She’s known for My So-Called Life, Romeo + Juliet and Homeland, but now Claire Danes should go down in history for being the only Hollywood actress to extol the virtues of the legendarily debauched Berlin club, Berghain. Appearing on Ellen, Danes spoke about her time in the city (where they’ve filmed some of the next series of Homeland) and her new “hobby”, techno. “Techno music?” Ellen clarifies for her daytime TV audience.
The seemingly straight-laced Danes goes on to explain, “They have this incredible club called Berghain, which is world-renowned and I got in with the guy who knows the owner, so we got to go in through the back, which is really amazing. But the thing to do is to go on a Sunday. And people there they go all weekend long.” Not only are we shocked to hear that Danes spent fetish weekend there with all the naked ravers, but also that someone had the power to skip the queue at the notoriously tough-to-get-into club. Is this the end of the deadly Berghain door policy myth?
Ellen shows us that despite being politically progressive, she’s still conservative when it comes to clubbing timetables (“but it’s open during the day?”) and nudity (“people are dancing completely naked? That is disgusting!”). When they play some cheesy techno that a pop loving TV researcher must have done a quick Google on, Danes screams, “Nooooo, but that’s not the Berghainian way!” like a possessed convert to the power of the dancefloor. “That’s not good techno music though! That’s what I thought of as techno music. You played bad techno!”
The crowd audibly gasps as Danes tells Ellen that “people go in on Friday, they leave Monday morning, they go straight to work. It’s intense.” To reassure middle America, Danes admits, “I was so scared when I went in. I had acute anxiety because I didn’t know what to expect… but it’s a blast. A great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.”