‘Deutschland 83’ Co-Creator Jörg Winger Says Audiences Are Now Ready For His Disney+ Show About East Germany’s First Black Policeman
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EXCLUSIVE: Jörg Winger and his Sam – A Saxon co-creator Tyron Ricketts believe the time is now right to tell the story of East Germany’s first Black policeman after a near-20-year period of shopping the project.
Disney+’s Sam – A Saxon, which was the streamer’s first German greenlight, spotlights Samuel Meffire, a former bricklayer who became the first elite East German policeman of African descent in the 1980s, where he went from diversity poster boy to being on the wrong side of the law. Scroll down for a trailer of the series that launches April 26.
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Ricketts first met Meffire in 2002 and began shopping the project – initially as a feature – with Deutschland 83 co-creator Winger in 2006, but the pair believe German audiences have only become ready for the story in the past couple of years.
“The answer from buyers when we pitched it back then was always ‘I find it fascinating but I don’t think our audiences are ready’,” said Winger. “The dominating discourse in Germany around diversity and racism was always the Holocaust and, while we never want to forget the Holocaust, it has sometimes overshadowed other aspects of diversity. Today’s conversation is more holistic.”
Winger worked with Ricketts on mid-noughties German cop show Leipzig Homicide, in which Ricketts played one of Germany’s first Black policemen on TV. “It’s very satisfying to see him 15 years later sell and a make a show based on a real-life Black German cop,” added Winger.
Beyond diversity strides, Winger considered how the streaming revolution has moved German TV forwards in terms of its “character-driven storytelling,” adding: “Back then, it felt like we just had cop shows and story of the week.” He said Disney’s “spirit and search for originality” led to his team opting for the streamer over a broadcaster.
For Ricketts, “we are in a better position to tell the story” of Meffire since the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, which opened up a wider understanding of what racism means.
“Certain terms like micro-aggression didn’t exist back then and we couldn’t have told the story in such a three-dimensional and psychologically rich way,” he said.
Ricketts spotted similarities between his and Meffire’s upbringing, although they grew up on different sides of the Berlin Wall, and the pair hit it off when they met 20 years ago.
“How Black people lived or survived in East Germany was always super interesting to me,” Ricketts explained. “Samuel’s story was so dramatic and made me want to look into other aspects of Black German life.”
Greenlit in 2021, Winger said the show’s production was subsequently hit by a “triple crisis of inflation, crew crunch and Covid-19.” A breakthrough arrived when the team discovered Malick Bauer, who plays Sam, an actor who not only bears an uncanny resemblance to his subject but “lets the craft speak for itself.”
Sam – A Saxon takes a no-holds barred look at racism in Germany and doesn’t hold back with violence or use of language. Ricketts said it was important to show how “physically threatening” it could be as a Black person living in East Germany before the Wall fell.
The Afro-German community is much misunderstood, added Winger, who believes a broad audience can learn and put themselves “in the shoes of a Black character” by watching Sam – A Saxon.
The seven-parter follows Meffire on his relentless search for home and his fight for justice against an over-powerful system, revealing both his childhood as an outsider, shaped by the murder of his father, his meteoric rise as a symbolic figure and the media sensation of a new Germany, and his subsequent fall from grace.
The show from Winger’s Fremantle-backed Big Window Productions is co-created by Christoph Silber and stars Svenja Jung, Luise von Finckh, Nyamandi Adrian, Paula Essam, Ivy Quainoo, Thorsten Merten, Martin Brambach, Aristo Luis and Daniel Klareamong. Lead director is Soleen Yusef and director is Sarah Blaßkiewitz.
Next up for Winger is Ouija, a supernatural coming-of-age thriller for France Télévisions and Starzplay.
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