Live From Someone Else’s Living Room

Hannah was a columnist here for a while, and when she turned up on a German flatmate reality show—the kind where strangers audition to share your bathroom—there was something genuinely funny about it. She was searching for someone to fill a room in her Munich apartment, and the whole messy process was being filmed for daytime television. The episode kept getting bumped and eventually landed on November 11th, which happened to be the same night a film I was involved in aired on a different channel. Two screens, one night, neither of us expecting the coincidence.

There’s a particular strangeness to watching someone you actually know appear on television. They’re right there but also not—processed into a format designed to generate friction and resolution within forty-five minutes. Hannah seemed mostly like herself. The flat looked good.