Jeremias Amoore Is Skating To Stardom

Zero Chill is a 10-part coming-of-age series and my character Bear Stelzer is the captain of the Ice Hockey Academy, where the series is based. He’s looking after everyone, he’s making sure everyone is getting along in the team – and he finds himself on this journey as well, really starts to accept himself and then love himself and ultimately also embrace everyone around him.

They’re both amazing. It has been such a pleasure and such an honour to work with those two brilliant minds. And Angelo, he’s just such a great leader as well. He just leads by example, but he also has a really beautiful sense of humour. And Tessa, she’s very precise, she knows exactly what she wants and she’s super prepared – she gets incredible results.

Sheffield is a very special and actually quite extraordinarily beautiful town, with the architecture and everything. It’s kind of unique. I’ve never been to a city like that even here in Britain. With the international cast, everyone assumed that Sheffield would be like the rest of Britain because everyone came from different places in the world. Over the shooting period, I felt we all made it our home, that we really settled in with the community and got to know the culture there in Sheffield, so it was quite nice.

It was mainly filmed before and then when the lockdown hit, we had to pause and then carry on when things got eased up a little bit. That was actually quite an adventure: we’re in the middle of shooting and then it was like [clicks fingers], wow, guys, I think we got to stop here because we’re going into lockdown.

We did then continue in lockdown and wrapped everything up so it all went well in the end.

It was an extraordinary journey because I myself didn’t know much about ice skating before the show at all. So for me, it was literally diving into the deep end before the show started with all the training that we did before that, and I give a massive credit to the amazing, amazing, amazing Ron Shudra and Cole Shudra who are the two hockey coaches that really taught me everything that I know. At the beginning, I was slipping and sliding and then they taught me crossovers, backward crossovers, hockey shots, you know, like hockey stops – all of that I learned from them. So I’m very, very grateful for their guidance and expertise along the way.

Well, ultimately, I fell in love with hockey. Also hockey as a sport, I find so fascinating. We went to quite a few hockey games in preparation for the role. Just watching the speed, the momentum, the power of the game is riveting in that sense. So I’m a big, big hockey fan. But ice skating in itself is such a beautiful and graceful sport, so I can identify with that as well. But I’m a big hockey fan – now!

Definitely, I definitely felt that in the sense that I’ve played competitive sport all my life. So that was something that really came in handy for this part and really reawakened that in myself. It was really nice to access that because I’ve played football and claiming a new skill in my journey through the role of Bear Stelzer was great. So the sports side of things was something new, and something very welcome.

Oh, that’s a very good question. So what really grabbed me in the beginning was a play at school. I wrote it myself and it was about my local community in Berlin – people travelling into Berlin and finding their home there and settling into my community. To prepare for the play, I interviewed loads of people in my community and took that to write the play verbatim, basically what they said, I put literally word for word. When I performed that, I was kind of a one man show to the audience, I could see how it would affect people, words that people in my community have spoken, affecting people so powerfully in the audience. And at that moment, I just knew – I felt radiant – I just knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was like, wow, this is beautiful and special.

Adventurous – that’s the best way to describe it because I was very young when I moved here. Straight after school I got a scholarship to come to England and then I got a university place, then got into drama school. So in the first year, I was just finding my feet, settling living away from home for the first time, and settling into an entirely new culture. Germany and England are similar in many ways, but also very different in many ways. So to me, it was just observing all those beautiful differences and understanding what my place in England is. Then from that point onward, it was just incredibly adventurous. I’ve been so grateful and blessed to be given gifts and given the scholarship, then I got into East 15 acting school where I found the love of my life, and found also a lot of roles in East 15 that I could play and really explore my range as an actor. So every single day here in England has been like a new adventure that was beautiful to live in.

Not particularly to be honest. German productions are very unique and have their own feel. They have a cultural stamp that is unique and quite interesting. But also, Germany is very different, especially in the film and television industry. I do find that feeling that there are a lot more opportunities here for me, as a mixed heritage actor, so I’m very grateful that I found this opportunity to stay in England.

It was amazing in the sense that I just felt I could give back. When they approached me for the role, I was like, ‘yeah, let’s do it!’ The campaign itself turned out to be amazing. It was so rewarding to see how the work was perceived by all the people that it was made for. So to be a part of that just made me feel very humbled and happy within myself.

Yes they approached me, and then they asked me to read for the part. Then I think three days later, they were like, ‘let’s do it!’ The turn-around was quite fast as well. I was still in drama school when I shot that. So I think I had to ask to take a day off in drama school just go to that campaign and shoot it.

That’s a very good question as well. I love the range of acting as much as specific genres. I’m a huge fan of riveting deep dramas and roles that have a meaty journey to them, no matter what genre in that sense. So I’m really looking for certain attributes in the roles that I’m getting that I can just bite my teeth into. But at the same time, I’m very open to exploring new territory in that sense, as well as learning new things with every part that I get and every genre that I explore. I’m very much looking forward to diving into all those different genres and just see the details and the things that make every genre what it is, and its specialism in that.

So the next one – I’m shooting it tomorrow, actually – is a comedy. And that one will be – hopefully, let’s see – speaking to the soul, as well as just uplifting the heart a little bit, especially in this time. I think it’s so vital. I can’t speak too much on all of them. But I think what we can expect for sure is just I’ll be having a lot of fun and hopefully, ultimately, people that watch the films will have a lot of fun with me too.

Um, secret talents… You know what I do as a party trick sometimes when people ask me: are you German? And I’m like, yeah, I’m German. They’re like: oh, wow. And then I go back: yeah, I’m German. And they’re like: speak German to me. And I go: okay. And I start rapping to them and they go: whoa!

[Jeremias raps in German.]

You’re like: I didn’t understand a word of that [grins].

It’s been revealed!