EXCLUSIVE: Director Tim Fehlbaum, Leonie Bensch & Ben Chaplin Discuss New Film, ‘September 5’

Tomorrow, January 10, Paramount Pictures will release its new film, September 5, Based on true events, we got the chance to chat with the director of the film, Tim Fehlbaum, and two of the stars of the film, Leonie Bensch and Ben Chaplin.

During our chat, we talked how everyone became attached to the project, the background cast, the research they did for the film, and so much more. Check out what they had to say below.

How did you all get attached to this project?

Tim Fehlbaum: “Well, I was approached by the casting director. No, I’m kidding.’

Leonie Bensch: “So you’re going to tell my story. I will tell yours?”

Ben Chaplin: “Yeah.”

Tim Fehlbaum: “No, I was, I can’t do that. No. I was involved from the very beginning on, of course, I created this together with the producers, Thomas Wöbke and Philipp Trauer and the writer, Moritz Binder. We, this group, started to think about the story in general. That was how it started. And how did I get in touch with the subject? I studied in Munich, and to film school. And in Munich, even after all these years, this story still is very present and I was quite interested in that specific day, also since I saw a documentary called One Day in September. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I saw it as a teenager, and it had a huge impact on me.”

Wow. All those years ago and now we have this.

Tim Fehlbaum: “Yes, yes, yes, yes indeed.”

What about you guys?

Leonie Bensch: “Well, Simone Bär was a very, very wonderful casting director. She sadly passed a month before we started filming, but she had a phone call with my agent and my agent called me and she said, ‘Simone will send us a script.” It’s about Munich 72, I know what you’re going to say. It’s been done before, but Simone promises it’s a thrilling read. And they’re actually offering you the part.’ Then I read it, and it was thrilling. And then we had a Zoom. I think Simone showed you some material that she still had or something like that happened. But yes, that’s how I got involved.”

Tim Fehlbaum: “Yeah, this is the classic case of when I saw some material from someone I like, and it was okay. It’s clear.”

Ben Chaplin: “And me, I don’t really know. I got sent the script and Tim probably knows more than I do about how I ended up in it, but it was not that long before the film. But I got sent the script and loved it. Then I had a Zoom with Tim and yeah, I was in, gratefully in.

For Ben and Leonie, you filmed in such tight quarters for this film. What was that like and do you think it impacted on your individual performances?

Leonie Bensch: “I mean, it’s a gift. Our production designer, well, your production designer [Julian R. Wagner], I want to claim a little bit of him, but he and his team have just, if someone builds a set like that for you, you can just walk on and be in it. There’s not a lot of pretending, because most of the machines worked, most of the footage that we see in the film, on the monitors we saw when we were playing. And just to go back to the brilliance of the casting directors involved, every single part, I would say everyone has a part. It’s not really supporting the cast, because they were there every day, and the film wouldn’t work if everyone wasn’t in it. But walking into that, yes, very tight space every day, actually really helped. Because I always thought it was very exciting when once Tim said, ‘And action,’ because everyone came together and everyone was game and people came together and there was not one person who tried to make it by themselves, which is amazing. But the moments in between were quite exhausting, because it was a very tight space, and it was difficult to navigate and the smoke and the sweat and all of that.”

Ben Chaplin: “Shooting wise, it was a gift, like Leonie says it was just so, I’ve never worked with anybody as dedicated to every aspect of the film making as Tim, script, collaborative cast, but just every detail, and to the point where it was almost to the point of obsession. Absolutely. It was extremely important for you, wasn’t it?”

Tim Fehlbaum: “Yeah.”

Ben Chaplin: “The detail and the precision and the accuracy. So, for us, that makes it, it’s like you say, there’s sort of less acting required, number one. One less thing to worry about. And number two, more scope to use the set. Can I use that? Yeah, you can. It works. So, it really was relatively easy. And the proximity, whilst demanding, again, helped the film be more pressured, because it was physically constricting. But then, that was quite easy, because the cast was so… Right across the board, people that didn’t get any lines, background extras, but even background, everybody committed, pulling in the same direction, which is a credit to the casting of the piece. But also, Tim’s endless boundless energy in keeping us all focused.”

Well, for me, at least from the audience point of view, it helps intensify the scenes.

Ben Chaplin: “Right.”

Because you guys may be saying all the lines, but my eyes were drawn to the background actors and their facials, as they’re reacting to what you guys were doing. For you, Tim, how important was it to make sure that those background actors were reacting the way that you needed them to?

Tim Fehlbaum: “Oh, that’s a good question. Because I think actually, yeah, they really deserve that we talk about it. Because it was, in a way, I think you wouldn’t compare that to a regular movie, because it was every day the same background cast, in the same room with the same crew in front of the camera, behind the camera. But that’s also what Jeffrey Mason told us about how the real crew that night, how they grew together in a way, even though it was such a tragic situation, that they bonded more. And this I could also observe in a nice way with our cast in front of the camera.

And to me, I observed a lot of these control rooms in preparation, just to feel these dynamics and see that. And to me it just, there’s a very specific way of how these people interact and they are constantly present, because they’re alive. So, everybody has a very specific function. As you said, is constantly busy with something. And so, we very accurately recreated. We had these photos, we knew it. There was sitting the first assistant director, who was always doing the countdowns. There was the person reporting the communicator, reporting to New York about the satellite and stuff. We knew all of these people had a very concrete description, specific of what they would need to do.

We even had; I don’t know if you guys know, but we actually had a background script. We wrote the background script. We saw that every of these background characters, new in this scene, there, I would take the phone and make that call.”

Leonie Bensch: “It’s amazing.”

Tim Fehlbaum: “Now we would have a commercial break, so I would need to do this. We had a lot of advisors also from these control rooms that were working with them. Why didn’t we do too much rehearsal. This is another interesting topic, why, but we rehearsed with those people very much with people who would know what they would need to do. It went even so far that one of these, I observed these control rooms also in Germany. And some thought, I thought they looked like they could be out of the time. And so, I asked him, ‘Hey, after this broadcast, what are you doing for next week?” Do you want to be in our movie?’ And they all, of course, also, especially in the sports TV world, this story is also of a great importance.’

That’s amazing.

Ben Chaplin: “I learn something new every day. It’s no stone unturned, isn’t it?”

Ben and Leonie, what type of research did you do to prepare for this film?

Ben Chaplin: “I did what I could do in the time I had, which wasn’t a lot, but I read everything I could find about Marvin Bader. I didn’t speak to anybody who knew him. I have done, since the film came out, talking to John Magaro who’d spent a lot of time with Jeffrey Mason, was very helpful. And I ended up having a conversation just sort of by chance, by luck. My girlfriend’s first boss was working, she worked when she was younger in New York for an agent, sort of legendary agent for news anchors. They represented Dan Rather and people like that. Her first boss is now married to a sports producer named Al Berman, who’s kind of a legend in the business. He was, I say he’s a sports producer, he’s CBS newsman, who did produce an Olympics in Japan in the end, a Winter Olympics.

But he was Dan Rather’s in the field producer. And I had a chat with him, a talk with him that was so helpful. And very similar, the way he spoke about his job. Very similar to what I read that Marvin Bader had said about his. I just thought, yeah, these people, they’re a particular kind of people. So that was about it, really, most of it. The research I did do, the script was so in keeping with anything I read about it, that you were in such safe hands with the script, that the voices were distinct, everybody was authentic, seemed to me credible. So yeah, I did what I could, but it was sort of in the playing of it, in the screenplay.”

Leonie Bensch: “We decided quite early on that I wouldn’t join for any table reads or anything, because we liked the idea of me being thrown into that room a little bit, like Marianne is thrown into that space too. And a lot of the work is done for me just because one of the only females in a very male dominance, that’s just not… It’s given. They were the given circumstances. That was already there. And what I did do is I picked an interpreter’s brains of someone who does simultaneous translating, because I was very interested in what is Marianna’s safe space? What does she really know how to do? Because the moment she also takes control in that control room, when she shouts at everyone, that’s when it’s about her work. So, I wanted to learn about that quite a bit. “

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity