Although his sister and her family were safe by the time he returned to Israel the following day, he felt compelled to act. Drawing on his military background, he joined volunteer organisation Brothers and Sisters In Arms and travelled south to help evacuate families still trapped in their homes.
“I felt like a lion in a cage,” he said. “I took my Jeep and my gun, and I went down to the south because there were still terrorists. There were missiles. Families were stuck in their houses. They needed to be rescued.”
He added: “You don't think about it... whether you'd die or not. It was just there's things that you feel that you have to do.”
There were even moments when residents opening their doors were confused to find the actor, best known for playing elite undercover operative Doron Kavillio, standing outside with a gun.
“They see me, and they get confused, and, you know, ‘Doron, what are you doing here?’ They thought that they were in a scene from Fauda.”
That day, he said, “was the hardest day ever. There has not been one day since – not one day – I haven’t thought about it.”
The attacks also prompted Raz, who writes the series alongside Avi Issacharoff, to make the decision to devote two episodes of the show's fifth season to October 7.
“For me, as an actor, to be there again, to play and to act in the same situation that really happened in real life was very hard,” he said. “We felt that we're doing something much more important than shooting a show.”
Lior Raz at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival (Credit: ARASH OSKOOIE/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)Middle East Images/AFP via Getty
Many of the cast and crew had lost friends or relatives or knew people who had been wounded. Production team member Matan Meir was killed while serving as an Israeli Defence Forces reservist in Gaza, while actor Idan Amedi was seriously injured in an explosion during his military service in January 2024.
Some scenes were particularly difficult for Raz. One depicts Doron visiting a therapist after losing eight hours of memory from October 7, based on a real survivor known to the writers.
“I broke down. I cried a lot. I went out. It was a very hard scene,” he said.
Another recreates the fate of young Israelis who hid from the attackers inside a rubbish container, only to be discovered and shot.
“The container story is real, something that really happened,” says Raz. “And to be there was the hardest thing ever.”
Raz and Issacharoff deliberately avoided depicting the full brutality of the attacks, fearing that overly graphic scenes would further traumatise Israeli viewers. The episodes carried warnings about their distressing content, giving viewers the option to skip them.
“I think Israelis are all post-traumatic,” he said. “Even my kids, they don't want to sleep alone because they remember the missiles. They're afraid of the missiles and the sirens.”
Fauda has ranked among Netflix's top ten most-watched series in over 40 countries.
