Ann Curry will host a new PBS series next year called “We’ll Meet Again.”
The six-part program will feature reunions between people who have been affected by real-life events, like a Japanese-American woman who sought to find a classmate who helped her when she was a girl at the outbreak of World War II. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese-American girl was bullied in school, but the classmate reached out to become friends with her. The girl and her family were interned during the war.
In an interview, Curry said she quickly boarded the series after hearing its concept. “I had a sense of the potential depth of the stories,” she said. “What I wasn’t prepared for is how much things that happened so long ago could rise to the surface and be so powerful.”
The show comes from Blink Films in partnership with Curry’s production company. It is produced by Simon Harries, and Curry, Justine Kershaw and Andra Heritage are executive producers.
Other stories will focus on those whose lives were impacted by the Vietnam War, 9/11, and the 1960s civil rights era, among other moments.
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“This is history not the from point of view of people in charge. It is the point of view of people who have no control over these events and have to rise up to survive,” Curry said.
She said that producers and researchers made extensive searches through public records to find people and bring them together. Kershaw, executive producer of Blink Films, said that the focus is on “ordinary men and woman who lived through extraordinary moments in history,” often with traumatic experiences, yet cherish memories of people “with whom they share a unique bond.”
Curry said that the series comes at a good time, as it shows stories of empathy.
“We are in a time when people actually need to hear these stories of empathy,” she said. “We have forgotten some of this good stuff. What we find are the similarities, and they speak to the similarities in our human family.”
