‘Blitz’ True Story: What to Know About the History Behind Steve McQueen’s WWII Drama on Apple TV+

If you want to watch a new, big-budget movie this weekend but don’t feel like going to the movie theaters for Wicked or Gladiator 2, then Apple TV+ has got you covered with the streaming release of Steve McQueen’s new WWII movie, Blitz.

This historical war movie was written, directed, and produced by Oscar winner Steve McQueen (Shame, 12 Years a Slave, Widows.) Blitz follows the journey of a young English boy (Elliot Heffernan, in his feature film debut) who is evacuated from London during World War II, and opts to run away in an attempt to reunite with his mother (Saoirse Ronan). The film opened in select theaters on November 1, and after a three-week theatrical run, began streaming on Apple TV+ today. The movie is free to stream for Apple TV+ subscribers.

Also starring, Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine, Kathy Burke, Paul Weller, and Stephen Graham, Blitz is a fictional movie that is built atop of a lot of real-life historical context. Read on to learn more about the Blitz true story, and the history of the real London Blitz.

Is Blitz based on a true story?

Blitz is not based on a true story, in the sense that none of the characters in the film are based on any real-life person. According to a Deadline interview with Steve McQueen, the director was inspired by an old WWII photograph of a black boy waiting at a train station with a suitcase, which was the jumping-off point for his main character, George (played by Elliott Heffernan).

“It started with a photograph of a boy that I found during my research for Small Axe of a Black child being evacuated, with a cap and a suitcase,” McQueen explained. “I wanted to know who he was. I felt so protective of him when I saw that photograph. He was just a sweet little boy. But the contrast is, he’s in the environment of war.”

However, everything about George’s life, family, and the incredible journey he takes on his way back home, was invented for the movie. Rita, the character played by Saoirse Ronan, is also fictional, though it is true that, in general, women worked in factory jobs making bombs, while the men were at war.

That said, Blitz is based on a true story in the sense that “The Blitz” was a real thing that happened, when German forces spent eight months bombing London during World War II, from September 1940 to May 1941. Civilians were forced to use the London Underground as a makeshift bomb shelter, over two million houses were destroyed or damaged, and over 40,000 civilian lives were lost. Thousands of children were evacuated out of London.

Even though the characters are not based on real people, McQueen did a lot of research in an effort to accurately depict London during the Blitz of 1940 and 1941. When asked in an interview with Awards Watch what he discovered in his research that he felt compelled to include in the film, McQueen replied, “Everything.”

“Everything, from the fire hose, understanding the mechanisms that the firemen had, to the sort of apparatus they had to deal with,” McQueen said. “The fact that the fire hoses were made out of canvas, they leaked the brass nozzles that they couldn’t control the water pressure. All the way through to the Cafe de Paris and people’s fingers being sort of cut off for jewelry and the Cafe de Paris before the explosion, with decadence.”

McQueen added that there is at least one character in the film based on a real person, and that is Mickey Davis, a little person who was well-known in East London in WWII, who is played in the movie by actor Leigh Gill.

“Mickey Davis, this small gentleman who was one of the architects of the NHS [Britain’s National Health Service] who basically created these shelters,” McQueen said. “An American journalist went to Mickey’s shelter, and she said this is the first time she’s ever seen democracy in actual action.”

Another real person who is, very briefly, depicted in the movie is Ken “Snakehips” Johnson (played by actor Devon McKenzie-Smith), a black, 26-year-old big band leader who was killed—along with at least 33 other people—while he was performing at the Café de Paris, London, when it was hit by a German bomb. McQueen imagines a lively performance scene at the Café de Paris moments before the bomb, and then depicts the aftermath, when the dead bodies were looted for their jewelry.

“What was interesting about it, for me, doing the research, [was] this wealth of this beautiful rich world,” McQueen told Awards Watch. “I was diving into the world, this actually happened and I’ve never seen it. I think we know more about the Tudors in the UK than we know about the Blitz.”