Til Schweiger at the RTL annual review: Memory gaps like Olaf Scholz

"People, images, emotions" - Til Schweiger at the RTL annual review: Memory gaps like Olaf Scholz

It comes unexpectedly early, Til Schweiger's appearance. "Menschen, Bilder, Emotionen", RTL's review of the year, is just 45 minutes old. It is the first time that Schweiger has spoken live on television about the allegations that he hit a team member on the film set while drunk and bullied others in a "climate of fear". Der Spiegel" had reported this in April. Schweiger then withdrew from the public eye. In October, the director, producer and actor then returned in an interview with stern and explained that he had apologized to the employee concerned and sought therapeutic help.

Steffen Hallaschka starts gently, first talking about Schweiger's new film ("The best is yet to come"), but then gets straight to the point: 2023, was it a great year or a shit year? "The year got off to a bombastic start and then had a slight dip," says Schweiger. He didn't take "the story" seriously at first, he explains. A lot of the accusations are not true: "I've never been domineering. I have never abused my power," the 59-year-old defends himself.

Til Schweiger: "I can't remember"

According to Hallaschka, however, it is "undisputed" that he hit an employee while drunk. Schweiger: "First of all: I can't remember - but our chancellor can't remember either" Schweiger alludes to Olaf Scholz's (non)-statement in the cum-ex tax money affair. There is also applause from the audience for this apology, which is not really an apology. Schweiger says that he is "terribly sorry" for the incident and that he has apologized for it. "I don't want to relativize it," he says and then does just that: "I didn't hit him with a bullet either, it wasn't a punch - but you don't touch someone in the face," he says.

He locked himself out of his hotel room that night "with a drunken head". "I went on a rampage in my underpants and tried to kick the door down." Surprisingly, he didn't succeed. After only an hour's sleep, he then rushed to the set ("There was a lot of pressure on the boiler"), where the employee told him he couldn't shoot like that. Then the situation escalated.

"Looking back, did you ever question your alcohol consumption?" asks Hallaschka. "Of course!" says Schweiger. The key moment was when a friend played him his Instagram video in which he, visibly drunk, celebrated the success of the Manta film. After that he realized: "It's over now! I don't want to lose control anymore." He could have left it at that, but Schweiger believes that he is really not an isolated case: "There are also politicians who lose control". But nobody points the finger at them.

He has "never treated anyone extra unfairly", the film star asserts and is then not above using the stars, or more precisely his star sign, as a justification for his behavior: "Have I hurt someone and treated them unfairly? Yes, if only because I'm a Sagittarius. Sagittarians always say what they think." Presumably the moon was also in the third house or had already finished work or whatever else is causing bad vibes on earth.

Thankfully, drag queen Olivia Jones immediately puts what was said into perspective: "That's an explanation, but not an excuse. You shouldn't let it go as far as Til: the dose makes the poison," she explains and uses the opportunity to quickly promote her own show on rival channel ProSieben: "I'd like to invite him to a celebrity penance," says Jones.

Chatting like on the living room couch

Next to her, chef Tim Mälzer (who hasn't touched alcohol for ten months), reality TV star Evelyn Burdecki and FDP politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann sit around a large table and chat about the topics of the year. The setting is familiar from American talk shows such as "The View", in which stars like Whoopi Goldberg talk to colleagues about the most exciting topics of the week. It works surprisingly well here too. Tim Mälzer and Strack-Zimmermann bicker like adolescents, but the feisty politician also reveals that she files around 100 complaints a month against trolls who threaten her online: "We're not fair game!"

Evelyn Burdecki publicly buries her hope that her celebrity friends Amira and Oliver Pocher will get along again after all ("You shouldn't get involved in some things"), and Olivia Jones makes her usual pointed comments in her glittery look, such as: "Sometimes I'm less afraid of artificial intelligence than I am of human stupidity." Tim Mälzer doesn't really want to talk about the AfD ("It's not my cup of tea"), but then he does and suspects that the party is so popular because it uses "clear words". According to the TV chef, he misses this clarity in many parties, but makes it unmistakably clear where he stands: "You have to take a clear stance against this right-wing soup."

However, the stories of the non-celebrities from this year will be remembered above all: the woman who collected 1850 Barbies, including the model with a prosthetic leg. The doctor who saved the life of a young man who had been hit by a combine harvester in a three-hour operation in an open field. The lucky man who fell from a tree directly onto an iron bar and miraculously remained almost unharmed. The man who spent almost 14 years in prison and is now free. The father whose wife died of cancer and he is now raising his three children alone.

The survivor of the Hamas attack speaks

And then there is Dafna Gerstner. She survived the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, when she was visiting her family. She and her husband waited in a shelter for 19 hours, as did her father. Her brother was murdered by the terrorists. "There is no word in the dictionary that can describe that day. It changed everything for us, forever," she says. Gerstner, whose adopted home is Munich, still lives in a hotel complex with the other neighbors in Israel. 400 people, all homeless and traumatized. Even if it is difficult at the moment, Dafna Gerstner has not yet given up hope for peace.

Finally, a celebrity was given the chance to perform: Mick Jagger, someone the Germans still love dearly. He had said 25 times in an intro that he was "great" and was looking forward to "people, pictures, emozioni" and Steffen. But when Steffen asked him whether it wasn't sometimes quite a burden to still have to play the 30-year-old Mick Jagger, the rock star put him on the spot: "You're taking a pessimistic approach to life," he reprimanded him, "how old are you?" Hallaschka, who is 51 years old, had previously declared in an interview: "I don't like cultural pessimism!" So be it! The man who once started out in radio presented the show with a great deal of sensitivity - unlike last year, when Thomas Gottschalk and former Foreign Minister Theodor zu Guttenberg were still galloping along as a presenting duo. But with 2023, it's slowly coming to an end.