With “Crime Scene: The Innocent Child from Wacken” Axel Milberg (67) is celebrating his 20th anniversary as Kiel Commissioner Borowski. At the same time, the Sunday crime thriller also heralds his imminent departure from the role. After this spectacular heavy metal “crime scene”, he will only be seen in two more episodes, after which his colleague Almila Bagriacik (33) will have to go hunting for criminals without him.
Before he completes his last case at the end of January 2024, Axel Milberg appeared ready to testify again and gave relevant information in various interviews about his farewell to Klaus Borowski and his plans for the future.
The actor has mixed feelings about his exit from “Tatort” after 39 episodes. He told NDR: “There was never a routine in ‘Tatort’, nothing was repeated, every ‘Tatort’ in Kiel was different. I was lucky enough to almost always have a new perspective on topics in the direction and in the scripts, Getting to know motifs, milieus and narrative styles. It was often – incidentally – a declaration of love to my first home, the state of Schleswig-Holstein.” Nevertheless, it is time to move away from the figure after two decades.
And not just because his fans on the street now almost exclusively address him as “Borowski” and not as “Mr. Milberg”: “As nice as it was to concentrate on the character ‘Borowski’, after 21 years the market is changing and I with him. I have therefore asked the management of NDR not to extend our contract again and I am looking forward to the new one. Now I am looking forward.”
As Milberg revealed to “TVDigital”, he has other projects coming up immediately after the last Borowski shoot, “completely different ones, abroad, I’m still sworn to secrecy.” Due to the regular blackout dates for “Tatort” productions, he has not been able to get involved in more extensive film projects that last six months. “21 years in Kiel and this figure is an incredibly long time, it was just a part of my work, an important and beautiful one, of course, which I loved,” said Milberg. “But don’t forget, I’m not an investigator, I’m an actor.”
It is now important for him to try out completely new roles and formats, he explained to the Germany editorial network. For example, as drag queen Vivian Bernaise in the ARD film “My Girlfriend Volker” or in the anthology series “The Nicest People in the World,” which also appeared on Erste. This also makes it possible for the “press and public” to experience him again in a completely different way, “not as the introverted investigator who asks tough questions.”
Fellow actress Almila Bagriacik, who has been at Borowski’s side as Commissioner Mila Sahin since 2017 and will become the central figure of the Kiel “Tatort” from 2025, revealed to NDR: “I have great respect for continuing without Axel. At the moment I can’t do that imagine correctly. But the fact is that I’m staying because I love Sahin so much and our ‘crime scene’ reaches so many people. The role has an incredible appeal for me because Sahin is a character with strong energy and enormous potential for growth .”
