series
The dream couple from “Die Heiland” is privately married
The actor couple Christina Athenstädt and Peter Fieseler flirt in front of the camera. photo
© Britta Pedersen/dpa
Five million people watch regularly when Christina Athenstädt and Peter Fieseler flirt in front of the camera. What many do not know: the two are a couple in real life.
Two main actors of the successful ARD series “Die Heiland – Wir sind Rechtsanwälte”, Christina Athenstädt and Peter Fieseler have been a couple privately for more than 20 years. “They didn’t even know that we were married,” Athenstädt said in an interview with the German Press Agency about her casting for the series at the time.
The 44-year-old actress took on the lead role in 2020 after the unexpected death of her colleague Lisa Martinek: “The fact that Peter knew and liked the project naturally meant that I did the casting.” But the couple talked about it for a long time before making this decision.
Christina Athenstädt plays the blind Berlin lawyer Romy Heiland in the ratings hit, which begins a new season on Tuesday (8:15 p.m.). Since the first episode in 2018, Peter Fieseler has portrayed the character Ben Ritter, lawyer and ex-boyfriend of Romy Heiland.
For the couple from Berlin, who have been married since 2015, working together in the series was new territory: “We used to make small films, short films or something,” said Fieseler (45). “But it’s actually a first time on that level. We were in a movie together once, We Were Kings. But I was in the background because the focus of the scene was just Christina. We didn’t act together . And that was twelve years ago.”
freedom for the actors
The subliminal flirt of the two series characters is a perennial favorite – it is “perhaps actually rather uncomfortable to play as a real couple. It has always been something intimate with everyone as an actor,” said Athenstädt. And as a real couple you have to be “extra professional”. After all, 40 people watched the shoot. “Somehow there’s a little bit of an embarrassing moment.”
Fieseler said: “It’s always about getting the best out of what the creators and the authors have given us. We then have leeway. So you don’t get in trouble if you omit a sentence or if you changed a sentence or added a sentence to it.” It’s the actor’s job to enliven the story with imagination in such a way that you suddenly see an aspect that wasn’t there before. “Or maybe you take away an aspect because it’s too much. So we keep a close eye on it, that it stays nice, stays simple, stays honest. Yes, and that it stays interesting for the viewer, because it’s just between Ben and Romy still have this potential that maybe the altar beckons.”
According to Athenstädt, a happy ending for the fictional characters is not planned for the foreseeable future: “In fact, Ben Ritter will probably always be Romy Heiland’s great love. But the two are not a couple, and I think you can say they will be It won’t be in season four either. But you never know.”
For ARD, “Die Heiland – Wir sind Anwalt” is a ratings hit, and around five million fans tune in regularly on Tuesday evenings.