Deutschland 83 star Jonas Nay: I’m a real fan of Daniel Craig and would love to play James Bond

The actor said he took inspiration from James Bond movies while researching his Deutschland 83 role
In his sights: Jonas Nay as Stasi spy Martin Rauch
Rashid Razaq19 February 2016
The Weekender

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The actor who plays an East German spy in hit drama Deutschland 83 has revealed he has another secret agent role in his sights — 007.

Jonas Nay, 25, says he took inspiration from James Bond movies while researching his role as Stasi operative Martin Rauch.

The espionage thriller has become Channel 4’s most successful foreign language show ever, attracting more than three million viewers.

Nay told the Standard that watching Bond films helped him learn “spy stuff” and he would leap at the chance to play the quintessentially British spy.

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The German said: “I’m a real fan of Daniel Craig. For me he’s the best Bond there has been. When you first heard he was going to be the next James Bond you thought he didn’t fit.

“But his films are great. I’d love to play Bond — if I was asked. I’ve actually always wanted to play Daniel Craig’s son. A lot of people have said I look like him — from the side.”

The eight-part sub- titled drama, which sees Nay’s character leaving his girlfriend and sick mother behind to infiltrate the West Germany army, had a cliffhanger ending last Sunday, with two more planned series set in 1986 and 1989.

Nay said the period in which the show is set was like “another world” to him.

He had to draw on his parents’ and teachers’ experiences to imagine what it was like living through the last years of the Cold War. “People were totally brainwashed then,” he said. “President Reagan said the East was the ‘evil empire’ but people in the East thought the West was pure evil also.”

Speaking of the series’ soundtrack, he went on: “I had an idea of the pop culture of the time because my dad played guitar and introduced me to Eighties music. I was the uncool kid at school while everyone else was listening to hip-hop and electro.”

Nay will be seen next in Line Of Separation, another German show selected by film curator Walter Iuzzolino as part of his collaboration with Channel 4 to bring more than 600 hours of foreign-language dramas to British viewers.

Iuzzolino said: “Deutschland 83’s success shows that British audiences are the world’s most open-minded. In most other countries the show would have been dubbed.”

Deutschland 83 series one box set is available now, for free, at All4.com/WalterPresents

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