Leo Woodall on learning German for “Nuremberg”

British actor Leo Woodall, 29, had a blast playing Renée Zellweger’s hunk du jour in Bridget Jones: Boy Crazya Netflix idol crying A day and playing leading roles in television series. Today, he excels in the role of Sergeant Howie Triest, a young American interpreter tasked with translating the words spoken by Nazi war criminals in director James Vanderbilt’s film. Nurembergwhich sees him take on Oscar-winning stars Russell Crowe as Luftwaffe Supreme Commander Hermann Göring and Rami Malek as American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley. Next year, Woodall will be seen in Daniel Roher’s film Tuner opposite two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman.

DEADLINE: Howie can’t let the Nuremberg Nazis know his true origins – that he’s Jewish – he has to hide it from them and that underpins your performance.

LEO WOODALL: I loved playing Howie, not just because he was such an extraordinary man. It’s funny because Howie, he was there in the room, and I felt like I was there in the room for the Rami and Russell dynamic, and it was fascinating for me to experience that. There were so many fascinating conversations between these two, between Rami and [Rudolf] Hess and Rami and [Julius] Streicher that Howie was in the room so no one else could really experience it first hand. So, it was really wonderful for me to be able to be there for that, but also to see every other thing happening that the Nazis didn’t know about.

DEADLINE: How did you make sure your German was fluent? It is said that we could not speak a word of the language before hearing about the film.

DRINK: I don’t remember exactly how much I was given for the first round of audition which was just a self-recording. There was a lot of German and I learned as much as I could. But there were so many that I remember thinking, OK, I’m going to miss this whole tape if I try to insert every sentence. So actually, I’m just going to do this part and let it breathe a little bit. But then I met Jamie [Vanderbilt] and he gave me more and more information to work with. But it took me a while to get the role and I had kind of lost hope at that point. I had thought about it a lot. I had tried to manifest it and I was at a point where I was like, “It’s done. It’s not going to happen.”

There was one particular day when my entire team asked, “Are you free today for a call?” And every time your whole team wants you to answer a call, you think, “There might be news here.” I was thinking, I wonder if it’s Nuremberg. I really hope that’s the case. It was a really happy moment.

DEADLINE: How did you approach studying German?

DRINK: I had a German coach. Her name is Léna Lessing. She was wonderful and she was very patient with me; very encouraging. We worked once or twice a week on Zoom.

We only met in person when we were on set together. And I’m going to give it a little chance to be able to make certain sounds. But it was hard work. It was one of the hardest things I had to learn how to do for a role. And there were moments where, because my first day was with Rami and Russell translating the first time their characters met. It was my first day, so the nerves were beyond [stretching his arms]. And even if I just spoke English, I would still have felt the nervousness. But I had to understand this German. I knew Russell was going to speak German too. And so, I just drilled and drilled and drilled and talked to myself in German as much as I could. It’s funny, everyone makes mistakes on set, but I put pressure on myself not to make a single fucking mistake.

DEADLINE: Was it because you were working with two Oscar-winning actors?

DRINK: Yeah, I put a lot of pressure on myself and I felt like there was a lot of responsibility to step up and if I couldn’t stand next to them and take action, it would have been a really shitty day. [Laughs].

DEADLINE: So how did it go?

DRINK: [Smiles] It went well.

DEADLINE: Had you met them before that first day of filming?

DRINK: I met Russell very briefly at the reading table. I had dinner with Rami once and maybe saw him again before we started filming. But fear of the unknown is a very powerful and scary thing. And watching how they both work on set, Russell just sits there and he’s thinking, and he might be mumbling something to himself and Rami is like he’s thinking about the next thing to do between every take… And that was a lot for me to feed off of and learn from. I was very lucky.

DEADLINE: And how was Russell’s German?

DRINK: It was good. No, it was really good. And I knew it was going to be good. That’s one of the reasons why I secretly wanted it to be better, up to par. But there was no chance of that happening.

DEADLINE: When I saw you at Tuner opposite Dustin Hoffman in Telluride, the idea crossed my mind that you were getting a masterclass from Hoffman, from Russell Crowe, from Rami and Renee Zellweger and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the Brigitte Jones movie. You chose well, right?

DRINK: I think with all these guys, we all knew from the start that they were involved. Of course, it’s always exciting to start something and find out who you’ll be working with. The world is very small, but at the same time it has many actors. There are many performances that I have seen and admired and actors that I admire. I’m a bastard, I have to work with so many greats and learn from them as much as I can. And Dustin was… I don’t think it’s going to be better than Dustin.

DEADLINE: What did you learn from them?

DRINK: They all have their own process and their own work to do. And I never want to be boring. If I think the time is right, maybe I’ll pick their brains a little. But I think what’s wonderful about the big guys is that they’re generous and they want young actors to join them. They want them to succeed and perfect their craft because they’ll come to a point where maybe they’ll say, “I’m done with this now, and now I can just sit back and watch.” And there must be actors who have learned and who do work that suits them. [chuckles] and entertaining and interesting. And above all, they are good people. I’m lucky enough to have not met someone who is so secretive and protective of their own affairs that they don’t want to see others imbibe their greatness.

I think the wonderful thing about the big guys is that they are generous and they want young actors to join them.

Leo Woodall

DEADLINE: Was there anything about these Nazi war criminals that you didn’t know about before?

DRINK: I had learned about the Holocaust and the Second World War at school and simply in life. You can’t not learn it along the way. But the clip that they play in the courtroom, for example, [showing footage from concentration camps] no, I’ve never encountered this before. I may have seen a clip of it in a documentary at some point. But it was [shaking his head as if to recoil from the horror]… You’re supposed to sit there and have the longest, hardest seven minutes of your life and it doesn’t stop. The original that they played back in the day, I think it’s 57 minutes or something.

Howie’s journey amazed me, fleeing Germany alone, learning English relatively quickly, and then passing himself off as a completely authentic American. And then he joins the army and his first deployment is on D-Day. You watch his story alone and it could be its own movie.

DEADLINE: The real Howie died in 2016, at the age of 93. Were you able to speak to his sons or other close relatives?

DRINK: Not before. I didn’t know how. I had thought about it and thought I just wouldn’t be able to get in touch. Little did I know that I probably could have done it if I had really used the resources. But I have since met two of his grandchildren.

It was in Telluride that I met a young woman named Katie who said to me, “You just played my grandfather in Nuremberg.” And it was a complete out-of-body experience. Nuremberg there wasn’t even a projection there. She lives there. Katie has lived there for about 17 years and runs a birding business. It’s such a small town, they all know each other. And he was told that a film about his grandfather was going to be released. They found out who was playing his role; I found out it was me. I just came out of a movie screening and there she was. I gushed and she gave me a big hug. And I arranged for her and her brother to come see the film in Toronto. They were there and I was very nervous about a lot of things, but especially nervous that they wouldn’t approve, that they wouldn’t like it, whatever. But they did it. And they said Howie, their grandfather, would have been proud. It was a very humbling experience.

DEADLINE: I was thinking about the scene at the train station where you and Rami have this heartbreaking, unforgettable conversation that lasts six or seven minutes and you tell Howie’s story. How did you prepare for this?

DRINK: Well, first of all, I knew exactly what I was going to do. But it’s obviously basic. I think with this scene, I discussed it with Jamie [Vanderbilt] a little ahead of the tone of the scene. And obviously, in the world of cinema, it’s a scene where there’s a big crescendo and everything is emotional. But we both agreed that it wasn’t necessary. And what was most important was that he simply told Kelley the story.

DEADLINE: Minimizing it makes it all the more powerful.

DRINK: I think so, because it meant that whatever was happening in my body was happening. It doesn’t matter, as long as I just tell the damn story, I tell him what happened. We just talked about all the inner dialogue and everything that was bubbling within Howie up until that point. I was lucky that we didn’t shoot that on the first day because it was very helpful to play all those scenes in the cells and all those other scenes where I have to guard them, keep everything inside, and then finally tell him the truth about Howie.

DEADLINE: The force of these four words: “I was raised here” causes a shock. And then you talk about Howie’s looks – the blonde hair and blue eyes – and you say, “I’ve never been harassed,” because they didn’t know Howie’s religion.

DRINK: During the screening in Toronto, it got a lot of laughs. The blonde hair, blue eyes and “I’ve never bullied myself so much” made him laugh a little. It was surprising.