Maybe... Maybe Not

“I had noticed Sönke Wortmann much earlier in a completely different context, namely, as a player for my hometown soccer club SC Westfalia Herne 04. We met in person for the first time on a student film set in Tübingen. I was visiting one of my acting teachers who had taken on a role there, and Sönke Wortmann was a member of the film crew. Our meeting resulted in two engagements under Sönke Wortmann’s direction, in “Die Hochzeit des Figaro” and in “Wahnsinnsehe.” At some point, he asked me if I knew Ralf König’s comics. I even knew Ralf König personally. At the beginning of the 80s, he had caused quite a stir with his trashy troupe “The Emscher Sisters,” among others also in the corner pub Vorort in Dortmund, which I ran at that time together with six other crazy people. Ralf König was impressive with a “Mireille-Mathieu-Playback-Disaster.” How I was supposed to find myself in Ralf’s bulbous-nosed ensemble was a mystery to me until Sönke Wortmann explained his plans to me and offered me the role of the homosexual Norbert Brommer. Today, I have to laugh when I think that my first thought back then was: if I play Norbert Brommer, it’s absolutely necessary to communicate that I’m not gay. 1994, a different time. A casting at the Film Academy in Ludwigsburg as part of a workshop by Sönke Wortmann, but with Kai Wiesinger as Axel Feldheim at my side, brought the decision. The material I worked up convinced the producer Bernd Eichinger— and I had the role. Later, he told me that I was actually too old for him, but that he was very, very happy to have overlooked it."