Wolfgang Cerny is an internationally well-known actor who has starred in the films The Red Ghost, The Whirlpool, Nürnberg and many more. Diana Ringo interviewed Wolfgang in Vienna, Austria on 15.01.2024. He shared information about his new projects, including the fantasy miniseries The Outliers, a new Western with director Andrey Bogatyrev and the German series Tatort.

Diana: So, nice to see you Wolfgang again here in Vienna!

Wolfgang: Thanks for inviting me.

Diana: Can you tell us about your new projects?

Wolfgang: I have a very interesting, German TV series called SOKO Donau, where I played a country singer. We were traveling to all these small Austrian villages, and I was on these big market places on a trailer, singing in the microphone and to film everything, it was super fun. This will premiere somewhere later this year in Austria and Germany. And besides that, next week is going to be the premiere of an international series called The Outliers. We shot that before the war, in Saint Petersburg and other places, and it’s a kind of alternative fantasy, it’s a bit X-Men like. But set between both World Wars, which was a very strange and dark time. And so goes the story – there’s people who develop superpowers, different kinds of. And there’s this one guy, he’s a very strange, mysterious German duke, who’s an aristocrat. He owns a whole castle, and he collects these people, mainly when they’re kids. He’s trying to start an academy, with very, talented and obviously powerful children. And then the word gets out of a very powerful young woman from somewhere from the north, and the Soviets are trying to arrest her for some murder she did not commit. And my character learns that she exists and tries to save her, and that sets of things in motion. My character and hers have very interesting superpowers. And it’s with really good colleagues, it’s a very good cast. And it was very interesting to stand there and do this and this with your hands, you know there will be special effects later, sparks or whatever waves of energy. I’m looking forward to that, actually.

Diana: And you also like fantasy literature?

Wolfgang: I am a huge fan. I’m a huge fan of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones and basically even like Harry Potter, even though a bit less. But I was hooked mainly about Lord of the Rings, to be honest. So, when I read the books as a teenager, that was one of the reasons why I went into acting, to be honest, because I wanted that to see that on screen. When I graduated from high school, the movies were almost out already. I was very happy to be part of that, at least time wise. I also have some ideas about such big projects myself.

Diana: And do you wish to also produce something yourself?

Wolfgang: I already have produced three projects as a creative producer. One just aired, it’s called Legends of Sambo, which is a martial arts movie about three legends, how a Soviet martial arts called Sambo was initially created. And I played one of the two leads. Plus, I’m the creative producer and thank God the movie was successful. I’m very happy that the audience, the reactions were very good and people had warm feelings when they left the cinema. I like producing because it lets you dive deeper into the material, at least into a project. It gives you more control and more responsibility because as an actor usually you come on set, you prepare, of course, you have an audition, but you enter usually a project very late, the project already exists, the story’s written, 15,000 different drafts until you have a story. And then in the end you have the casting sometimes weeks before the major shooting starts and then you come on set, you deliver your lines, you are with the other actors, with the director, maybe producer or whatever on set for a couple of weeks, if you’re lucky. Maybe 2- or 3-months max, and then you’re out and then you never know what’s going to happen with the project. I had a couple of times that I played substantial big parts, and those projects, ended up not being that successful or not that good, actually. And I really wondered why for quite a while. One of the reasons I went into producing for why I’m interested in it is because I during the last five years, for example, I saw almost only really good, performances by actors and actresses. Almost nothing that didn’t convince me. Really felt that the level and the quality of acting worldwide has really gone up a lot. Maybe there’s so much competition the whole industry benefits from it. But I have not seen that many good projects in movies. And then I felt like that apparently it does not mainly depend on acting because there’s really like shitty movies from movies that didn’t reach me in a big time where, but the acting was great. I felt like, okay, apparently it doesn’t only depend on this. And combined with the experience I had with projects of mine where the cast was amazing, the director was amazing, the story was great, and in the end, the movie was so-so and I felt like, what happened? And this question led me to realizing that apparently the power of the producers after the general shooting is finished, is quite big. And that led me to the wish to be able to control more of a project to help and nurture it from the beginning of an idea until the premiere, and even further, to send it to festivals to live the life of a movie because in the end, it’s like a child. You have to start to nurture it, give it the milk bottle or whatever, and til it grows up and then goes its own way. And then you hopefully say, I’ve done my work and wave goodbye and hopefully win something. Mainly the big wish is that it gets seen by people. That was my path into producing. I’m still new to this, but I do have my own projects, which I’m developing right now step by step. And, I was lucky that in in the past decade, I got to work with many really good, really great artists, filmmakers be in front or behind the camera, and that helped me a lot to develop a sort of style or experience to which are now try to use for my own projects. My main thing is not to just not repeat the bad stuff, just repeat, copy the positive experiences.

Diana: Was it difficult to prepare for the role of Oschepkov?

Wolfgang: It was not that hard because I’ve worked with Andrey Bogatyrev, my friend before. Right now we already have finished three projects, actually. But after, The Red Ghost, which was our initial, project, which thank God became a huge success and which, was the start of our friendship and creative collaboration there. When he presented me with another script, like one two years after I shot The Red Ghost, I read it, of course, because it’s Andrey. But then I felt like “Andrey, it’s very kind of you, but I don’t know which role”, because there were only like four German roles in there. And so, it was German number one, two, three and four. And then he said, no, I want you to play to look at Oschepkov. And I was like, who? Andrey’s like, read it again, but with this character. I read the script again and it’s one of the two lead roles. And I said, yeah, but Andrey, he’s fully Russian. He said I don’t care, you can do it, it’s fine, we’ll just dub you and anything, and he’s bald and whatever, but we’ll find a way. He knew that I have been doing martial arts for more than 17 years. I have never done Sambo before, of course, we had three quite intensive weeks of rehearsals and training. And I was working with some guys there with some guys who were professionals in that sports, and they taught us everything. There were funny moments. We had 3 or 4 different choreographers, mainly for the big main fight between Spiridonov, Oschepkov which had to be rehearsed. And I was very lucky because Dima, my colleague, he is a professional instructor in Aikido. He’s also a martial artist. He’s was really nice. We ended up doing all the stunts ourselves, which I usually prefer when I shoot, because it just gives me more control over the character and more control of the story. The camera guys are happy too, because they can also film my face when I get beaten. We had long shooting days and, long nights.

Diana: Were there any interesting behind the scenes stories?

Wolfgang: It was only funny that Dima sometimes got so into characters, so into the fights that he applied real pressure to all these things. I would say, Dima, stop, stop, its hurting… I turned the cameras are not even rolling anymore. “You can stop. Oh, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.” That that happened a couple of times. But besides that, I was not bald in real life. I couldn’t because I had four projects in parallel where I had to switch and jump and one with long hair, one with short hair, one with no hair. They ended up gluing my hair every day. I was there in the makeup department like two hours before shooting every morning. And that was a challenge. That’s why I ended up having like such a huge head. I was ready to shave my head fully for that project, were it not for the other projects where I was shooting before we started with Sambo. But it was amazing to shoot with Andrey again. We had another project which we just finished a couple of months ago. It’s kind of like a Western shot somewhere in the taiga, in the forest. And really, that’s the kind of stuff I’m interested in as well, rough stories, where it’s about survival.

Diana: And what about The Red Ghost? How did you get cast in the film?

Wolfgang: It was some years ago when I heard through my agent that they want to shoot a movie called Red Ghost and I heard it’s a World War Two story and they want to cast me for a Nazi. And it was really a very stupid role, very small, a couple of shooting days, very stereotype Nazi. He would go in, he would kill everyone, get killed. And that was it. Very black and white. I still went for the casting because I felt like let’s meet the guys, what they want to do. But I told them, guys, this is a nice, very nice story, but this character is super boring, so I will not play this way, but you guys are cool. And they said, what do you suggest? And then I said, there’s much potential if we change the character, and we met a couple of times and they were ready to do that. And Andrey was like immediately, “so of course, let’s hear your opinion”. And then we developed the character together and the story grew. And they had another draft. And then we couldn’t shoot that winter because there was no snow for whatever reason, not enough, they wanted to shoot in March and everything was melted. They postponed the general shooting for the year after the winter. And we were so lucky because there was so much snow, really. We had to order special machines to clear paths to the shooting location. It was crazy. And by that time my character became quite big and he became a human being, before he was just a stereotype. It was just like a black and white two-dimensional figure. What we added was that he was not a Nazi initially, he was just a super soldier, he liked the tactics, he liked the challenge of who’s the better soldier in war. And, all the other German roles, they’re a bit stupid, but they’re very nice and warmhearted. And it’s kind of the first time in Russian cinema where I saw, German soldiers depicted as nice guys. So would there be no war? They would probably be friends with Russians in a second. But because they were on different sides, the moment the enemy approach, they all took their weapons on shooting. And that was kind of the big points where it took the guys seven years to make the movie because they, didn’t get funding because people thought it was not patriotic enough. And I feel this movie is one of the most patriotic movies can ever imagine, because it’s about the Unknown Soldier and about all the sacrifices they had to endure when the Nazis invaded. But many people didn’t see that way. And then Andrey and I really think that you couldn’t praise that high enough because many producers came on board and said, okay, I’ll give you the money, but you have to change this and this… And Andrey said, no, no, I want to have my version. And because he saved his version to the very, the movie became a success. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough power, enough energy to send it to any festivals, and the premiere was set somewhere in after Covid to another lockdown, somewhere end of June, 35th degrees outside. No one watched the movie. And they said okay, its another success, bye, next movie. But then it got picked up by all the streaming services and it became an instant success overnight. Like for 2 or 3 weeks, it was number one on three different platforms. So that was nice. And afterwards it was history, because then it was like over and over time and people would watch it again. I was very happy because I initially believed very much in that project. And I kept telling Andrey that you are the Russian Tarantino, it’s the best advertising you can do. And now they write it everywhere. It came even up to a point when they were doing a very strange poster for the movie. And I said, no, I want to have a really nice, cool, Hollywood like poster. And so I drew it myself, then they used this to make the final version. That was one of the reasons why Andrey, later approached me and said, I want you to be a creative producer on the next film, in the summer. I’m very happy that he came to me, because it was a really amazing experience for me and kind of like a new level and a new step in my filmmaking life.

Diana: And was it initially very difficult to play in the films about World War two?

Wolfgang: Yeah, it was initially. It is always hard and difficult because it’s not fiction, these things really happened in war and worse. In the case of Red Ghost, it was a kind of a Western or Eastern, as Andrey said. But there was always a sense of dark humor in it. It was a bit like Inglourious Basterds, you could say the Russian or the eastern answer. But two years before that, at its Sobibor, which is a, real story based on real events about the mass breakout of a death camp of the Nazis in Poland. And, there was Khabenskiy. I really was uncertain, I was in such a dark mood because I knew that what we’re doing here and what happens here on set happens and even worse, in real life and all these Jewish people… It was a huge set. It was also sent to the Oscars by Russia, actually, and it was Khabenskiy’s, debut as a director. And we really were shooting, long 16, 17 hours night shoots somewhere in Vilnius, and it was, rainy it was dark and they had fires everywhere and it looked real. And everyone was so in character, even the people who played the Jews, especially them, they were like, dressed poorly and dark, and it was really hard. And then going out there with a gun… My character, was in real life a pure monster, there are few monsters, but he was one of them. But we changed it somehow because Kostya, the director didn’t see me in that way, thank God. So, we changed him into a young, naive joker. He was kind of naive and a bit stupid and in the end, he was the most positive of all the people, he never killed during the whole movie. I was very happy he never tortured anyone. And, in the end, when the outbreak happened and everyone was killed, he wasn’t even there. And initially, if you look back at the history because he wasn’t there, it was the only reason they could break out because he was such a monster, the real character, Gustav Wagner, that he didn’t have a schedule. They couldn’t predict where he would be in order to like, overtake him and kill him or whatever, what they did with all the other guards. But he being the second in command in the whole death camp, he didn’t have a schedule. He just popped up wherever he wanted to. It was impossible to know where he will be in the next minute. They couldn’t plan with him because he was like a big X, no one knew what would happen. And that was a tough project. There was another movie called Zoya about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. She was a Russian martyr, young girl who was captured by the Nazis because she was behind enemy lines, meaning behind on the on the German side, burning Russian, buildings in order for the Nazis not to find anything where they can, sleep at or like get some warmth during the harsh Russian winter. But the problem was that the Russian population wasn’t happy about that either. If someone comes of your own, it doesn’t matter who does, but you wouldn’t be happy if anyone burns down your house, doesn’t matter whether German, or Russian. But she was on a secret mission, apparently for Stalin, who said, you have to sabotage and destroy as much as possible there. I also refused in the beginning. I refuse quite a lot about these roles, but they wanted me to play the main German negotiator. It was kind of a like a psychologist. And when I met the director, I told him, yeah, thank you, it’s an interesting project, but the characters too bad because it was initially the first draft, he was torturing and killing, was a sadist. And I told them that’s a very interesting character, but I will not play it. I’m not the kind of guy to want to do that. And then they changed it. They said, no, no, that’s okay, they then give the torture part to someone else. And we turned it into my character kind of falling in love with, Zoya, seeing like a like-minded spirit. He’s trying to save her because what happened was they just needed her information. Who else was there, which she already had, they just needed her to confirm. And, my character tried everything within his power to save her, but in the end she was too stubborn so he couldn’t do it. But, he was not a “Nazi Nazi” either. So that was the way I approach it. And, but those are dark stories. Those movies you don’t only do to entertain, you do them to educate and to show people how far human beings can go. So, the main reason to do such movies is to tell people never, we should do that again. We should never repeat that. And the layer of civilization, it’s very thin and we saw it during Covid even when people were starting fights in supermarkets about toilet paper. So even like the moment you switch off one of the leverages of comfort of people, they immediately feel threatened and shut down in themselves a little bit, and the small, thin layer of civilization is easily wiped away. And then just imagine if you are in a foreign country, 4 or 5 years of harsh world war behind you, no food, nothing. Of course, you care only about yourself. And now with all the technology we have, all the internet, all these messengers, sometimes also fake news, unfortunately. But we have the way and means of informing ourselves. I really recommend everyone don’t only believe the first opinion you hear, go out there, get as many opinions of different sides as possible. So especially if there’s a big conflict between two sides and if you pick one side, it’s fine. And if you feel like that’s the reality, that’s justice and that’s just fair. But I recommend everyone to at least have a look at the other side and try to understand what’s happening there. And I’m not saying to justify that. I’m just saying just to understand both views of the same conflict. And that will help you to de-escalate for both sides, for your own good. I feel like now we’re in a state in the world where we’re just escalating, we’re fueling the fire again, because some individuals, it’s never nations, individuals are profiting a lot of that. And that’s like something I detest, to be honest, when you really like in it. When you earn money and make a profit and living off the death and torture of others. And that’s basically the whole weapon industry. I never understood the concept that we have to buy a gun, wear a gun to protect myself against other guns. I’ve been doing martial arts for such a long time. I was shooting guns all the time in all the movies only. But in real life, I’m a pacifist. I would never touch a gun. I think it’s actually stupid. But that’s also why I’m now in Austria and not there anywhere else, because it’s a very safe country and we have actually very strict gun laws here. In order to have a gun, you have to make like trainings every 2 or 3 years. You have to have your gun locked at home with the key somewhere else if the police comes unannounced and checks that. But that’s the way our world is drifting into right now. And I would like to remind or help remind people that, there’s more connecting us than actually separating us.

Diana: What was it like, when you first went to Russia to shoot the miniseries Snipers?

Wolfgang: It was super interesting because I never thought about Russia before. And when there was, a casting offer for, quite big budgeted, TV series called snipers for Russian TV. And, it was a bit like Romeo and Juliet set in war. Two snipers getting the who fell in love with each other before the war, a Russian girl sniper and a German male sniper. And they, fell in love and then the war happened, and suddenly they get the order to shoot one another. It’s very dramatic, of course. And, I was initially cast at the audition for the big bad guy, the full Nazi who’s like, ideologically Nazi, and but then a week before the casting happened in, Moscow, and it was 2012, I think 2013, they, called me and said, you know, if you’re interested, we’d like to cast you for the lead role as well. The good Nazi, the Nazi Romeo. And the only thing you have to do is, learn six pages in Russian. And I was just like, of course. No worries. I was in the middle of rehearsals for theater. I had no time at all. I really hung up and I was like, it’s happening. I have no clue… And then I didn’t even understand Russian, couldn’t even read it. I called a colleague of mine who was Russian, and asked him, please, can you just like, read it to me and slowly so I can write down what I hear? It was just it was like a magic spell that I wrote down. And then every three seconds I was just like remembering, repeating this whole thing in my head again, beginning again like a loop. And then in the end, I, flew to Russia, flew to Moscow. It was like February. Super cold. -32 at night. And it was -26 during the day in Moscow. Everything was freezing, touch screens wouldn’t work. And then we were shooting in Mosfilm studios, and it was a huge set, there was like two guys only for the for the smoke in the background. I remember they put makeup on my hands and wore everything, including a four kilo sniper rifle. Only for the audition, I was just like, this is a bit too much? “No, no, that is exactly as we wanted.” And then, of course, no one spoke English. I had a translator there, and it was it was hilarious because my, my co-lead, Tatiana Arngolts, she was quite a big star back then in Russia. She came a bit late and didn’t learn her lines, so she just told me, like in Russian “I didn’t learn the lines, I’ll improvise a bit.” I say to my interpreter, “So, what did you say? ” … “Please tell her that she can do whatever she wants. I learned my lines. And I don’t care what she does, I speak my lines”.  She was like oh, give me five minutes. And then she learned the lines. And then we, actually had like, a very weird, intense casting. And then I think 2 or 3 weeks later, they called me and said, want to play the lead? And I was just like, what happens now? I had to, like, get out of two theater productions in Munich, where I was part of the ensemble, and I started shooting there, it was three months. It was crazy intense. I didn’t speak the language. I just learned the lines because I only had the time either learn the lines or learn the language. I chose the lines because I really needed that. So would I need to speak was a bit like, okay, “Germany is better”, I knew words for gun, I knew words for war and everything. But that wouldn’t help me if I went to buy milk at night. But it was a really, really nice experience. I really felt very, just appreciated there. And they’re super nice people. And I really felt the old atmosphere of Chekhov or Stanislavski and basically all the modern theory of acting is based in Russia. That’s where it comes from. I mean, all the modern teachers and, who developed their own techniques, Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler and all this stuff. They all studied with Stanlislavski when he was in Paris for six months. And they founded their knowledge and their theories and their techniques on his studies. And I felt that I felt there was like an old, really big appreciation for the art of acting, for the art of theater, for the art of film. We had applause after some takes, and I never had that in a movie. Said, what’s happening? They’re talking about us? It was really good. But in the end, it was a really nice experience. And then I asked Tatiana, through a translator, whether she believes there might be a chance to work a bit more in Russia because it was such a nice, wild East experience. And she said, yes, of course. And she introduced me to her agent, which is still my agent. And in Russia, Roman Vlasov, he’s a good friend of mine. And he immediately started working. He said, okay, let’s give it a try. It’s a huge market, but it would be good if you would learn a little bit of Russian. And so, I tried. I did it, but I ended up doing 2 or 3 other projects with an interpreter on set, usually a young, very good-looking Russian girl who spoke amazingly Russian, English or German. But usually, it was her first time on set so she had no clue what was important for me to translate, so she ended up translating something, but not the stuff that was important to me. And then in the end, I really felt like I was blind and deaf on set. I said then, please, next project without any translator. And that was when I start to learn the language. And it was actually a unique chance to learn a language because no one either wanted to a couldn’t speak English, at least not where I was shooting. And now I’m kind of fluent, so I’m very happy. It was like an amazing experience and who knows what’s going to happen next. I had an amazing decade in the wild, wild East, as I call it. I learned a lot. I’m very grateful for how much I could do there, how much I have done, how many people I’ve worked with get to know and get to portray and, meet. I’m very grateful and that’s also something you should never forget, when someone is nice to you, be like a country be it a person or institution or like a circle of friends, never forget that. Never take it for granted. I think being grateful is one of the biggest superpowers we can have as human beings.

Diana: So you started your career in the telenovela Storm of Love?

Wolfgang: It was interesting because it was, exactly three days after I graduated from drama school. I started shooting there, and that was as a lead for, such a big, successful show. It was quite a lot of responsibility and load on my shoulders because, as you know, telenovela is like a format. It’s a bit like a modern fairytale. So there’s Prince and Princess. They meet each other, they love each other. They cannot come to each other, whatever it takes a year until they finally, marry, move out, and then the next couple comes busy. It’s like a never-ending story. The setting is, in this case a five-star hotel somewhere in the south of Munich, in the beautiful Bavarian landscape. I studied drama. First, I did medicine. I really went deep into, all this theatrical of theater, underground movies, short films in the dirt somewhere when I express something very, very artsy. And then I came to Storm of Love where it’s beautiful, it’s nice. So, there was one thing I really, I never forget is like, impression before logic. So if something looks nice, let’s do it. So if I made the mistake of asking. Yeah, but why should I do it? The wrong question, it just looks nice. It was interesting because it was one year. It was, 220 shooting days and we shot 45 minutes per day. So usually when you shoot, like a feature film, eight, nine minutes max, in Hollywood it is sometimes 30s. It was such a huge, such professional crew. They had two directors. They had seven operators, minimum 2 or 3 different sets every day built. Some were always indoors and 2 or 3 outdoors. You were traveling nonstop, especially as the lead couple. They really like shipped us nonstop. It was 5 or 6 shooting days per week. It was tough. It was really tough. It was an amazing experience because there was no time for any stardom issues. There was simply no time for that. And that’s like the best workshop, the best work experience you can ever get because it really trains you to be disciplined. Otherwise, you just go down. It’s impossible because you’re constantly behind time, whatever you’re shooting there. And this pressure, that taught me a lot. And that basically everything, almost everything after this was, easier stress wise. So, the stress I had later on in bigger projects and big productions, international, was not due to too much to do, but due to seven 800 people on set. Horses, animals. The sun is setting. Rain is coming. We have to shoot now. Hurry up, we change the sets… So basically the stress that came afterwards was easier for me to deal with because of Storm of Love. So I’m really grateful for the experience there. For me, Storm of Love was a an immeasurably, important experience. But I didn’t want to repeat it. Afterwards came many requests for soaps for telenovelas. But I really said no, I don’t want to see any camera anymore after this year. I was really fed up. I went to theater for two years. I played in a very nice theater in Munich, was part of the ensemble for one year. I didn’t shoot anything. I was really just on stage six, seven days per week doing different kinds of plays. We rehearsed, we dived into characters, situations. really like artistic work. But then after one year, I slowly started to realize, I want to do a little bit more film because that was my first love. The reason I came to acting from a very academic and medical background was movies, it was not theater. I love theater, I still love it, but movies are my first love. As I always said, filmmaking and the whole experience is this magic. When you come to a premiere or just watching with or without popcorn, you just sit there and the lights go out and everyone sees the same movie. I really love it. And, theater is different kind of magic, but it’s a different profession. I produced later a couple of short films and then came the request from a strange country in the East and, fully out of my whatever aura of experience that I felt like it’s something totally new. But on the other hand, why not? Let’s give it a try. And, as an actor and person, one of my ways of, deciding things was, when it comes to very tough decision between A or B, that I always try to picture myself as two clones of myself. So Wolfgang A Wolgang B, Wolfgang A chooses version A, Wolfgang B chooses version B, and if they both go this way. And then I would ask myself, which version would I be more interested in watching? That’s how I decided to try the Russian project, how I decided to go into acting from a very safe and set profession as a surgeon or a doctor. Storm of Love really helped me a lot to prepare for the business. I wanted to shoot serious stuff, Tatort, crime investigations, tough stuff, which I did in drama school, but no one cast me for that. They all saw me like the Prince Charming from Storm of Love, and I said, can I do something else now? “We don’t believe you” or “we don’t see that, we want you as Prince Charming for this, and this very light hearted…” No, I don’t want to do that. I refused many of those roles until they stopped sending them. And then I made my way back from Russia. Interestingly, so also through Russia came UK and American projects. I played Russians in Hollywood and in England. It was super funny.

Diana: Can you tell more about these films?

Wolfgang: there was one I’m really proud of. It’s called Action Team. It’s a UK production, with Tom Davis and produced by him and some of his friends. It’s also super nice story how they came up with that. It’s basically a very goofy, very dark UK comedy spy comedy, basically. And my initially my character was Bogohardt, an Austrian Russian counter spy, and I really had to talk … of course it was in English, but in the beginning I talk as a very Austrian actor, a bit stupid, and I say, “hello, my name is Bogohardt and I want to help you.” Then it turns out that he’s actually a Russian counterspy. Anyway, it was a really interesting, experience because initially it was supposed to be in only one episode in the end, and I’m almost in every episode because they made the role bigger and bigger because we it was really amazing working with the guys, and they improvised a lot. In the end, there’s a whole heist story and kidnapping story and action sequences, and that was really fun. So it’s called Action Team, and that was kind of my initiation to the UK market, we were shooting in London and in Sofia, Bulgaria. And it was I enjoyed it a lot. I did a couple of smaller things in the UK and one project in America. And then came, Vikings Valhalla that was shot right during Covid. That was super tough because I actually got Covid while I was there in quarantine in the hotel. So we had to prolong the hotel stay in Dublin. Drove me crazy not leaving my room for almost 20 days. It was a nice hotel, a five star in Dublin, but I couldn’t see that anymore at the end of the 20 days, I did everything, workouts every day, room service knew me. That was also one of my dreams, to play in Vikings and with all my sword fighting and martial arts experience and my me being a fantasy nerd, that was just like, hit all the right strings. Super nice care, super nice team, very professional. Then some other parts came along and right now I’m, as you know, I’m in the West now, as I officially say and try to and building up my career here again.

Diana: What do you think is the main difference when you work in Hollywood, in the UK projects and when compared to Germany, Austria and Russia?

Wolfgang: So basically you can of course generalize, but I always say it fully depends on the crew and on the director, on the filmmaker, how they want to tell their story and how they are as a person, how they treat people. And you can have very strict directors who are control freaks in Germany, which happens quite often, and, in Russia or in America. And you can have like super casual, let’s of fair directors in Germany, in Russia, American anywhere basically depends on them. But if you want to talk cliche and there is something to it, otherwise there would be no cliches that, Russia is very chaotic, meaning that they don’t like to plan ahead, they, they don’t like to plan at all. Actually, I got the impression sometimes. And they always like they’re always mad, personally mad at the weather, if something unforeseen happens, someone gets sick. They’re like, “oh my gosh, how could this happen? This is impossible, why…” But actually they are only angry with themselves because they didn’t plan. If that happens in Germany or Astria, its like, okay, whatever, in America we have we have a safety system ABCD, if this happens and this is this, this everything is planned ahead, which is nice. The good side of this chaos in Russia is that they’re always open to some spontaneous magic happening. While if you are too restrictive in what you have planned and everything is planned through, you kind of squeeze that creative moment out of it. That’s the problem sometimes. Not always, of course, but I was shooting on one of the biggest sets I’ve ever been to, a small part in Mission Impossible, and this was like 900 people on set. It was crazy. But there was so much money involved that there was almost no space for any improvisation because everything was already planned ahead months of years for that specific shot. So they had to do it the way they planned it. That’s a bit tough. And on the other hand, when you come to a to a smaller set, they have much more freedom, of course, to experience it. And I’m not saying one is better than the other, I’m just saying there are differences. And then on the other hand, I heard that there’s also crazy directors like Taika Waititi who takes that huge budget and says okay, let’s improvise. Let’s see what happens. But that takes a lot of guts and a lot of experience, a lot of good taste to do that, to pull that off. So in my opinion, Russia is very creative, but not so well prepared while, Austria and Germany, if you want to put them together, they are very well prepared up to a point where there is, no more project, but only preparation. This project in Austria I just did, two months ago, it was a really nice experience. They were very well prepared. There was much space, it was a very director, Katja, she really gave us enough space to develop the character to see what was happening, where we could go with it. It depends on the director and the person and the personality and experience of the director. Because filming is one of the last true dictatorships left in our society, which are still kind of like accepted because and suddenly because of that, it depends. On the director how the movie is shot in the end, so it’s his or her responsibility that the movie becomes a success or a flop. And that’s why. And it’s his or her vision. Everyone is working towards to, of course, it’s a project together, but if the movie flops, no one will say the light was bad. No one would blame the light guy. They might blame the actors because they lent their faces to it. But everyone would blame the director, so it comes with a lot of risk, but also with a lot of opportunities at the end. That’s what I love about it, it’s always a risk. It’s like kids that never really grew up, but play with bigger money to tell that bedtime stories because in the end, it’s nothing else we do. We entertain. We show social dilemmas, of course, but as Shakespeare did, if we do that in a non entertaining way, no one will watch it. In my opinion, the big magic of theater as well, but mainly a film is to tell something important in an entertaining way.

Diana: If you could have dinner with any person, dead or alive, who would it be?

Wolfgang: It would probably be Robin Williams, the actor who killed himself. Yeah, I think I would choose him, actually, to have dinner with him. I think he could share something about life, about the profession, about work no one else could. Did you know that he had it in his right or in his contract, whenever he shot a movie that they had to employ at least 20 homeless people? It’s amazing. And if you look at Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting or Mrs. Doubtfire? H was such a talented and a warm person at the same time, and that rarely happens. So, yeah, that would be my pick. So today probably I would I would take Taika Waititi because, really interested in his work. I loved Hunt for the Wilderpeople and of course, everything modern like from Star Wars to Our Flag means Death. And also Thor: Love and Thunder, the way he takes the big budgets and turns them into a very funny success.

Diana: And, what is the best movie you have ever seen?

Wolfgang: One of the movies that left the biggest impression on me, which I rewatched several times, was Lord of the Rings. It’s a trilogy, but whatever. Then there is the Green Mile. So it’s a really good movie, which just pops up in my head then. There’s Shawshank Redemption, these classics. Basically a movie that explores the darkness within humans, but always with a twist to the light, so it leaves you with a positive feeling. That’s also my aim as a filmmaker, that a movie that only waves the finger, shakes the finger and says, you don’t should do that. It’s bad, people are bad… That leaves you with a question. That’s also possible, of course, but I personally prefer when it leaves you with the feeling like there’s good in the world where there’s a message of moral, where we feel like that’s a story that leaves me with a good feeling that I have to do something, maybe something has to change, or we have to work together, like I said, or focus on what connects us rather than what separates us. But it’s still leaves me with this warm, fuzzy feeling. And that’s kind of like one of the superpowers of cinema, in my opinion, because in theater it’s a bit strange because if you have this feeling, it’s a bit it was not a good theater evening. It feels a bit like it was cheap or was bad quality. There’s a thing in theater when you have to read at least ten books of secondary literature in order to understand what’s happening on stage, then I feel like it’s a bit like they’re fully showing off how smart and intelligent and sophisticated they are and how stupid the audience is, and that pushes me away as an audience member. But that’s just me and my two sets.

Diana: What kind of hobbies do you do in your spare time?

Wolfgang: So I love doing sports, all kinds of, right now I’m in the gym, I do CrossFit, I do skiing. It’s a nice season right now, nice winter here. And, to relax I paint miniatures. It’s a big hobby of mine. It’s called WarHammer. It’s from the UK. Initially I started doing it when I was a teenager, 12, 13-ish. Then I lost it over the years. And I rediscovered it during Storm of Love, because it gave me the small world of miniatures where I have full control, where I could really focus, and it was like calming down and meditation. I attended the World Championships of painting and I won some awards even for painting and stuff. I really loved it and I still love it, and I kind of rediscovered it together with my brother. And it is not only a hobby where you paint, but you can also play games, or you create your own landscape and you and you and you play. And it’s a huge growing community online. It’s huge. It’s bigger than Star Wars. The IP is huge and there was kind of a big deal with Henry Cavill about doing a big episode series about that. And that’s just a start. There’s 5 or 10 year deals and going to be more. And it’s huge and it’s a huge fanbase worldwide. So I’m one of many. But I see many parallels between this and many people think it’s just stupid nerdom, but it is actually between this and, movie making, actually telling stories because that’s what I like when I paint some miniatures. I want to tell a story with this, and it’s just a different medium, but in the end it there’s many similarities. For me it’s just a different way to express myself as an artist and using, brushes, using paints, using this sculpting paste to create something three dimensional is, for me, similar to creating a character, which I’m playing because I’m also three dimensional most of the times. And I have clothes, I’m set in a story and I have a life. And so do my miniatures. So, and it’s usually fantasy or science fiction sort something out of the ordinary. And that’s the stories I’m interested in as well. Something that you dream about, your you fantasize about and it takes you way invites you to journey you would probably never have in your life or maybe just dream about.