Jonas Nay

Jonas Nay was born on 20 September 1990 in Lübeck, Schleswig‑Holstein, just days before German reunification, and grew up in a household that prized both sport and music. An active child, he spent his school years at the prestigious Johanneum zu Lübeck, a Gymnasium with a strong musical focus, where he performed in the school band and cultivated his early love of performance. In 2004 he answered a newspaper ad for actors and landed his first television role in the NDR children’s series Vier gegen Z, appearing under the stage name Jonas Friedebom. After modest appearances on ARD and ZDF dramas, he achieved critical acclaim with the TV film Homevideo (2011), a harrowing story of teenage bullying that earned him a German Television Award and a Grimme‑Preis. His commitment to socially relevant projects continued with a notable turn as investigator Cenk Batu in Tatort (2012) and a breakout performance as the son of a schizophrenic patient in Hirngespinster (2014), for which he received the Bavarian Film Award for Best Newcomer. Alongside his acting, Nay co‑founded the band Concerted while still in school, later evolving into the group Northern Lights, and now plays keyboards and provides vocals for the band Pudeldame.

Nay’s international profile skyrocketed when he was cast as Martin Rauch, an East German spy, in the critically lauded Cold‑War series Deutschland 83 (2015), the first German‑language series to air on American television. He reprised the role in its sequels Deutschland 86 (2018) and Deutschland 89 (2020), earning widespread media attention across the UK and US and securing a German Television Award for Best Actor. Since then, his filmography has expanded to include Persian Lessons (2020), A Thousand Lines (2022), and the forthcoming The Tattooist of Auschwitz (2024). Continually balancing acting with music, Nay remains a versatile figure in contemporary German entertainment.