Katharina Wackernagel

Katharina Wackernagel has chosen Godot, a local café, for our meeting. She’s wearing a bright red dress, sitting right by the door and looking exactly as she does on her publicity photos. I, of course, fail to see her as I barrel inside to find a plug. Because if I don’t then the battery on my laptop will ensure this interview is good for, oh, ten minutes! But I’m lucky. I find one, get set up, and then wait. Shortly afterwards, we have one of those mobile phone conversations where both parties are standing maybe three or four feet apart, each looking around for the other!

That sorted, Katharina Wackernagel seated, she is most keen to talk not about herself, but her brother’s debut film, "Résiste – Aufstand der Praktikanten". “We’ve done shorts before,” Wackernagel says, “but this is our first big project and it was really intensive work. Since we live together we also discussed it in the kitchen each evening! It was my first time on a film from the first letter of the script to the finished product. Now it's ready and is coming out mid-November.” Said brother is Jonas Grosch, “he was nominated for the First Steps Award. The film is great! You mustn't forget to say that! ”

Currently enjoying a short summer holiday, hanging around in Berlin's café rich Prenzlauer Berg district, Wackernagel was born in 1978 in Freiburg but grew up in Kassel and hails from an acting family (mother, grandmother and uncle are all actors).

She started her career aged 17 in the ARD series "Tanja". “It was such fun that I went from there. I couldn't imagine going back into education and, with no professional training, I learned on the job.”

In fact Wackernagel was definitely an early starter. At the tender age of seven she set up her own theater group! “It was called Rote Handschuhe,” she explains. “There were five of us. We learned our texts from a record, built our own sets and did the show right here, kind of thing! ”

Later on, Wackernagel joined the Staastheater Kassel's youth drama club, where her mother was engaged (at the theater, not the club!). It was there that "Tanja"'s producer discovered her and "the growing young girl found herself playing a girl growing up! Tanja drops out of school, so did Katharina! She moves from home early, me too!”, Wackernagel continues. “I moved to Berlin on my own and thought I was grown up! Then I realized I knew nobody here! I was a bit overwhelmed and but wanted to carry it through. I think I overestimated myself to begin with, but it was a good time.”

She started doing short films from her younger brother's scripts. Then came the 2003 hit "Das Wunder von Bern", her first cinema film. That was followed by "Die Boxerin", “very important for me. I was cast so differently to before. I had to learn boxing! I could do something so different and also made many lasting friendships.” Then came the Thalidomide drama "Contergan" (the drug's German trade name) and Wackernagel was now “established. I was playing female roles, here a mother. I no longer felt typecast.”

Unlike many in her industry, Wackernagel is “happy as an actress in front of the camera. I don't write. There is so much still to try and I'm not ready to do something else. I love singing for fun although I don't play any instrument. I don't want to start my own band! Not till I know I can do it! ”

But Wackernagel does enjoy “going out with my brother, sitting outside with a glass of wine, kicking around ideas. We think up characters but then I leave it to the writers to write.”

Her short holiday is just that: short. Wackernagel has already signed for two crime films next year. “I play a cop, with director Martin Eigler. I was a cop in his film 'Stralsund'. We don't have titles yet but they're for ZDF, the Monday crime slot I think.”

Also coming up is the two-part TV event movie "Vulkan" in which southern German property values take a terminal dive. “It's by Uwe Jansen and I play Andrea, the lead's girlfriend. The characters are very good.”

And then Wackernagel is back to beating the drum for "Résiste", a socio-romantic comedy about an intern who is sick of being a permanent intern and a French girl who decides what Germany needs is a good revolution! "My brother loves comedies,” Wackernagel explains. “The more difficult a subject, the more important it is to do it with humor. 'Résiste' is not a totally realistic portrayal. It's set in Berlin but works with metaphors. I play the French annoyance!”

For her general health and well-being Wackernagel likes to “run every day. Well, I try to! It's a kind of meditation. I love music – everything mixed: ska, swing, soul. Anything I can dance to I can also run to.”

And only now does she start to list just how busy she's been!

“At the start of the year I was in Africa for six weeks, in Cape Town, for a film by Dieter Wedel called 'Mit Glanz und Gloria', a TV two-parter for pubcaster ZDF. It's about a con artist who parts people from their money and then has a great life with it. I play the wife of a victim who loses everything, including me!”

Then she was in Scotland for another ZDF film, this time for Ken Follett's "Ice Fever". “It's the story of the head of a laboratory,” Wackernagel relates, “who develops a virus. It's Christmas, I'm his daughter, the virus is stolen, the criminals get snowed in and stuck in the same house as the family that's celebrating.” Many of us have had family Christmases along those lines, have we not?

“So after all this traveling, I then made a film, 'Abschied in der Nacht', this summer and was in Denmark and Sylt,” Wackernagel continues. “The script is by Niki Stein, it's also for ZDF and is set in 1945 in an internment camp on the North Sea. It's about a woman who is caught between a former German soldier and a British one.”

But now Wackernagel is 'finally' in Berlin, a city she “likes so much in the summer, just to meet with friends and sit in my favorite cafés!” Godot, for example.

Author: Simon Kingsley