Ms. Haase, you became an actress because you were jealous of Emma Watson.

Caroline O Jebens

Editor in the “Society & Style” department.

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At school we watched the Harry Potter film where she plays Hermione and I was like, why is she playing that?

I love Hermione!

Why can't I be Hermione?

At that time I decided: I'll do that now too.

Then I went to an agency and it all started.

You started making films when you were 15.

But before that you had already gained some experience on stage: as a child in the theater and in musicals.

I went to the theater for years, watched one play after the other.

For me, the theater was a place of longing that remained closed to me for a long time because I thought: you have to be properly trained to be a stage actress.

I've often asked myself whether I shouldn't go to drama school after all.

That was a complex for years, but it's not true at all.

I had to free myself from this thought first.

Nevertheless, you have been part of the ensemble of the Volksbühne for the past two years, without any training.

When I heard that there was an audition at the Volksbühne, I just jumped in at the deep end.

Very lucky, as it turned out!

When I first opened up there, I thought: Oh God, they absolutely have to teach me everything here!

I can't wait to get back on stage.

How does working in theater differ from film?

You think bigger on stage.

You have what I call a different game fantasy.

You have to keep up with your colleagues, otherwise the stage will swallow you up.

It broadened my horizon enormously, and that can also be applied to film and series roles.

In what way?

On stage as in film you have to find your own approach to the character.

I could offer more for my role as Kleo, I dared more.

In the past I might have said during the last take: I have a suggestion.

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For this series, I came straight to the set with ideas.

In the theater I learned the joy of trying, searching, finding and sometimes being wrong.

In the series "Kleo" you play a former Stasi contract killer who goes on a revenge campaign after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

You once said that you would like to play a real villain.

Is Kleo that villain?

Kleo is more of an antihero.

She's too fragile, too flawed, too longing, too loving to be a real villain.

Rather, she is inherently radical, but then stumbles again and again over her own courage.

You can't pin good or bad on it.

In this respect, she is also not a classic action heroine.

The range of your roles is wide.

They choose characters from the gut.

Was that the same with Kleo?

In fact, doubts prevailed at the beginning.

The character is very violent and I had to ask myself how I can justify this excess of violence and her murders.

Well, not rationally considered, of course, but in its exaggerated form.

Kleo is initially robbed of the security of her life, then the system she has lived in, but also the people around her.

She loses faith in life.

On her journey, she tries to regain her dignity bit by bit.

That sounds more like an approach for a tragic play than a more comedic series.

For a long time I didn't even know what genre it would be.

In addition to her joke, I also looked for her distress until I realized the exaggeration.

But I didn't want to serve a genre, I wanted to appropriate a character.

The last East Berliner you played was the actress Katharina Thalbach in the film Lieber Thomas.

It was serious then.

I think you can approach a fictional Kleo with a certain sincerity, just as I was able to bring a certain lightness to my Katharina in Lieber Thomas.

I don't differentiate between genres.

I always try to approach a topic from the character.

I don't differentiate between which character is clever and which is funny based on the genre.

The difference, if you will, is that Kleo lives in a kind of comic world and Katharina in a real one.

By the way, Katharina is not only serious.