Nina Hoss is such a big deal in her native Germany that when she landed a role in hit TV series Homeland, there was panic at newspaper Die Welt that she wouldn’t come back from America. “We don’t want to lose her,” it wailed. “What would German film and German theatre be without her?”
Some 10 years on, though she hasn’t abandoned her home country, Hoss has become more familiar to international viewers – for work including Homeland, Jack Ryan and most recently in Tár, playing the wife of Cate Blanchett’s capricious conductor – and next week Londoners will have their chance to see this great actor in the flesh for the first time.
Thursday marks the opening of The Cherry Orchard at the Donmar Warehouse, in which she plays Ranevskaya, the grieving aristocrat, crippled by nostalgia, who just can’t face up to the social change hurtling towards her and her family pile.
It’s not the 48-year-old’s first time on a UK stage – she has performed not only at the Manchester International Festival but also to a crowd of 40,000 at Glastonbury – but it is her professional debut in the capital.
She loves London. Her husband, Welsh music producer Alex Silva, was living here when they met, and they still have many friends in the city. “London has this beautiful energy. I know life is tough, but London somehow has this positive energy just to make something good out of it,” she says. “That’s really nice, because Berlin can be a bit gloomy, and people can take life too seriously sometimes. And…” she breaks off with that laugh again, “we can’t really compete with your humour. So it’s great to be in this place.”
Directed by veteran Benedict Andrews, this production is “something of an experiment, very free and inventive... It’s very alive; that’s why it’s kind of exhausting.” To bear out the physical nature of the show, we meet after a long day’s rehearsals, and Hoss is in athletic gear and trainers, her hair scraped back.
Though it was first performed in 1903, Hoss is adamant it’s a play for today. “It is such an amazing work, and it has so much to do with the time we’re living in now,” she says. “It’s because of change. Things are changing. Ranevskaya has this line, ‘I have this constant feeling of impending disaster’, and you’re like, ‘I think we all know what she’s talking about!’”
She hopes the work will touch audiences deeply and make them think. “Experiencing together what change means and what nostalgia is. Is it worth clinging onto things, or does that hinder the future? There are all these things that open up your brain, it’s just so wonderful.”
This was the playwright’s last work before he died in 1903 and Hoss has done a lot of research into him through biographies and his letters. “Learning how Chekhov died is so phenomenal. At a certain point he said, ‘Oh, now I’m going to die.’ The doctor left the room, came back with a glass of champagne, he drank it, really enjoyed it, laid down and died. What a way to go!”
She performed the role 12 years ago but says she was too young for it. “I find so much more in it right now. I’m older and it’s about how I’ve changed and what has changed in the world in that time. So much has changed… everything. It’s crazy.”
Though known here for her screen work, Hoss is very much a theatre animal, working in numerous productions in Germany and being part of ensembles first at Deutsches Theater Berlin and then the prestigious Schaubühne. Thomas Ostermeier, who directed her in Germany, has just had a West End run too with An Enemy of the People starring Matt Smith. “The Schaubühne is entering London,” Hoss cackles.
Hoss is clearly revelling in working here. “I’m in a different culture and I really enjoy it. I’m glad that’s still possible, that we can have this exchange.”
I feel the ‘B’ word looming and ask about how she views Brexit and its impact on European culture. “People are terrified on both sides about what will happen. You need to know that Germany and France, we are all like” she puts her head in her hands “‘Oh my God they’re not in it anymore.’”
She fears countries isolating further, turning in on themselves. “That’s the wrong nostalgia. And it’s making its way everywhere now. And you think, ‘Go back to what exactly?’”
Growing up in Stuttgart, she was always around politics. Her father was a co-founder of Germany’s green party and she would regularly go on peace marches. “The great thing about my father was he was very independent. He taught me to always question what you believe. He believed in many things but wasn’t stubborn and would correct things if he found out he was wrong. That has left our political spheres.”
She says she’s not politically active right now. “I’m politically interested, and I’m not afraid of voicing anything. But I feel there’s so much talk with little knowledge and I don’t need to enter that.”
‘I know life is tough, but London has this positive energy to make something good out of it. That’s really nice, because Berlin can be a bit gloomy’
Her mother was a theatre actor, and from when she was a baby, Hoss would be in rehearsal rooms. “I loved the world I found it so inventive, free and open minded. It was full of stories and laughter and fights. It was life. That’s what drew me to acting.”
After drama school in Berlin, her big break came in the film A Girl Called Rosemary in 1996. She built a strong list of theatre credits before forming a professional bond with film director Christian Petzold, starring in a number of his films. “I thought I couldn’t live without theatre, and then I got hooked on filmmaking.”
I ask whether the industry has changed over her almost three-decade career. “The hierarchies have broken down a bit. In Germany we’re a bit behind because Germans love hierarchy. And this idea that you have to suffer while working on something. This idea, when I went to acting school, that some directors would break you but it’s for the better, that has gone out of the window, which is great. I don’t think pressure or punishment of that sort brings anything creative out of someone else.”
It didn’t happen to her. “I was lucky, maybe because my mother was an actress and I watched her and others. She said ‘You can always leave.’ But you see things, the fear and that was unpleasant. It’s not completely gone but it’s getting better.”
She began to land roles in American projects, and one, A Most Wanted Man starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, led to her being cast in Homeland. The sixth series was filming during the election of Donald Trump in 2016. “I was right there. Everyone said it would be fine, but I wasn’t sure – the minute you left New York there were loads of Trump flags. And election night was unbelievable. We were walking home and there was such a silence. It was like… ‘What now.’”
And if Homeland was a breakthrough in the US, Tár brought more recognition. “A film like this doesn’t come along so often in your acting life, so I cherished it. I enjoyed every bit of it. Also being surrounded by these incredible people.”
Her and Blanchett hadn’t met before but felt like they knew each other through their work. “So there was a lot of trust, and wanting to dance with one another; diving into it without hesitation.”
It was a film that came along at the right time. “It’s about so-called wokeness and that discussion. Without ever judging and not giving answers. Tár raises a question. We all have to think about ourselves in the system and how it functions.
“You can think about it or not – to me that’s great writing. I’ve seen Tár three times and every time I’ve left with something else. Even though I was in it. The Cherry Orchard is the same, the focus shifts and it has to do with your own life, with what you bring.”
Before we finish up, I have to ask about Glastonbury. She had recorded the song The Manic Street Preachers’ Europa geht durch mich, which translates as ‘Europe goes through me, in 2014. Most memorably, she performed it that year on Glastonbury’s Other Stage. She is still incredulous about the whole experience.
“I was backstage looking out to this sea of people,” her eyes still filled with wonder. “It was three minutes of pure adrenaline. For days I was going, ‘What happened?’ just taking it in. I still can’t believe it.”
