Q&A: Christoph Silber, Creator of 'SAM - A SAXON', Discusses How an International Identity Has Influenced His Screenwriting
The co-creator and head writer of Disney+'s first German-language series brought a contemporary American sensibility to the story of East Germany's first Black cop
The last time I saw my friend screenwriter/author Christoph Silber, he was sitting across from me in a Munich restaurant. It was 2018 and my family was on vacation in Germany, his homeland, and he was coincidentally in the city for work. It’s always a joy to see him, even though we don’t get to do it nearly enough as it’s been five years since I’ve seen his face in the flesh. By the way, my favorite moment of this meet-up was when I voiced my frustration with the miserable waiter shortly after Christoph ordered our meal in his native tongue. Christoph chuckled then, and said some version of, “Oh no, no, he’s hilarious when he’s speaking German.” It was a reminder of how extreme cultural differences can be between nations and languages, even when your family is ancestrally German as mine is - but also what can happen when these cultures collide. Christoph lives at one such collision between not just German and American culture today — he lives in America —but numerous others as you’ll see. It’s had a profound impact on how he tells stories such as “SAM - A SAXON”, a new TV series he created for Disney+.
He and I decided to celebrate the release of “SAM” by catching up as part of one of my artist-on-artist conversations, giving me the opportunity to probe even deeper into his backstory and the life that informs his international work today. For some of you, it might not seem immediately evident why you should be getting to know a screenwriter primarily known for his work in the German language — like “SAM” or the film that helped establish his career, “GOODBYE, LENIN!” (2003) — but I assure you that you’d be mistaken to pass up the opportunity to explore screenwriting across cultures like this.
As for “SAM - A SAXON”, it tells the exciting story of East Germany’s first Black police officer, is co-created by Tyron Ricketts and Jörg Winger, and stars Malick Bauer. It’s also Disney+’s first German-language original series.
COLE HADDON: I had to think yesterday about when the last time I saw you was. Because we didn’t see each other in Nashville last year as planned, that means our last meet-up was that random encounter in Munich back in 2018. Which boggles my mind, because it feels like just yesterday we were sitting across from each other that autumn. It’s been such a thrill, watching your life since then, from a new marriage, to a children’s book, to, most recently, a new TV series.
CHRISTOPH SILBER: Funny – I was in Munich a few weeks ago introducing my wife to Germany and I remembered that day. My creative life has been versatile and busy as long as I can remember, but being married to another creator — Tracey is an actor and a writer — has been a beautiful shift.
CH: Congratulations on “SAM – A SAXON”, by the way. We’re going to come back to that in a moment, but it made me so happy to see your name up on the screen. You have a bit part as an angry soccer coach, and I shouted to my wife, “It’s Christoph!” when you showed up.
CS: Thank you so much. I had been hiding from acting for decades after spending much of my childhood and youth on stage. “SAM - A SAXON” felt like the right time to have fun with that side of me again.
CH: You and I played the personal biography game nearly a decade ago at Soho House in LA, but let’s assume readers aren’t as familiar with you as I am. By American and British filmmaking standards, you have a wildly unique backstory - in large part because you’re German-born and raised and, well, there just aren’t a lot of you working in the US or UK. Let’s start with where you came from, and by that, I mean your parentage and your grandparents. I can’t help but feel as if you were born a storyteller, or at least born with no choice in whether you become one.
CS: In lieu of any material inheritance, I was born into a wealth of story, and writing runs in my bloodline. I’ve been feeding on these stories for a good part of my career - my grandfather’s work as a denazification interrogator, my great-grandfather’s journey between political activism and hiding his Jewish identity in Nazi Germany, my grandmother’s role as a Communist spy in WWII, my dad’s childhood in British exile. In fact, some of these stories have helped me to “earn my place in the room” in Hollywood.
In lieu of any material inheritance, I was born into a wealth of story, and writing runs in my bloodline. I’ve been feeding on these stories for a good part of my career.
CH: I can imagine so. You’re told to give producers some kind of hook, something to remember you because of, and you just start throwing one amazing biographical detail after another out. So, I know what I just said about seemingly being born to be a storyteller, but did it feel like that for you? By that I mean, did you consider other paths besides storytelling?
CS: I tried a few things growing up - acting, singing, journalism. In hindsight, I’d say they were all different forms of storytelling. I started writing plays as a child. Screenplays as a teenager. Turning the passion into a profession was more a matter of courage.
CH: Can you expand on what you mean by that? What was the great challenge for you?
CS: I was surrounded by some outstanding wordsmiths growing up. My grandfather was a sports journalist, my grandmother wrote a best-selling memoir, my dad was a Shakespeare scholar, my mother a poet and translator. There was a lot of emphasis on skill, hard work, and depth of meaning. It took me a while to muster up the courage to believe that my own stories were worth telling and that I had what it took.
CH: God, I don’t think I realized that. Most artists suffer from some kind of imposter syndrome, all of us desperate to prove we’re not hacks. The idea that you might’ve felt you had something to prove to not just one, but several accomplished family members is…I mean, wow. It sounds like a Wes Anderson film, to be honest. I’m curious if you feel free of their presence in your creative process at this point, or are they still there somewhere in your mind?
CS: A Wes Anderson film…that’s a fascinating thought! Their presence is always with me, but now they’ve mostly found their rooms in the ever-evolving mansion inside my mind. Sounds crazy, I know, but it’s how I visualize my story brain - similar to those “casas vivas” in Latin American novels. So, in a sense I’ve turned the scare into a strength, I guess. Which, now that I think about it, would be a great arc for the Wes Anderson version of my life story.
CH: You recently told me that one of the things you found ironic about the success of “SAM – A SAXON” was you had spent years avoiding writing about East Germany because the German film/TV industry had typecast you into only writing about it. I want to interrogate that a bit because I don’t know nearly enough about the German market and I imagine your answer is going to further illuminate how you broke into film/TV. How did that happen to you in the first place?
CS: I began my German screenwriting career as a very young guy in the mid-nineties, just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. East Germans like me were in an underdog position then. Our ability to tell “relevant” stories outside of our specific experience in Communism was questioned. There was quite a bit of ridicule and skepticism, and there’s still some today. It’s not unusual that someone in the German industry will tell me, “I’d never have guessed you were East German. You’re so eloquent and open-minded.” So, it’s no coincidence that after a few years of hustling in the lower echelons of the German TV world, my breakthrough came when I was hired to work on “GOODBYE, LENIN!”
It’s not unusual that someone in the German industry will tell me, “I’d never have guessed you were East German. You’re so eloquent and open-minded.”
CH: How did you internalize that kind of cultural classism? Was there a lot of anger about that when you were younger? I imagine this has much to do with why you avoided writing about East Germany for so long.
CS: I still see a lot of anger and frustration in a generation of East Germans who feel that their entire world was pulled out from under them. My advantage was probably my young age. As mentioned, I was still a teenager when the Wall came down. I spent more time facing forward than looking back in anger. Besides, for all my disagreement with how the German reunification was handled, I didn’t miss much about the GDR as a state.
CH: I often think of you as one of the more compassionate friends I have. You’re deeply committed to social justice, but you bring a great deal of respect for others’ opinions — to a degree — to the table. Unlike me, you don’t yell at people for being idiots. I can actually see these qualities evolving out of the unique kind of cultural classism you’re describing.
CS: Thank you, that’s very kind. I am, as my wife describes me, a man of strong opinions, but also of great patience. I do believe that, alongside my own experience as a creator, watching generations of my family navigating cultural divides and dealing with strong limitations to their freedom of expression has shaped my personality into what you are describing. It definitely helps me in my approach to character development - and in dealing with some of the less productive input we as screenwriters often have to endure.
I even designed a business card for myself with an address on Sunset Blvd as a sixteen-year-old, when the Berlin Wall was still standing. Funny enough, two decades later I had an office on Sunset.
CH: Here’s a question I’ve never asked you, or at least I don’t remember asking you. What motivated you to come to America and pursue screenwriting in Hollywood?
CS: I like to dream big. For an East Berlin kid, I had an unusually high exposure to American culture through my home. I remember dreaming about following in the footsteps of the great Hollywood exiles like Lubitsch and Wilder — who had both lived in my Berlin neighborhood at some point — from my teenage years.
CH: I love that Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder could still have that role in an East German kid’s life in the nineties.
CS: I even designed a business card for myself with an address on Sunset Blvd as a sixteen-year-old, when the Berlin Wall was still standing. Funny enough, two decades later I had an office on Sunset.
CH: This is a good place to talk about the fact that you are a living intersection. One of the reasons I started this artist-on-artist interview series was to discuss art at the intersection between mediums, how X unexpectedly influences Y and Z somehow glues it all together, that sort of thing. In your case, you’re more of a cultural intersection. German-born and raised, but also British. East German, as you say, but you easily move through the West German world. German/British living in America, in the American South at that. Your immediate family is equally as hyphenated. I haven’t even touched on you being a writer who developed his skills in German and now writes screenplays in English. Let’s start with how you identify yourself today: are you German, German-British, German-British-American, or, as I think you casually referred to yourself recently, a German living in America?
CS: How about a German banger with a dollop of British mash, served on an American plate. I think that describes it pretty well. And now I’m hungry.
CH: [Laughter] How do you think that has impacted your writing over the years? Does this fractured identity provide you with any unique gifts or maybe even perspectives that might distinguish you from other writers out there?
CS: The Golden Age of Hollywood — arguably the entire emergence of film as a narrative medium — is unthinkable without the influx of “foreign” perspectives through the immigration wave of the early twentieth century. Thanks to my own multifaceted background, I’ve always enjoyed thinking of myself as a global citizen. That definitely impacts my approach to American as well as to German reality. I’m not fully rooted in either one of those worlds. I’m an observer – a highly involved and opinionated one, but an observer.
In “SAM - A SAXON”, we chose to tell our hero’s period journey through a modern lens of the current debates on racism, cultural identity, colonial thinking, and systemic oppression.
CH: What about “SAM – A SAXON”? What were you able to bring to that project, at this point in your life and creative journey, that you wouldn’t have had in your toolbox ten or fifteen years ago?
CS: So many things. In “SAM - A SAXON”, we chose to tell our hero’s period journey through a modern lens of the current debates on racism, cultural identity, colonial thinking, and systemic oppression. Which also meant that our diverse writers’ room — the first of its kind in Germany — was a place of often uncomfortable discussion and learning. I wouldn’t have been able to do that without my experience as an anti-racism activist and single parent guiding my two biracial children through the storms of the last ten years in America.
CH: As a screenwriter, I’m fortunate enough not to be stuck playing in only one sandbox. I work in Hollywood, but since 2017, when my family left America, I write across the UK and Europe and in Australia where I live today. Basically, if I have a story to tell, I find that someone, somewhere will let me tell it in some way I care about. What are some of the creative and professional advantages you can identify being someone who works between two different countries as you do?
CS: The greatest advantage I see is pretty much what you just said – having more than one market to sell my stories in. When I came to Hollywood, I found myself being able to play in genres that were rare in European film and TV. I got to work on two action films and a horror movie. For a passion project of mine that had never found a home in the German market for years, I sold a pilot script in the US within weeks of mentioning it to a producer I had just befriended. Reversely, whenever projects I’m involved with languish in Hollywood — which is way more frequently due to the insanity of legal folks than the often blamed “development hell” — I’m grateful I can quickly land a pitch or take an interesting offer from overseas. Overall, I’ve experienced more appreciation for creative achievement in Germany. Once you’ve established yourself over there, you’re not expected to prove yourself over and over again. There’s more job stability for writers.
CH: We’ve been circling “SAM – A SAXON” for a while now, so let’s just dive in. You were typecast in Germany because of your East German background and avoided writing about East Germany for years as a result. What was it about this story that made you rethink that position?
CS: Very personal reasons. For one, I grew up with a very strong anti-fascist worldview. The life mission of my grandparents could be summed up in the words “never again”. I can’t say I was without fear, but when it comes to fighting racists and defending those who were targeted by them, I’ve been okay with taking a few blows.
I wanted to use my voice and experience to take a stand for the kind of world I wish for [my children] to live in.
In the early nineties, I got beaten up by neo-Nazis a few times and even found a way to negotiate a truce for my diverse group of friends, similar to what happens in Episode 4 of “SAM”. In other words, I knew the madness of the time first-hand, I knew many of the players involved and I had been looking for a way to talk about that experience. Another important motivation was the new rise of racist violence in Germany and elsewhere. My biracial son — whose name is also Sam — was born in Berlin, and he moved back over there last year. I wanted to use my voice and experience to take a stand for the kind of world I wish for him and his sister to live in.
CH: You say you were looking for a way to talk about that experience. Can you talk more about that emotional need on your part? Were you looking to better understand what you had been born into, exorcise some of that family trauma, or something else?
CS: I grew up in a time and country where many of the kind who killed my great-grandfather were still alive and well. I never understood human hatred – it used to frighten me to the core. I remember being equally sickened by the anti-Semitic and racist jokes I heard in school all the time. Another thing I struggled with was the passive, defeatist attitude I saw in many of my marginalized relatives and friends. I studied martial arts to be able to defend myself and those I cared about. I never wanted to feel that sickening powerlessness again. All of those are elements you’ll find in Sam’s journey.
CH: You chose to tackle “SAM – A SAXON” as, you said, through a modern lens. Can you explain what that means in practice?
CS: German TV executives are very heavy on historic authenticity, and we had meticulous research at our disposal. However, working with some more flexible folks at Disney allowed us to take liberties in the way our characters spoke and what they discussed. One example is the conversations about race between Sam’s post-Wall love interest and her two Afro-German friends, which feature terminology of the Black Lives Matter age.
CH: A moment ago, you described “SAM – A SAXON” as taking a stand for the kind of world you wanted your children to live in. Activism in art is obviously a precarious position because it can often become preaching or outright propaganda. How aware were you and the writers’ room about the risk of this as you worked, and how did you safeguard against it?
CS: We trusted the power of our hero’s journey and our abilities to create great entertainment. The room knew that my co-creators Tyron Ricketts and Jörg Winger and I had fought for this story for years. Tyron had known Samuel personally for decades. Jörg and I brought an impressive amount of combined experience as two of the very few Germans to ever win International Emmys. I never experienced any doubt in the writing team that we would find the perfect way to tell our story to the world.
CH: Okay, we’ve come to the end of our conversation. One final question. You’ve written films, created TV series, and recently published a children’s book to glowing reviews. What’s next and what haven’t you done as an artist that you’re desperate to try?
CS: For one, I’m working on my first novel - you’d know a thing or two about that journey! But my biggest unfulfilled dream is to direct a film. I’ve done a few short films, and I’ve actually never felt happier while working. Not sure why I haven’t gone after it harder – maybe I was intimated by the many brilliant directors I’ve worked with. Now that I’m firmly in the grip of middle age, there would be ample excuses to let that dream go. But my dad, who was a brilliant theater man, challenged me about it in one of our last conversations before he died. He said I had the perfect set of talents and character traits to be a fantastic director, and that he hoped I’d finally go for it. So, grey hair or not, I think I’m ready for my debut film.
You can find “SAM - A SAXON” on Hulu or Disney+ now depending on where you are in the world. If you’re a German reader with children, I also encourage you to buy Christoph’s kids’ book DIE WOLKE UNTERM DACH, about dealing with grief.
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PSALMS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD is out now from Headline Books, Hachette Australia, and more. You can order it here wherever you are in the world:
The industry is a tiny village as we all know and his first film is brilliant and so are the actors and actresses performances. I read about Christoph’s unique biography which is similar to mine when it comes to resistance in the Nazi era. My aunt was incarcerated by the Gestapo for listening to Swing music and was denunciated by the neighbor who had listened to it together with her and my great grandfather refused to hang out the Nazi flag and lived in the notorious communist’s Red Front district.
Was excited to read an interview about my countrymen, C. Silber and although I have never visited the US yet, I call myself lucky for getting hired from The States as a screenwriter although living in Germany. Regards from Hamburg, Lucie