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Liv Lisa Fries
Photo: Joachim Gern / X Films Creative Pool
Liv Lisa Fries squints in the late summer sun.
She is sitting under a roof made of beech in a beer garden in Berlin.
In front of her is an almost empty bowl of quinoa salad, next to it a pot of tea.
Fries looks relaxed, while she is in the middle of an interview day for "Babylon Berlin", every conversation is closely timed.
Fries (29) waves it away, she wipes "Alles gut" on the table.
After the third season of the successful production "Babylon Berlin" was shown on Sky in winter, ARD will broadcast the first new episodes on Sunday.
They can be seen in the media library from Friday evening.
Between misery and glitter
In it, Fries investigates alongside Commissioner Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) as detective assistant Charlotte Ritter: clever, cheeky, ambitious, always gets up, no matter how hard the blow hit her.
While one puzzles about Rath's behavior and psyche, the life of Charlotte Ritter is illuminated in detail: the filth of the Berlin Secret Annex, from which she comes, the rims of the eyes when she sells her body in a fetish dress, the ecstasy when she dances .
She balances between misery and glitter.
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Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) and Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch)
Photo: Frédéric Batier / ARD
Sometimes, says Fries, the series is accused of being flat.
You will stop at nothing, withstand any horror.
"But I don't think we are telling a superwoman. Getting up again and again is a very important quality," says Fries.
Charlotte Ritter wanted to get away from her milieu, she was looking for a place to belong and not a careerist devoured by ambition.
That inspires them.
The role of Charlotte Ritter made Fries famous.
It earned her a Grimme Prize and a nomination for the German Television Prize, "Babylon Berlin" was sold in 90 countries and broadcast on Netflix.
Recently, says Fries, US actor Jeff Goldblum praised the series.
"That's crazy," says Fries and her green eyes widen a tad.
"That so many people are watching and also those that you admire."
When Fries talks about "Babylon Berlin", she raves, of course.
That might be a great project or a gift.
However, she also admits that it is exhausting.
"This is a feat"
Anyone who has seen the mammoth series knows what it means: mass party scenes, hundreds of extras, elaborate backdrops, stress.
After turning, she is often so exhausted that she just controls the bathtub.
Then, as she relates, the text will be learned for the next day.
With "Babylon Berlin" this is repeated a good 70 times.
"It's a feat," she says.
Maybe also because she throws herself so absolutely into her roles.
In order to embody a violent youngster in "She Deserves It", she refused to let herself be hugged during the shoot.
When she played a cystic fibrosis patient in "And tomorrow noon I'll be dead", she climbed stairs in preparation, just breathing through a straw.
In between, she gave the survivor of a rampage in "Staudamm".
Violence, illness, death.
Hard stuff, even for the spectators.
It must have been a bit tougher for Fries.
"I don't do it with half my ass cheek and I think of something else with the other," she says.
When she stands in front of the camera, it is like a pull, she describes.
Then there is only her and her work, nothing else.
If it's supposed to work, then this is it.
Then it has to be there, be present, that's what she calls it.
Fries has been in front of the camera for half her life.
For the first time at 15, alongside Götz George as a young prostitute in "Schimanski".
Then she continued shooting, next to the school, stood in front of the camera for television films and "The Wave".
After graduating from high school, the main role came in "She deserved it" and with it the award for young talent from the Golden Camera and the TV Acting Award from Studio Hamburg.
In between she started studying German literature and philosophy, but she kept turning on and on.
Awards such as the Bavarian Film Prize and the Max Ophüls Prize were added.
"I am interested in what is. Not what I would like. Or how it should be. But how it really is"
"I have the ambition to express something. If I don't do that, I'll die in everyday life."
Fries pupates such sentences in long answers, she searches for the right words in them.
And then sometimes wonders what will end up floating in the air.
As if she didn't find out until she was talking.
Charleston, Irmgard Keun, Marlene Dietrich
Before "Babylon Berlin" she learned Charleston for several months, read Irmgard Keun and watched Marlene Dietrich.
"That sounds epic now," she sends in advance, "but I feel a responsibility to the audience. If I play something, it has to be right."
Her well-stocked price shelf proves: she usually succeeds. Fries plays hard roles delicately, revealing the human in the inhuman.
But this absolute presence, this being present, has its price.
Shortly after each other, she stood in front of the camera as a terminally ill who organized her suicide and then as a survivor of a rampage.
Two so demanding films, "they brought me to the limit of my strength."
But they would also have taught her to take care of herself.
In life she thinks like the GDR songwriter Gundermann: having something every day, a laugh, a victory, a tear, a slap in the face.
In the face?
"Sure. At least metaphorically. I want to feel myself and the world."
A bit like Charlotte Ritter, who is fighting her way through the 1920s Berlin.
"Babylon Berlin"
, Sunday, 8:15 pm, Das Erste.
The first episodes from Friday evening at 8:15 p.m. in the ARD media library.
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