By then, Fernandes had been married for nearly a decade. She and Ulman met in 2010, when he was 34 — already a well-established director and actor — and she was 28, a presenter on a popular music video channel in Germany. That spring, Fernandes had posed seductively on the cover of the men’s fashion magazine FHM Germany, which named her the sexiest woman in the world. Soon afterward, Ulmen cast her as his wife on a show he was making called “The Snobs,” which was set over 18 holes on a golf course, with Ulmen playing an insufferable, self-made businessman.
Fame had made Fernandes skittish about dating, especially as she felt people underestimated her because of her public image. The tabloids often characterized her as a “party girl,” because she was frequently photographed at celebrity events; but Fernandes considered herself something of a nerd. She was driven, even a workaholic, an obsessive researcher with a critical eye. The network she worked for, she recalls, wanted her to be bubbly, ask inane questions and keep things light, which wasn’t really her sensibility: She had an irreverent edge, and would sometimes go off script on live shows, which could get her into trouble with producers, even if the audience seemed to appreciate it.
Fernandes and Ulmen hit it off on the set of “The Snobs.” On their first date, Fernandes recalls, they talked for nine straight hours. They both started out on camera early, as teenagers, and they found in each other something of a haven. “We could have really deep conversations,” Fernandes told me. Neither had much interest in Germany’s celebrity-circuit nightlife; they preferred to stay home, talking late into the night about the people in their lives, their gripes with the industry or what made a scene funny. “It looks like German television now has a new dream couple,” an entertainment magazine wrote after they went public with their relationship.
Fernandes successfully transitioned out of her younger starlet image, becoming a pundit and journalist, while still acting; Ulmen’s work was widely lauded in the press, even if it sometimes courted controversy. He occasionally appeared in sketches, interviewed celebrities or gave interviews in character as his comic alter ego, a boorish, offensive figure named Uwe Wöllner who was prone to crude sexism. As Wöllner, he hosted a hidden-camera show called “Who Wants to [Expletive] My Girlfriend,” in which women in relationships competed to see which of them could most easily lure other men into going on a date or even having sex (promised but never delivered). Ulmen characterized the work as feminist satire that skewered male sexual desperation, but he sometimes joked about identifying with Wöllner’s adolescent impulses. “I, too, have wondered if it isn’t actually the case that I’m really Uwe Wöllner,” he told a magazine in 2013, “and only pretend to be Christian Ulmen the rest of the time.”
Fernandes also sometimes felt confused by the two versions of Ulmen — the one who presented himself to the public as a feminist and the one she says she saw in her own home. After announcing that he was taking a year of parental leave, Ulmen resumed working. In later years, Ulmen sometimes parented solo while she was on location, but she says he was often resentful and jealous. Seemingly small irritations were enough to provoke his anger, such as the placement of a package in the hallway or her mentioning something in the press that he considered private, like the kind of cookie they preferred. (Ulmen’s lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)