84 | APRIL 27 • 2023 

ANNE FRANK FROM 
ANOTHER ANGLE, 
WATERGATE PLUMBERS, 
& BUPKIS, A COMEDY

Starting on May 1 is A Small 
Light, an eight-episode 
series. New episodes air 
first on the Nat Geo channel 
on Mondays and stream the 
next day on Disney+ and 
Hulu. 
Light is based a memoir 
by Miep Gies (1909-2010), a 
Dutch secretary employed 
by Otto Frank (Anne 
Frank’s father). Gies risked 
her life to hide the Frank 
family from the Nazis, as 
did Elisabeth “Bep” Voskuijl 
(Sally Messman), a Frank 
company typist. These two 
young women found and 
hid Anne’s diary after the 
Nazis discovered the Frank 
family’s hiding place and 
ransacked it in August 1944. 
Liev Schreiber, 55, plays 
Otto Frank (1889-1980), 
the only member of his 
immediate family to survive 
the Holocaust. Bel Powley, 
31, an English actress, 
plays Gies. Powley’s most-
seen film is King of Staten 
Island (2020). She played 
Pete Davidson’s on-and-off 
girlfriend. Powley’s mother 
is Jewish. My sense is that 
she’s secular.
Anne Frank (1929-March 
1945) is played by Billie 
Boulett, who I’m virtually 

sure is not Jewish. French 
actress Amira Casar, who 
plays Anne’s mother, Edith, 
is not Jewish.
Hiding with the Franks 
was the (Jewish) Van 
Pels family. British Jewish 
actors Andy Nyman, 57, 
and Caroline Catz, 52, 
play Mr. and Mrs. Van Pels. 
(Nyman played a Warsaw 
Ghetto fighter in the 2001 
film Uprising.) Another 
Brit, Rudi Goodman, 20, 
plays Peter Van Pels. I 
couldn’t find much on his 
background. 
Ashley Brooke, 19, 
who plays Anne’s sister, 
Margot (1928-March 1945), 
is Jewish. Brooke has 
performed on Broadway, 
been in a few films and 
has had some TV guest 
roles. With some difficulty, I 
found out that her “real” 
last name is Eisdorfer. Her 
father is Jerry Eisdorfer, a 
New Jersey attorney. The 
bar mitzvah notice of her 
brother, Adam, now 15, is 
online. 
I relayed this info to a 
friend, and he found a very 
moving Facebook post 
(June 2022) by Ashley’s 
mother, Barbara Schwartz-
Eisdorfer. She noted that 
Ashley, her daughter, 
would play Margot Frank. 
Then she related that 
Ashley’s paternal Czech 
Jewish grandmother, 
Esther Eisdofer, was a 
Holocaust survivor. Like 
Anne and Margot, Esther 

was a teen when she and 
her sister were sent to a 
concentration camp. Unlike 
the Frank sisters, these two 
sisters survived. 
Esther wouldn’t talk to 
family about the camps, 
but she consented to 
have her Holocaust 
memories videotaped by 
the University of Southern 
California (USC) Shoah 
Foundation. Ashley viewed 
the tape and thought of 
turning her grandmother’s 
story into a screenplay 
some day. As Ashley’s 
mother put it, Ashley was 
“primed” when an audition 
for A Small Light came up. 
Ashley now attends USC. 
Here’s a Frank family 
story that always haunted 
me. Otto Frank served in 
the German Army during 
WWI. He saw combat in 
an artillery unit and was 
promoted to the rank of 
lieutenant. He took his 
WWI army trunk with him 
when he and his family fled 
Germany and moved to 
Holland. The SS-led police 
who raided the Franks’ 
hiding place were — for 
lack of a better term — 
quite rude when they broke 
into the hiding place. But 
then one noticed a stencil 
on the trunk. The stencil 
said that Otto was a (WWI) 
German army officer. The 
SS raiders then turned more 
polite — but they didn’t lift 
a finger to help their former 
“brother-in-arms.”
White House Plumbers is 
a five-episode HBO series 
that begins streaming 
on May 1. It follows 
the activities of agents 
(nicknamed “plumbers”) 
who were directed by 
President Nixon, and his 
aides, to spy on political 
rivals. The operation came 
to an end when several 
plumbers were caught 

(1972) trying to break into 
a Democratic Party office 
within the Watergate office 
building. 
David Mandel, 52, 
directed the series. Ike 
Barinholtz, 46, co-stars 
as Jeb Magruder, a Nixon 
re-election “honcho” who 
directed the plumbers. 
Ashley Brooke has a small 
role as the daughter of G. 
Gordon Liddy, a plumber. 
Jewish Matchmaking, 
an eight-episode reality 
series, will begin streaming 
on Netflix on May 3. The 
official description says: 
“When Jewish singles 
are ready to get serious, 
they call on Aleeza Ben 
Shalom to find their perfect 
romantic match from across 
the U.S. and Israel.”
Bupkis is an eight-
episode comedy series 
that, in the words of the 
publicity release, “provides 
a heightened, fictionalized 
version of Pete Davidson’s 
real life.” Davidson plays 
himself. Edie Falco (The 
Sopranos) plays Pete’s 
mother. Bupkis (which 
means “nothing” in Yiddish), 
begins streaming on the 
Peacock channel on May 4.
Brad Garrett, 62 
(Everybody Loves 
Raymond), is listed high 
in the Bupkis credits, so I 
guess his part is big — he 
plays “Roy.” Another series 
regular is Simon Rex, 48. 
He plays a character named 
“Ice Pop.” 

CELEBRITY NEWS

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

ARTS&LIFE

MARTIN KRAFT/WIKIPEDIA 

Liev 
Schreiber

IMDB

Ashley Brooke

GREG2600/WIKIPEDIA 

Ike Barinholtz

