Why suffered Vicky Krieps to play the Nazi Ilse Koch against Ed Gein
The German-Luxembourg actress embodies the terrifying “Buchewald witch” in season 3 of Monster, on Netflix.
She embodies a surprising part of the horrible story of Ed Gein.
Vicky Krieps plays “The Buchenwald witch” in season 3 of monster. The German-Luxembourgeois actress lends her features to Ilse Koch, wife of a Nazi officer and commander of the concentration camp, sadly known for her abominable practices: to tap the skin of Jewish prisoners and make objects like blank. A dreadful figure of history which fascinated the real Ed Gein and which plays an essential role in its macabre descent towards the inexpressible.
But for the German-Luxembourg actress revealed in the three musketeers, accepting this role was an intimate test:
“I was not ready to play such a role, because my grandfather was in a concentration camp. This part of the story is very close to me and my family,” she told Variety. “I was afraid of what it was going to wake up in me and the way it would be shown on the screen.”
What helped her, she explains, is to understand that the series does not show Koch as it was, but through the prism of the imagination of Ed Gein, nourished by comics and morbid fantasies.
“It freed me. I was able to play it as a figure larger than life, somewhere between a Hollywood star and a housewife from the 1950s obsessed with perfection.”
To slip into the shoes of such a monster, Vicky Krieps sought the human detail that gives flesh to horror.
“She wanted perfect life, the perfect house, the perfect husband. And to get there, she was ready for anything. This sick perfectionism was the key to entering her mind.”
The actress then echoes Hannah Arendt and her reflection on “the banality of evil”: the monster is not necessarily spectacular, he can also hide in everyday life, the kitchen, the house.
Beyond the shock, Krieps says he has found a form of freedom in this role. “It was important to give her enough humanity so that the spectator will find himself feeling pity for her, when she is bad, bad, bad.” And to conclude: “Ryan (Murphy) asks the essential question: what is a monster? The monster is perhaps us.”
Season 3 of monster is to be seen at the moment on Netflix.
