TROUBLED waters
VINCENT KARTHEISER on his return to the wartime submarine thriller – with an American twist…
THE FIRST SERIES of wartime submarine
thriller Das Boot saw a mutiny aboard the German U-boat captained by Commander Klaus Hoffmann (Rick Okon), who was cast
adrift in the Atlantic
Ocean where it was assumed he’d died.
Yet in the last scene, viewers were stunned to see that Hoffmann had been rescued and was in New York,
meeting his former American
prisoner and wealthy businessman Samuel Greenwood, played by
Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser.
This week, the second season of
Das Boot starts at Christmas 1942 and follows Hoffmann and Greenwood’s story in America, where Greenwood and his politician father, played by British star Kevin Mcnally, are helping to hide Hoffmann by giving him the identity of a neutral Swiss visitor.
Meanwhile, a disillusioned
Hoffmann is helping Greenwood discover more about Germany’s sea warfare plans for a secret Allied naval mission. We’ll also see flashbacks of how Hoffmann survived his dinghy ordeal in the middle of the ocean.
With plenty of scenes set in America in this series, far more of the drama is now in English alongside the usual German and French subtitles. The drama’s American storyline will take viewers to the jazz clubs of Harlem plus the New England coast, where the rich Greenwoods have a summer retreat. The New York scenes were filmed on set in Manchester but Tv&satellite Week was invited to Formby beach near Liverpool, which doubles as New England – and it was there, inside a specially created 1940s-style American diner, that we caught up with Kartheiser…
HOW IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GREENWOOD AND HOFFMANN THIS
SERIES? They both need each other, as they know things about the other that nobody else does and they’ve saved each other’s lives. When Hoffmann comes to New York he has no one but
Greenwood, but it’s complicated. Hoffmann is standoffish and it’s hard getting him to open up;
Greenwood is the opposite.
ARE WE GOING TO SEE MORE OF GREENWOOD’S SHIFTY SIDE?
I’d like for viewers to trust him more, though he was definitely shifty and secretive in the first series. But he’s back
in New York now and he doesn’t need to explode to make everyone fear him. There’s a Donald Trump
side to him, especially in having a dominant father who he feels he must live up to.
WAS IT ODD FILMING THE US SCENES IN THE UK?
Well, you can’t shoot 1940s scenes in New York any more because so much has changed with the billboards in the streets. I also believe Formby beach is the closest thing in Europe to resembling the coastline in Maine.
WERE YOU A FAN OF THE 1981 MOVIE
Das Boot?
I’d seen it when I was in my early twenties. I liked it, but it was very hard to watch and it affected me. It was certainly something I respected.
HOW HAS THIS BEEN DIFFERENT FROM FILMING Mad Men [IN WHICH KARTHEISER PLAYED 1960S ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE
PETE CAMPBELL]? Mad Men was a unique experience, the language and the dialogue was like doing Shakespeare – you didn’t change it, and it wasn’t up for discussion. With Das Boot there’s a straightforwardness, the producers are pragmatic and cut through all the fluff.