Das Boot As series two of the hit German series kicks off, Donal O’Donoghue meets the cast
Is there is a country that can spare a real submarine?
“We said from the start that we were not doing a remake because the original movie was so iconic that there was nothing to be gained by remaking it,” says Tom Wlaschiha star of Das Boot, the acclaimed TV series that continues the story of Wolfgang Petersen’s Oscar nominated classic. “We are telling the story from a much wider perspective with the stories on land and in the submarine intertwined to give a multi-layered TV show that is drama, anti-war narrative and love story. Interestingly, a lot of the feedback on the first series was from young people who had not seen the original film.”
It’s the last day of the 2019 Monte Carlo TV Festival. Everyone is feeling the pace after hours of interviews and nights of parties. Wlaschiha, who has just flown in from Prague where he was filming the second season of Das Boot, is accompanied by fellow cast members Thierry Frémont and Vincent Kartheiser. In my fuzzy brain, Wlaschiha’s face rings a bell (much later I realise he’s the Faceless Man from Game of Thrones) And where have I seen the cherubic-cheeked Kartheiser before? ( Mad Men, again much later).
But right now, we’re wondering how Wolfgang Petersen’s classic 1981 film about the crew of a German U-Boat during WWII (itself originally shot as a TV mini-series), was resurrected for TV. The German producers were never in doubt. ‘New submarine. New crew. New story’ they tweeted in advance of the first season which, like the film, draws on the novel, Das Boot, by Lothar-Günther Buchheim, as well as its sequel, Die Festung). Set nine months after the events of Petersen’s film, the debut season chronicled the struggles of the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied La Rochelle and the exploits of U-612 in the waters of the North Atlantic. (Season two adds a third strand set in New York).
Filmed on location in Munich, La Rochelle, Malta and Prague, the series boasts an impressive international cast (Michael McElhatton features in season 2) and nails the sweaty, nail-biting claustrophobia of the original. “We didn’t actually have a submarine that went underwater,” say Kartheiser, who plays an oily American war profiteer, and U-Boat crew member, on a secret mission. “We had the frame of a submarine which couldn’t really submerge to any great depth. And the rest of the filming was on a soundstage. So it was not very long periods underwater like the submariners had to do in real life.”
Then the conversation takes a turn to the surreal. “Was it a real submarine?” asks a journalist. ”No,” says Kartheiser. “It was an exact replica on a soundstage.” Why couldn’t you get a real submarine? “Are you pulling my leg?,” asks Kartheiser. “To shoot on a real submarine you have to…you are joking aren’t you?”
“Do you think we should have filmed it underwater?” asks Frémont. “I don’t mean that,” says the journalist. But no one seems to know what she does mean. “Is there is a country that can spare a real submarine?” wonders Wlaschiha. “Can you find out for us please and we can use it in season two.” Season two of Das Boot, written by, among others, Dubliner Colin Teevan ( Rebellion), opens in December 1942 with U-822 bound for the East Coast of America while in La Rochelle the game of cat and mouse between the Resistance and the Nazis continues. “For me, the story is really about the individual who has to make big decisions, whether to go with the mainstream opinion or fight against it,” says Wlaschiha, who plays a Gestapo officer. “That translates to any time in history and to any situation: the individual having to stand up for what they believe in and having to fight for what they believe to be truth.” Wlaschiha, who grew up in East Germany, in the town of Dohna, had seen the Petersen film a number of times from his mid-teens onwards. And he also quizzed his family about the war and their part in it. “When my grandparents were still alive I talked with them a lot about those days,” he says “It was tough leaving your family and loved ones behind but it was what everyone had to do. It’s not like you had a choice. Both of my grandfathers fought in the war and luckily they both came home.” Asked for the secret of Das Boot’s international success (it is sub-titled in German and French), Kartheiser simply says: “Good writing. Good writing. Good writing.” As for how many seasons are likely to be made (the blockbusting novel Die Festung allows for a lengthy screen life), Kartheiser unsurprisingly kicks to touch. “It’s above our pay grade, as they say.” But it has the potential to go on. “Only into the 1960s!” But the last word has to go to Wlaschiha and his dry humour. “Maybe we can get a real submarine and sink it in the very last season with everybody on board and then we’ll just see what happens.”