In a new Netflix mini-series, the two actresses playing the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel’s protagonist, are blind, just like the character.

On a set on the outskirts of Budapest, as the crew reset cameras for the next take, Nell Sutton, 7, sat up in bed and asked her director, Shawn Levy, a question:

“How will you make it look like night?”

Levy explained that the blue lights, set up around the room, would convey nighttime onscreen. Sutton was satisfied, and settled back into position, headphones on, to start a scene in which her character, Marie-Laure, is listening to the radio way past her bedtime. Her father, played by Mark Ruffalo, comes in and catches her. She tells him that she is learning about the magic of radio waves. “The most important light is the light you cannot see,” she says.

Sutton, cast as the young Marie-Laure in All the Light We Cannot See, Netflix’s four-episode adaptation of Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is blind. The actress playing the character 10 years later, Aria Mia Loberti, is also blind.

In some ways the set, which took over a site next to an abandoned brewery last year for a few weeks over the summer, seemed like any other: People with walkie-talkies strode past equipment and craft services. But this production was the first time that blind lead characters in a major television show were being played by actors who were themselves blind, and the attention that went into accommodating those actors, and making the show as true as possible to the experiences of people who are blind, was significant.