When Olaf Scholz meets the drag queen – this is what the RTL summer party was like

Olaf Scholz recently complained about the media in an interview. Too often, the only thing reported is: “Who acts like what? Who behaves badly? Who looks pretty?” But in politics, “we are not making a new episode of ‘Good Times, Bad Times’,” said the Chancellor. However, if Scholz comes to RTL of his own accord, which is exactly where GZSZ is made, then the question is: Who? What? How? And with whom?

On Thursday evening, the Chancellor attended the summer party on the roof of the RTL capital studio. The teams from RTL News, starCapital and n-tv had invited him and around 300 other guests. Scholz was late and missed the view of Berlin bathed in the glowing sunset, but when he arrived at around 9:30 p.m., the first person he met was Olivia Marei, who played Toni Ahrens in “Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten”. It was a memorable encounter that will be talked about later.

Even up until then, it had already been an extremely varied evening. Inga Leschek, RTL’s program director, welcomed the guests and first had to apologize to RTL CEO Stephan Schmitter, whose train from Cologne to Berlin had been held up due to a bomb threat.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz meets GZSZ star

Leschek took a brief look back at the summer of sport, with matches from the European Football Championship, which were also shown on RTL, and the Olympic Games in France, which brought good ratings to the public broadcasters. In her outlook, she promised the best RTL entertainment for the upcoming rematch of the boxing match between Regina Halmich and Stefan Raab next weekend. Leschek also used the opportunity to warn the politicians present about what she saw as the wrong plans for film funding. Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth heard this with a grim expression, but this soon brightened up again in the subsequent direct conversation with Leschek.

And what about “Who acts like that? Who misbehaves? Who looks pretty?”

Celebrities such as Natascha Ochsenknecht and Kader Loth were among the first guests, but also stayed for a long time. Also present were model and presenter Micaela Schäfer, actress Mariella Ahrens and entertainer Desirée Nick. Who was particularly pretty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Drag queen Olivia Jones was definitely particularly striking, and she later met the Chancellor.

At first, however, the Union dominated politically: CDU leader Friedrich Merz had a lively conversation with Andrea Nahles, the head of the Federal Employment Agency. “It’s nice to see each other again!” said Merz. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst met his colleague Kai Wegner, the Governing Mayor of Berlin. But then the coalition caught up, the parliamentary group leaders of the Greens and FDP, Britta Hasselmann and Christian Dürr, were in a conversation group, as were Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig, Family Minister Lisa Paus and Head of the Chancellery Wolfgang Schmidt. Finance Minister Christian Lindner also wanted to come. Nobody misbehaved, not even Wolfgang Kubicki.

The early autumnal coolness of the evening did not spoil the mood on the roof terrace, especially since people were standing close enough to warm each other up or, if necessary, to argue heatedly. For a brief moment, things even seemed to have gotten too heated when the fire alarm went off in the stairwell of the RTL capital studio – a shrill siren sound, the volume of which provided further material for discussion, while the fire brigade, which had arrived, was able to give the all-clear after a quick inspection of the building.

And then the Chancellor came. A friendly nod here, a quick handshake there – and Olaf Scholz was standing in front of GZSZ star Olivia Marei. She boldly took the Chancellor’s hand and congratulated him on his recent speech in the Bundestag. “I told him that I liked the way he gave Friedrich Merz a piece of his mind on the issue of border closures,” Marei later said.

There were certainly guests that evening who had the exact opposite experience. But Olaf Scholz must have liked it. He certainly sees GZSZ in a completely new light since that evening.