Extra special
As Vienna Blood returns for a fourth season, DQ writer James Rampton considers the life of a supporting artist after making his screen debut in the return of this historical crime drama.
As I stare into the mirror, I am absolutely amazed. Looking back at me is not the usual dishevelled journalist from 2024, but a rather well-dressed, dare I say suave Viennese doctor from 1909.
Before my very eyes, I have metamorphosed into a pre-First World War Austrian hospital physician.
No, this is not some bizarre and unsettling nightmare. I am in fact fulfilling a lifelong desire to appear as an extra. All my childhood dreams of TV stardom are suddenly coming to fruition. Next stop, the Baftas.
I am working as a supporting artist on the fourth season of BBC Two’s well-regarded period crime drama Vienna Blood, playing the doubtless pivotal role of a – admittedly silent – doctor.
In my single and, I convince myself, surely very significant scene, I am standing in the draughty corridor of a deserted and decidedly unloved hospital on the outskirts of the Austrian capital. I am conversing with a nurse, who is also silent, while further down the corridor a group of people speak to another doctor. Rather annoyingly, he actually has some lines.
There is no need to dwell on the non-speaking aspects of my role, however. Merely inhaling the same air as the actual stars of the series is a thrill in itself.
As I hear the director shout that immortal TV-set word, “Action!” my heart skips a beat. At that moment, I am right at the nerve centre of a major TV production, and it’s a massive adrenaline hit. I’m not Malcolm Tucker, but I’m still in the thick of it.
Produced by Endor Productions and MR Film for ORF (Austria) and ZDF (Germany), and licensed to more than 100 territories, including the UK (BBC), US (PBS), France (France 3) and Spain (Movistar), the series plays out in Vienna in 1909 against the backdrop of the rise of Sigmund Freud and the advent of psychiatry.
The drama is shot in Vienna. It had to be, didn’t it? It’s not called Pinewood Blood. Scripted by Steve Thompson (Sherlock) from Frank Tallis’s bestselling Liebermann novels, it charts the birth of criminal profiling as Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt (Tatort’s Juergen Maurer) teams up with Max Liebermann (Matthew Beard, Avenue 5), a gifted young student of Freud. Liebermann draws on his groundbreaking studies to help Reinhardt solve apparently unsolvable cases.
Season four, which is told over two episodes and debuted on BBC Two last night, begins as the double murder of an arms dealer in police custody and a senior public official has shaken Vienna to its core. Liebermann has only just returned from a lecture tour when Rheinhardt asks for help in what could be the most dangerous case of their career as they discover a conspiracy that leads to the heart of government.
After many takes, during which I have somehow managed not to trip over any equipment and ruin the shot, an assistant director tells me, “Well done!” The stars of the show chip in that I am clearly a natural.
They are obviously joking, but the job of a background artist is much more difficult than it appears. You are obliged to stay in the moment and remain in character while not distracting the stars or making funny faces at the camera. It demands a very high level of concentration.
And, despite the exhilaration of briefly being at the beating heart of the production, the life of an extra is not all glitz and glamour. For a start, the 45-minute make-up routine – which begins before 7am – bears all the hallmarks of something dreamt up by Torquemada. The chief instrument of torture is a false moustache.
Before applying it, the enormously skilled make-up artist shaves my upper lip and then wipes it with 90% alcohol. It’s never a good idea to imbibe alcohol before breakfast, and I’m feeling distinctly woozy from unwittingly sniffing the fumes. Luckily, my mental equilibrium has returned by the time I am finally required on set 14 hours later.
As my lengthy wait shows, supporting artists also need immense reservoirs of patience. Never mind reading a novel, you have enough time to write one while awaiting your call-up as an extra. It’s like appearing in an extended, behind-the-scenes version of Waiting for Godot.
This experience of being pumped-up for hours on end awaiting a spine-tingling moment that may never happen is well captured in Ricky Gervais comedy series Extras.
Peter Cengeri, who moonlights as a background artist from his daily occupation as a PhD physics student, remembers his worst ever job. “One November, I sat in a freezing cold, wet and dark cellar all day long waiting to be called up for filming.
“Every hour an assistant director told us, ‘You’ll be next’, but we were never used. They sent us home without shooting a single second. That was horrible. I do this job not for the money, but to be in films!”
As a group, however, the extras seen admirably unaffected by these miserable experiences – for which they are paid on average £90 a day in the UK. Nothing, it appears, can dampen their enthusiasm for their job. They are very upbeat and really keen to recount anecdotes about their work. They tell me, for instance, about a famous Austrian drinking game. One local supporting artist appears in so many different shows that if you down a shot every time you see him, you will be completely hammered within half an hour.
“One day, I was asked by an agency to be an extra and I really didn’t want to do it,” Cengeri says. “I had a big pimple and felt so ugly. I thought, ‘That will be on film and stay in the world’s memory forever.’”
However, he continues, “I was so glad I went. I had an amazing day. When I got on set, I was asked to play the main character’s assistant. I had to follow him around. I was on film four or five times. I even got to say a sentence – ‘Here are the papers.’ I went to see the film in the cinema – there were only two other people there. But my name was in the credits. That was my moment of fame.”
Unfortunately, “they dubbed my line because they didn’t like my voice. But I don’t mind. That was my greatest achievement. I might never reach such a career peak again!”
When I get to watch the final cut of my very fleeting appearance as a doctor – during which all viewers will see of me is a flash of my bald patch – I am forced to diagnose that my high-flying TV career may have crashed before it has even taken off.
For all that, I wouldn’t change a second of a thoroughly enjoyable day. The camaraderie of the extras and the sheer elation I experience when I am finally on camera are worth crossing several borders for. It is very easy to see why supporting artists describe their work as an addiction.
Cengeri smiles. “I see the same addicted people every time I turn up for work as an extra. Why do we keep coming? Some people only go to a carnival once a year. But we go to a carnival every single day.”
tagged in: BBC Two, Endor Productions, MR Film, ORF, Vienna Blood, ZDF