Oppenheimer star Matthias Schweighofer He has been cast to play the eccentric, successful music producer Frank Farian, the German record producer who orchestrated the rise of the duo Milli Vanilli in the 1980s, the subject of a new biopic, A girl who knows it's true. But a pivotal moment came before filming when the actor had a chance to speak via Zoom with Farian before the infamous producer passed away this year. As a producer, he had sourced other songs from random collections and saw an opportunity with young dancers Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, but he told them they could only lip-sync in music videos.
Milli Vanilli became a Grammy-winning global phenomenon, dancing and singing along to other artists’ songs, but Farian eventually exposed the duo in what became one of the biggest music scandals in history. All of this intrigued Schweighöfer before he had a Zoom call with Farian. “It was really interesting,” the actor told MovieWeb in a recent interview. “It’s always hard to talk to a real person and ask them about that time—how they felt, what their life was like, what was real.” Of course, I had to ask him, “Wait, what really happened? What do you think of this story? What's the truth?” I never heard the truth.“”
Schweighover added:
It was crazy to understand this story, what happened there and what they did. I really thought, “Well, it's good that we made this film, because it's German history. I was so proud to be a part of the film.
A girl who knows it's true
3.5/5
Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan dominated the world's music charts as the pop duo Milli Vanilli. However, their fame soon turned to scandal when it was revealed that the vocals behind their hit songs were not theirs but those of other singers.
- release date
- August 9, 2024
- exit
- Simon Verhoeven
- Runtime
- 2h 4m
- The book
- Simon Verhoeven
- Distributors
- vertical
I grew up with Milli Vanilli songs.
Matthias Schweighöfer achieved great success with his portrayal of Werner Heisenberg in the Oscar-winning film. Oppenheimer, One of the highest-grossing films of 2023. Before that, he starred in Zack Snyder's army of the dead Directed and starred in Army of thieves. He has been performing for decades, A girl who knows it's true The film is about “performance” and display, with the music industry creating an illusion with Milli Vanilli. In a way, the film mirrors our embrace of fakery and performance, with lip-syncing taking over TikTok, AI faking a variety of things, and everyone cutting and editing “content” on social media.
Thinking about it now, Schweighofer agrees that Milli Vanilli's fame was somewhat ironic. “We were asking ourselves every day [on set]“Hey, people perform, but they’re not the ‘performers.’ And that’s a very good thing, because everyone knows,”Hey, this isn't your song, but you can perform. It's amazing. You can do crazy dances, and you might even be really successful.“The actor explained, adding:
“We found this crazy, why didn't Frank ever tell the truth before selling the music or showing it to the world?
Now, everyone is completely in agreement on that.
“It's fun and we love it. Why didn't they tell us the truth before the train started going so fast?”
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Meanwhile, even Schweighofer admits he can't get the duo's songs out of his head, especially after becoming part of the production. “I was on a show in America about two years ago, and the host asked me, 'Hey, what kind of movie are you doing next? ' And I said, 'It's a movie called A girl who knows it's true “About the pop duo Milli Vanilli.” And he sang every song – “Blame It on the Rain” and “Girl You Know It's True.” It's crazy, is it called an earworm? Is that what you say when you can't get the song out of your head?” A song the duo never sang. A girl who knows it's true (Paragraph intended) The movie is now in theaters. Watch the trailer below:
