A film about the rise and fall of Milli Vanilli

At the end of the 1980s, a pop duo based in Germany suddenly took the international charts by storm. Under the name Milli Vanilli, Robert “Rob” Pilatus and Fabrice “Fab” Morvan gained worldwide fame, their songs selling millions of copies. In 1990 they even received a Grammy in the “Best Artist” category – the top US music award. But then came the revelation: Milli Vanilli did not actually sing themselves when performing – Pilatus and Morvan simply danced and lip-synced to pre-recorded vocals. In a new film, director Simon Verhoeven now tells the story of what was probably one of the biggest scandals in music history. “Girl You Know It’s True” is due for release in Germany just before Christmas. The title echoes Milli Vanilli’s biggest hit, which also went high up in the charts in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and numerous European countries.

Frank Farian – the man who discovered and produced Pilatus and Morvan – is played in the film by Matthias Schweighöfer, a long-established international film star. Most recently, he appeared in the successful drama “Oppenheimer”, which tells the story of the physicist and inventor of the atomic bomb Robert Oppenheimer. Farian himself was delighted with Schweighöfer’s performance. “Nobody can look like Frank Farian, but his portrayal of me is superb,” he told “Saarbrücker Zeitung”. However, he also says in the interview that the film is “less than 80 per cent” true. “It’s not the truth as I experienced it.”

In his film, director Verhoeven takes the audience back to the 1980s and 1990s and Milli Vanilli’s “rollercoaster ride”, as he describes their rise and fall. “The story has everything,” he told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. The film fits in well with the present day and age too, according to Verhoeven: “The theme of finding fame at any price is a topical one,” he said at the premiere in Munich. “The film raises a lot of interesting issues relevant to our own times,” he said, also referring to the influencer phenomenon.