“My friend Volker”
“Tatort” star inspires as a drag queen
Drag queen “Vivian” in “My friend Volker”.
© NDR/Georges Pauly
Drag queen “Vivian” hides from the mafia as a hetero man in the TV film “Meine Freund Volker”. Do you recognize the “Tatort” star?
Made up beyond recognition: Dragqueen “Vivian Bernaise” witnesses a mafia attack after a glamorous performance at the Hamburg club Donauwelle and has to flee. As a straight man, Volker Weinreich, the star of the drag scene in St. Pauli, has a good chance of remaining undiscovered. And so Vivian becomes Volker, who is hiding in the family of a primary school teacher in the countryside of Schleswig-Holstein…
Axel Milberg as Vivian/Volker
In “My friend Volker”, which will be broadcast on the international day against homophobia and transphobia (May 17) at 8:15 p.m. on the first, Axel Milberg (66), a true “crime scene” star, slips into the dazzling double role.
Especially walking on high heels was a special challenge for the actor. “It was a long number before I could walk so sure on high heels that it didn’t look like ‘Charly’s Aunt’,” the actor recalls of the preparatory phase. Six months before shooting started, he always had a pair of heels with him to practice in hotel rooms, he continues. “I finally found the one tutorial on the internet that explained how I could walk comfortably in these shoes at 186 centimeters and 90 kilograms.”
His first drag show as a ‘barely legal age’
Incidentally, Axel Milberg saw the first drag stage show live in a Kiel nightclub early on. “I was just of age, sitting in the front row with friends, and we were being flirted with violently. We felt pretty brave and a bit wicked,” he recalls. In preparation for the film, he then looked at the American TV show “RuPaul’s Drag Race”. “Well, the latest thing that’s got drag queens in battles, in crazy costumes and wigs,” says Milberg.
For his own transformation process, it quickly became clear to him: “I have to work from the outside in. Mask, hair, first have a face, hairstyle, make-up, then there is a voice, then there are movements.”
Farewell to the Sunday thriller is approaching
After more than 20 years as Commissioner Klaus Borowski (since 2002), Axel Milberg announced his departure in March. The last “Tatort” episode with the Kiel investigator will be broadcast in 2025. For his other prime role, father Gerald in the “Bundschuh” series (since 2015), there is no end in sight.