On March 28th, “Chantal in Fairytale Land,” a spin-off film from the extremely successful “Fack ju Göhte” trilogy, will be released in German cinemas. The Berlin actress Jella Haase (31) once again embodies fan favorite Chantal, who this time does not attend the Goethe comprehensive school, but rather visits the eponymous fairytale land with the help of a magic mirror.
In an interview with the news agency spot on news, Haase reveals what special skills she had to acquire for the new Chantal film, what it was like to ride a dragon on set, and what the chaos character she played in fairytale land all about turned inside out.
Jella Haase: I had to practice riding. I was a little sad because unfortunately I can ride much better. Chantal can’t ride well at all. That’s why I had to practice a bit to actually ride badly. But that was funny.
But what can also be described as a special skill is walking in these clothes and breathing all day long, which should not be underestimated as a discipline. Otherwise… Well, I took a course in dragon lore (laughs).
Haase: Yes, that was one of my favorite days of filming. Unfortunately it wasn’t a real dragon (laughs). But the guys from the stunt department really put a lot of effort into it. They really built an installation. It was like a long seesaw. There were weights at one end and the boys hung on them and played kite. At the other end I was floating in the air, sitting on it – on a kite built like that. That went really high. It was like a crane.
And when I flew up with this kite, I asked director Bora Dağtekin if he could play the music from “Jurassic Park” for me, because I grew up with “Jurassic Park”. And when this music played and I played to it that I was flying through a fairytale world on a kite, I thought: Wow. So this is really a dream come true.
Haase: Not so much. She’s still the same. “Chantal in Fairytale Land” follows on relatively seamlessly from high school. Chantal is Chantal as she lives and breathes. She wants to become an influencer. At the beginning of the film she is, as usual, pretty self-centered, you could also say selfish. During the film she actually goes through a development, but at the beginning she is still completely the same as before.
Haase: It’s a completely new story, so there wasn’t any concern. What really appealed to me was that the character was put in a completely different context, in a more feminist context. In fairytale land, Chantal really becomes a heroine. That was a big, big gift and I was really happy about it.
In 2021 I met our director Bora Dağtekin for the first time, and that’s when he started talking about how he planned to weave more serious topics like empowerment and diversity into the new film. It’s about breaking down role models. In the broadest sense, it is also a form of feminism. And then I thought: It couldn’t be any better with this character, who is so popular for dealing with such topics. That made me extremely happy.
But at the same time I believe that this new story was needed to bring it back to life. It was important to put it in a new context – in fairytale land. And I think it’s just a dream to have such a fairy tale written.
Haase: Absolutely clear: She slips into a fairy tale and is supposed to be the princess who just waits until she is kissed awake. And she doesn’t feel like it at all. Things are expected of her that she can’t handle. But it also bothers her that the other characters are so stuck in their ways and don’t stand up for themselves and do things that are expected of them but that they don’t want to do. This is something that Chantal can’t really cope with and where she tries to free the other characters from their rigidity and empower them herself. She teaches the other characters to stand up for themselves.
