist.

“It’s like comparing me to Prince Harry,” McQueen said. “Like, really? But that’s to do with something else. That’s whatever that is. But the reality is I’m interested in images and stories that haven’t been told before.”

Ronan doesn’t live all that far from East London and is often reminded of the past in the banal every day. The bougie park where everyone walks their dogs? That’s only there because the rows of houses were destroyed, she said. But like everyone, she came out of “Blitz” with an even greater appreciation for her adopted community and neighbors, some of whom have lived in their homes their whole life.

“There’s a real commitment to the place,” she said. “Knowing that that still exists in London in small pockets means you’re sort of there to honor someone’s story.”

For McQueen, it was an important experience getting to know, and tell stories that we haven’t yet heard, much as he did with Solomon Northup in the Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave.”

“The Blitz is something we put a lot of our national identity on, you know, the Blitz spirit and who we are and whatnot, our finest hour and all that business,” he said. “What was interesting to me was illuminating the who were missing from the conversation. When I look at London now, I feel very proud. I feel very proud of all these people’s contributions and of the film: That we allowed people to see themselves.”

McQueen doesn’t lose sleep over the big set pieces: The flood, the fire, the Café de Paris destruction. But he does worry about the emotion of it.

“Cinema is about the heart,” he said. “What gave me sleepless nights was creating the love and that the people felt it and it was palpable in the family…This movie at the end of the day, is about love. L-O-V-E.”

Film festival audiences are responding as he hoped. Soon, everyone else will get the chance to go on this journey with George.

“It’s been getting a very visceral response from people,” McQueen said. “I think in London and New York, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It’s what cinema can do and that’s what I wanted. It’s as much about the audience: You can see yourself through a child’s eyes.”

This image released by Apple TV+ shows Saoirse Ronan, from left, Elliott Heffernan, and Paul Weller in a scene from "Blitz." (Apple TV+ via AP)

This image released by Apple TV+ shows Saoirse Ronan, left, and Elliott Heffernan in a scene from "Blitz." (Apple TV+ via AP)

This image released by Apple TV+ shows Elliott Heffernan, left, and Saoirse Ronan in a scene from "Blitz." (Apple TV+ via AP)

Saoirse Ronan, a cast member in "Blitz," poses for a portrait at the Four Seasons Hotel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Saoirse Ronan, a cast member in "Blitz," poses for a portrait at the Four Seasons Hotel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Saoirse Ronan, a cast member in "Blitz," poses for a portrait at the Four Seasons Hotel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

This image released by Apple TV+ shows Elliott Heffernan in a scene from "Blitz." (Apple TV+ via AP)

Saoirse Ronan, a cast member in "Blitz," poses for a portrait at the Four Seasons Hotel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Steve McQueen, right, writer/director of "Blitz," poses with cast members Saoirse Ronan, left, and Elliott Heffernan at the Four Seasons Hotel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Steve McQueen, right, writer/director of "Blitz," poses with cast members Saoirse Ronan, left, and Elliott Heffernan at the Four Seasons Hotel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Steve McQueen, writer/director of "Blitz," poses for a portrait at the Four Seasons Hotel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

This image released by Apple TV+ shows Elliott Heffernan, left, and filmmaker Steve McQueen on the set of "Blitz." (Apple TV+ via AP)

Saoirse Ronan, a cast member in "Blitz," poses for a portrait at the Four Seasons Hotel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Steve McQueen, writer/director of "Blitz," poses for a portrait at the Four Seasons Hotel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Steve McQueen, right, writer/director of "Blitz," poses with cast members Saoirse Ronan, left, and Elliott Heffernan at the Four Seasons Hotel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Luka Doncic will miss the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers' regular season with a Grade 2 strain of his left hamstring, the team announced Friday.

Doncic is the NBA's top scorer and the driving force behind the Lakers' surge into the third spot in the Western Conference standings, but he injured his leg during Los Angeles' blowout loss in Oklahoma City on Thursday. An MRI exam revealed the severity of the strain.

The Pacific Division champion Lakers (50-27) have just five games left before the postseason, starting Sunday at Dallas.

Grade 2 hamstring strains sometimes require several weeks of recovery, but Doncic also has prior experience with hamstring issues. He missed four games right before the All-Star break with another left hamstring strain, but returned to the lineup after the break.

Doncic is putting up spectacular numbers in his first full season with the Lakers, who acquired the Slovenian superstar from the Mavericks last season. He is averaging 33.5 points, 8.3 assists and 7.7 rebounds per game for Los Angeles, and he was named the NBA's Western Conference player of the month for March after racking up 13 consecutive 30-point performances, including seven 40-point games, a 51-point barrage against Chicago and a 60-point masterclass in Miami.

Doncic scored a whopping 600 points in March, becoming only the 10th player in NBA history to hit that mark in one month. While LeBron James and Austin Reaves have also played well down the stretch, the Lakers thoroughly depend on Doncic, who either scored or assisted on 58% of the their total points in March.

Doncic is all but certain to win his second NBA scoring title — but he has played in only 64 games this season, which means he will finish one game shy of the 65-game threshold to be eligible for the NBA's biggest postseason awards.

He was a lock to be an All-NBA selection, and he had even been making a late run at consideration for the MVP award with his outstanding play down the stretch.

Along with his two absences caused by hamstring injuries and a handful of additional absences for minor medical maintenance early in the season, Doncic missed two games last December while flying to Slovenia for the birth of his second child. He also missed one game last week under suspension for accumulating 16 technical fouls.

Since he sits just shy of the 65-game threshold, Doncic theoretically could challenge the rule by citing the extraordinary circumstances of his daughter's birth in Europe through the grievance process created for these collectively bargained rules. It's wholly unclear whether that appeal would have any chance of success.

If Doncic wins the scoring title but doesn't make the All-NBA teams, he would be only the third scoring champ in league history to fail to do so. Elvin Hayes wasn't selected when he won the crown as a rookie in 1969, and Bob McAdoo wasn't chosen for the teams in 1976.

Lakers coach JJ Redick said Doncic was injured in the first half against the Thunder, but was cleared to return to the game while his team was getting plastered by the defending NBA champion Thunder. Doncic lasted only about four minutes before he spun, stopped and went down on the court in pain, leading to his departure.

The loss was only the Lakers' third in 19 games since Feb. 26, but Doncic's absence casts a cloud of uncertainty over the rest of their year. Los Angeles only leads fourth-place Denver (49-28) by one game, while sixth-place Minnesota (46-30) is 3 1/2 games back with a game in hand.

The Lakers’ regular-season finale is next Sunday, April 12, at home against Utah. Their first-round playoff series is expected to start the following weekend.

AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds contributed to this report.

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA

Los Angeles Lakers forward/guard Luka Dončić (77) drives against Oklahoma City Thunder guard Cason Wallace (22) during the first half of an NBA basketball game Thursday, April. 2, 2026, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Gerald Leong)

Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic (77) gestures after a three-point basket against the Indiana Pacers during the first half of an NBA basketball game in Indianapolis, Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic (77) is fouled by Orlando Magic center Wendell Carter Jr. (34) as Magic forward Tristan da Silva, right, helps defend during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Saturday, March 21, 2026, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)