Til Schweiger is irritating in his first TV appearance after the allegations of violence. He explains his freak out, among other things, by saying that his zodiac sign is Sagittarius. The stories of non-celebrity people remain in memory.
By Simone Deckner
Til Schweiger’s appearance comes unexpectedly early. “People, Images, Emotions”, the RTL annual review, is just under 45 minutes old. It is the first time that Schweiger has spoken live on television about the allegations that he hit a team member while drunk on the film set and bullied others in a “climate of fear.” The “Spiegel” reported in April. Schweiger then withdrew from public life. The director, producer and actor will be in touch in October star returned with an interview and explained that he had apologized to the affected employee and sought therapeutic help.
Steffen Hallaschka starts off gently, first talks about Schweiger’s new film (“The best is yet to come”), but then gets down to business: 2023, was that a great year or a crappy year? “The year started off bombastically and then had a bit of a dip,” says Schweiger. He explains that he didn’t take “the story” seriously at first. A lot of the allegations aren’t true: “I’ve never been domineering. I’ve never abused my power,” defends the 59-year-old.
Til Schweiger: “I can’t remember”
However, according to Hallaschka, it is “undisputed” that he hit an employee while he was drunk. Schweiger: “First of all: I can’t remember – but our Chancellor can’t remember either,” Schweiger alludes to Olaf Scholz’s (non-)statement in the Cum-Ex tax money affair. There is also applause from the audience for this apology, which is actually not one. Schweiger says he is “terribly sorry” for the incident and has apologized for it. “I don’t want to put that into perspective,” he says, and then does exactly that: “I didn’t hit him either, it wasn’t a hit – but you don’t touch someone in the face,” he says.
He locked himself out of his hotel room that night “in a drunken head.” “I was rioting in my underwear and wanted to kick the door open.” Surprisingly, that didn’t work. After only an hour’s sleep, he rushed to the set (“There was a lot of pressure on the tank”), where the employee then told him that he couldn’t shoot like that. Then the situation escalated.
“Looking back, have you ever questioned your alcohol consumption?” asks Hallaschka. “Of course!” says Schweiger. The key moment was when a friend played him his Instagram video in which he, visibly drunk, celebrated the success of the Manta film. Afterwards it was clear to him: “It’s over now! I don’t want to lose control anymore.” He could have left it at that, but Schweiger believes that he is really not an isolated case: “There are also politicians who lose control.” But no one points the finger at them.
He has “never treated anyone particularly unfairly,” asserts the film star and is not above using the stars, or more precisely: his star sign, as a justification for his behavior: “Have I hurt anyone and treated someone unfairly? Yes, on their own , because I’m a Sagittarius. Sagittarius always say what they think.” The moon was probably also in the third house or had already finished work or whatever else was causing bad vibes on Earth.
Drag queen Olivia Jones thankfully classifies what has been said immediately: “That’s an explanation, but not an excuse. You can’t let it get as far as Til did: the dose makes the poison,” she explains and takes the opportunity to say without further ado to advertise her own show on the rival broadcaster ProSieben: “I would like to invite them to the celebrity penance,” says Jones.
Ratchet like on the living room couch
Next to her, cook Tim Mälzer (hasn’t touched alcohol for ten months), reality TV star Evelyn Burdecki and FDP politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann sit around a large table and discuss the topics of the year. The setting is familiar from American talk shows like “The View,” in which stars like Whoopi Goldberg talk to colleagues about the most exciting topics of the week. It works surprisingly well here too. Tim Mälzer and Strack-Zimmermann bicker like teenagers, but the argumentative politician also reveals that she files reports about 100 times a month against trolls who threaten her online: “We’re not fair game!”
Evelyn Burdecki publicly buries her hope that her celebrity friends Amira and Oliver Pocher will get along again (“Some things you shouldn’t get involved in”), and Olivia Jones, in her glittering look, makes her usual pointed comments like: “I sometimes less afraid of artificial intelligence than of human stupidity.” Tim Mälzer doesn’t actually want to talk about the AfD (“That’s not my floor”), but then he does and suspects that the party is so popular because it uses “clear words”. According to the TV chef, he misses this clarity in many parties, but he makes it unmistakably clear where he stands: “You have to take a clear position against this right-wing soup.”
But what will be remembered most are the stories of the non-celebrities from this year: the woman who collected 1,850 Barbies, including the model with a prosthetic leg. The doctor who, in a three-hour operation in an open field, saved the life of a young man who had been caught in a combine harvester. The lucky guy who fell from a tree straight onto an iron bar and miraculously remained almost unharmed. The man who was innocently imprisoned for almost 14 years and is now free. The father whose wife died of cancer and he is now raising his three children alone.
survivor of the Hamas attack speaks
And then there is Dafna Gerstner. She survived the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7th while visiting her family. Her husband and she stayed in a shelter for 19 hours, as did her father. Her brother was murdered by the terrorists. “There is no word in the dictionary that can describe that day. It changed everything for us, forever,” she says. Gerstner, whose adopted home is Munich, still lives in a hotel complex with her other neighbors in Israel. 400 people, all homeless and traumatized. Even if it is difficult at the moment, Dafna Gerstner has not yet given up hope for peace.
At the end, another celebrity was allowed to take part: Mick Jagger, someone the Germans still love dearly. He had previously said in a clip what felt like 25 times that he was “great” and was looking forward to “People, Bilda, Emozioni” and Steffen. But when Steffen then asks him whether it isn’t sometimes quite a burden to be 80-year-old Mick Jagger and still have to pretend to be a 30-year-old tomboy, the rock star puts him on the spot: “But you approach life pessimistically “Come close,” he scolded him, “how old are you?” Hallaschka, who is 51 years old, had previously declared in an interview: “I don’t like cultural pessimism!” So be it! The man who once started out on radio did the moderation with a lot of sensitivity – unlike last year, when Thomas Gottschalk and former Foreign Minister Theodor zu Guttenberg galloped along as the moderation duo. But by 2023 things are slowly getting better.