The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Peacock.

Albrecht, you said rehearsal was the most challenging of your career. Why?
Albrecht Schuch: It was, without question, the hardest preparation I’ve ever faced. At first, I couldn’t find the center of the character. He felt like someone without emotions, almost as if he were absent from his own life. Gradually, through discussions and rehearsal, I realized his emotions were there but deeply hidden. He cares for others (his clients, his surroundings)… but neglects his own feelings and fears. That absence leaves him with no relationship to himself, as if he were in “parking mode” but had forgotten where the lot was.

It was unnerving. I’m used to characters who stride into a room with energy, whose presence immediately shifts the atmosphere. This man was the opposite: like an empty page, waiting for something to be written. That lack of definition drove me crazy at first, but eventually I saw it as the key. He’s a man who has given away so much of himself that he hardly knows what remains. Playing him meant learning to embody stillness and vacancy, which was both exhausting and strangely moving.

the humor isn’t there just for laughs

How much did you discuss tone beforehand?
A.S.: A great deal. Bernhard and I shared many cinematic references, so I grasped the tone of the film almost immediately after reading the script. Oddly, my first instinct wasn’t, I must play this role, but rather, I can’t wait to watch this movie. That reaction told me the project had something special… an aesthetic and emotional clarity we both understood from the outset.

Bernhard, you pre-shot the movie with storyboards and stand-ins. Why this method?
Bernhard Wenger: For me, filmmaking is all about preparation. I want to be relaxed on set, fully present for the actors. To achieve that, I shoot a rough version of the film in advance with a small camera ()sometimes even acting in it myself), alongside colleagues and the cinematographer.

It’s not about polish. It’s about testing ideas: does this shot work, does this movement make sense, does the dialogue have rhythm? Once we’ve tried it, I can refine the shot list and even edit a full mock version. That way, by the time we’re on set, I already know what feels natural and what doesn’t. If an actor says, “This doesn’t make sense,” I’ve usually discovered that earlier through rehearsal with the camera.

It also builds a shorthand with my DP. We don’t need to have long technical conversations while the actors are waiting. We already know what lens, what lighting setup. That frees me to concentrate on performance. Timing, especially with humor, benefits enormously from this process. Even something as simple as which side of a table a character walks around can feel awkward if you haven’t tried it yourself. By acting it out, I sense the rhythm of a scene, the timing of a line, or the pause before a look.

So in the end, the film exists twice: once in a strange, rough version with me in several roles, and once in the finished form. And that first version is what makes the second possible.

Tell us about the party tram sequence.
B.W.: That scene was deceptively simple on the page but very demanding in practice. You need extras, permits, a tram, and closed streets—all for a fleeting moment. Yet I was determined, because inspiration came directly from life.

One day, in a terrible mood, I was stuck at a red light and saw a party tram roll by, full of people dancing and laughing. The absurdity of it instantly shifted my perspective. I thought, this is exactly the kind of strange, joyous detail I want in the film. That clash — the grayness of an ordinary day colliding with something so oddly exuberant — captures the humor I look for.

What’s important is that it isn’t spectacle for its own sake. It’s not about staging a giant set piece. It’s about how a small, surreal detail can suddenly change the way you feel about the world. A tram filled with people partying on a weekday afternoon is funny, yes, but it’s also oddly uplifting. It takes the characters (and hopefully the audience) out of their routine and reminds them that life is unpredictable, sometimes ridiculous, and occasionally wonderful.

How did you manage humor and tone in the film?
B.W.: My sense of humor is rooted in Scandinavian cinema and British black comedy, fused with an Austrian instinct for tragedy. That mixture shaped my handwriting as a filmmaker. When I write, I don’t calculate whether an audience will laugh… I trust my instincts. If something strikes me as funny, I believe it can resonate.

But the humor isn’t there just for laughs. I want to address serious themes and still give people relief through comedy. Satire allows that balance. It’s about making space for laughter while still pointing at something painful. For me, humor always comes from tragedy. It’s what makes it human.

Too often, art-house films treat humor cynically. That’s not how I look at life. I prefer optimism, and I look at my characters with warmth. Even when they’re misguided or tragic, I want to treat them with empathy. Comedy becomes a way of reaching that empathy: you laugh at their situation, but you also recognize the fragility underneath. That’s why I love satire: it gives you the chance to speak to heavy issues and still let the audience breathe.

At what point did the mustache come in?
A.S.: The mustache was very intentional. We discussed it as a metaphor for German precision and rigidity. In Germany, people sometimes trim hedges into perfect square shapes, obsessively neat. The mustache felt like the character carrying that same rigidity on his face.

At the same time, we decided he would have no other body hair. That choice made him oddly blank, hard to pin down… like he was slipping away from any clear definition. The contrast of meticulous order and elusive identity said a great deal about who he was.