Anja Su-Jin Bourdais - Actress

Anja Su-Jin Bourdais is a unique actor, she speaks four languages, German, English, French and Korean and she is equally adept in theater, as she is in front of the camera. Those skills, however, are not the most unique part of who Anja Su-Jin Bourdais is, wait for it…she completed her law degree, she fulfilled what in North America is know as articling, the final stages, before you become a lawyer and before writing her exam she embarked on a career in the arts. Sandokan, the revived Italian television show based on the books by Italian novelist Emilio Salgari, has presented her with a new adventure, as the mother of the 19th century pirate, Sandokan.

“The TV show dates back to the seventies, and it was a very popular and well-known TV show. It was very popular not only in Italy but Europe wide. When I talk to Germans who are older than me or my age and up most of them know the show and they watched it when they were children. I haven’t. Everyone in Europe who grew up in Europe has heard of this series or they have watched it. The Italians were really careful when they wanted to do the international reboot of the series. The good thing is due to COVID they had to postpone for years the making of the show, so they wrote and rewrote and as we know when people have time to spend on the series, the scripts are amazing. They brought a very modern twist to everything but still respected the story.

I was really happy. I never thought I would get the role, because I thought the character I was auditioning for was kind of like my mom a real Asian woman. I was not raised anywhere in Asia; I was raised in Germany. I was born in Frankfurt, but I have been living in Berlin for a long time,” she says, before describing the auditioning process, “It was a monologue of one and one-half pages with me being very strong. I had a very good reader for my self-tape who pushed me a lot and much further than I wanted to go. There was also my resemblance to the main character, so people could assume that I could be his mother. Everything clicked. It was a wonderful experience. I was there in Italy four times last year and I got to know the whole cast and the whole production team. We did a really wonderful table read. We were spoiled and we had great Italian food. The people were (great). For me it was like a dream come true. It was like paradise.” 

As for the location, “I went three times to Rome, once was for a table read. Then it was shot in Calabria. It was not too hot, and it was not too cold. It was just perfect, and the people were really nice.”

Anja Su-Jin Bourdais describes her character as, “The director and a wonderful Italian actor with whom I had some scenes came to me and they described her (Sandokan’s mother) as being beautiful inside and out, which of course is what I liked to hear. She would sacrifice everything for her family.

I had two coaches (who helped me prepare). I worked with an American acting coach, who has been my teacher for the last twenty years, Robert Castle from New York City.”

She goes on to describe Robert Castle’s acting method, “It is based on method (acting), but he has developed it a lot further. He goes more into Stella Adler and more into your own imagination and explores it, by experiencing it without really talking about it too much. I like the American way of doing it. Here in Europe, we always write biographies. It is all very intellectual and theoretical. I like experiencing the whole thing and you just imagine being in that room and you touch things. Having that experience gives something to your body. I did that with him and a German acting coach. That has helped me to be very concrete with my goals within a scene.”

What type of actress is Anja Su-Jin Bourdais?

“Let’s say I tried the Meisner technique and took some lessons in it also. I am shy. Method acting helped me a lot with those exercises that you do for relaxation and sense memory. It helped me a lot to imagine my own world, so I do not get distracted by the whole shyness and the whole wanting to adapt and not being loud,” she says.

Thinking there is something more there, we explored a little bit more.

“I was the good girl. I am very happily married with two kids.  People would love to live this life, and I am really happy in my private life, and I am very adaptive. I don’t like to be loud, and I don’t like anybody to be loud. Maybe I am too adaptive. I know my mom had to adapt a lot when she came to Germany. She kind of over adapted. Acting helps when either the teacher or the director tells you that you are too nice. Be louder, be meaner and it helps to just feel yourself again. I don’t see that as any kind of therapy, but it does help to free yourself,” she explains.  

We wondered if living all of her life in Germany yet having Korean heritage and physically bearing Korean characteristics opens more doors for her career wise now that the world is becoming more multicultural or if it still comes with its challenges.

“That is a very good question, because it was a challenge for a long time. It partly still is, but in this changing environment it is now a real advantage. It has taken me a long time to see it as such, especially here in Germany. It doesn’t mean that people are hostile, but if you emphasize that you are half Asian it completely changes. Asians are seen differently than if I was Turkish or (she looks for another comparison). Germans do (distinguish). Here people like to know who they are dealing with, and I don’t look like anything that you can put into a drawer or any category. Even today it is sometimes a challenge, especially with older people.

It is also with the young people (that things are changing). I feel because I have a lot of younger colleagues that I am in touch with, especially female colleagues, especially the ones between thirty-three and forty, they have fought a lot for that. Even those who are much younger have the advantage now, because those people fought for this,” says Anja Su-Jin Bourdais.  

What was lifelike growing up in Frankfurt Germany, Anja?

“There is nobody in my family who has anything to do with, even remotely anything that is artistic. Oh, I am wrong. My father who died when I was twenty-six, he was a musician. He was very, very musically talented with any instrument. For me he was an artist. I started acting when he was gone. From my Korean family there was not and still is not any support whatsoever. They see it as very cheap and something one shouldn’t do (She sort of half-laughs, but more as in expressing exasperation),” she says.

Anja Su-Jin Bourdais inherited her father’s love for music and in fact, during a follow-up to this interview, when contacted she was on her way to take part in a choral presentation. She also was drawn to his love for instruments.

“The drums for sure. I still like the drums. Any drum player would say that I have no technique. I had one year of lessons, and I did workshops every summer. Now I play the drums for the singers who are in the Jazz school. I just love to be in the music, because as a singer you are kind of apart and now, I can at least be with the others. It is easier to do Jazz drums than it is to do Jazz guitar or Jazz piano or whatever.

My father played the drums really well. It is really strange, because I do not feel that it is my instrument, because nobody really taught me. I can always adapt though and go to a session and play some swing things or whatever they are playing. It is just fun, and it is being with other people. The piano is opposite, because I was always (trained) to play the Classical piano. I had a real technique, but it never developed into Jazz piano. I was always playing Classical piano, and I stopped,” she says.

She then takes us for a trip down memory lane saying, “I was always acting in school, and it was led by a nun. The girls were even playing the male parts. I was drawn to it immediately, but I had a Korean family, and they were saying your grandfather studied law, so you should study law. From the beginning it was something I had to do. Then my father died, and I just wanted to do something with music, and I started to do musical theater at school. In Germany there is a time between when you pass your first and second exam (to become a lawyer) and it is very well-paid internships, and you are paid by the state. You are also paid if you work at a law firm and you can also earn money there. After my first exam I went to the school for musical theater, so I did both. I worked there (at law) and I also studied acting, singing and dancing. It was not a very good school.

I decided to go to New York, and I studied acting there. There everything changed. I felt that I belonged. Robert Castle was a very critical and very honest teacher. When he tells you that you should do that, it is really something that you should do (big smile). It really did change.”

Then she adds, “I know after Sandokan it will change (again).  All of a sudden you are someone who has worked internationally and even if it is two episodes, as I am not in all of the episodes you will recognize me, because I was in there. That (how she viewed) may change concerning Germany.” (editor’s note Anja Su-Jin Bourdais is also cast for the second season of Sandokan)  

How many of you reading this know that great Austrian composer Wolfgang Mozart had a sister? This writer did not and one that history suggests may have been equally or perhaps even more talented than her well-known brother. Anja Su-Jin Bourdais for two years played the role of Maria Anna Mozart, also known by the nickname Nanneri, in the play The Other Mozart. The one-person play was written by Silvia Milo.

She gained great insights into the relationship of Maria Anna Mozart and her famous brother saying, “Wolfgang and Nanneri were really close and Wolfgang was already ahead of his time. He would not have thought it weird if his sister became one of the first female composers ever.”

I got to do (The Other Mozart) because we have a mutual friend and Silvia, and I knew each other but we had never really become friends. She was looking for someone to do it in German in the German speaking countries. She is Austrian. The Mozart House was looking for someone to do that (also), because they had already done it in English.

It takes a long time because it is twenty-four pages of text and that is just the lines and just you. It is one hour and fifteen minutes for the whole play without any break. You are on stage all of the time and performing. It takes every actress (a long time) to get this role and to get it into your body. It took a big toll on me physically, but it was the most wonderful role. You can really experience the exchange with the audience. You are talking to the audience, and Maria Mozart is telling her story of the Mozart family from her point of view. It is based on pure facts and all of the Mozart letters. There’s just five percent that have been invented or edited.

I was working for such a long time on the play, and I had to fly over to New York a couple of times, because I was not only playing the role, but I was also producing it for the German speaking countries.

They prepared me over there. There are of course books and the Mozart letters (She holds her fingers wide apart to illustrate a stack of letters). There is a collection of letters, and I had to read them. There are also several books about her. The main preparation was from the creative team in New York and especially the writer and the director.

For me personally it was not that hard to feel her, because there were so many things that I could relate to, and she seems like a very strong character. You can grasp her when you read the letters and the way she speaks to her brother, and he speaks to her. It is not vague.

I enjoyed the whole acting process, and I loved it. It is maybe the hardest thing I have ever done. Even if you are well prepared and you know your lines. People (could) fall asleep after half an hour, when it is just you. It is really hard to keep them (the audience engaged). It is the hardest thing I have ever done.

I did not enjoy the producing. It is a lot of work. You have to put up the hair and it takes more than two hours to get your hair done. You are in a corset, and it is very tight, especially for that long of a time and when you are by yourself on stage. It was really hard.

I remember doing it in Mallorca (Port d’Andratx) and it was really hot. You have the wig, and you have the corset, and you have a dress that weighs a lot.”

With a bit of a twinkle in her eye, Anja Su-Jin Bourdais tells us that although she enjoys the role of Sandokan’s mother, whom she describes as being wonderful, that she hopes someday to be cast in a role that really is quite the opposite of those who know her best, including this writer describe her as being kind and gentle spirited. We know that anything is possible for this talented actress, because both in supporting roles in which she has been cast and watching some of her showreels, we have seen her play an adulteress, an alien and a seductress.

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