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# The Filmoiselle Interview: Tiana Pongs, Actress and Producer, on Women, Power, and Starting Over
- URL: https://www.filmoiselle.com/the-filmoiselle-interview-tiana-pongs/
- Published: 2026-09-18T15:12:31.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-18T15:12:31.000Z
- Description: The Filmoiselle Interview. Actress and producer Tiana Pongs spent two decades as one of Germany's leading models before walking away deliberately. This is a woman who knows exactly what she brings into a room.
- Author: Daria Ershova
- Tags: The Filmoiselle Interview

[Tiana Pongs](https://www.tianapongs.com/home?ref=filmoiselle.com) is an actress, producer, and one of Germany's most recognisable commercial faces. German-born and Los Angeles-based, she has spent 25 years moving between commercial modeling, German television, and now American film – most recently wrapping ['Homewrecker'](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt42841752/?ref%5F=nm%5Fflmg%5Fjob%5F1%5Faccord%5F1%5Funrel%5Fcdt%5Ft%5F1&ref=filmoiselle.com) in Paris alongside Simu Liu and Allison Williams. She produced her first film with Abigail Breslin, sits on the [Telly Awards](https://www.tellyawards.com/?ref=filmoiselle.com) as a judge and council member, serves as a World Vision Germany Ambassador, and runs EA Media, her production company bridging Europe and America through film, content, and strategy. She is also, as you are about to find out, someone who says exactly what she thinks. We are big fans of that around here.

> Those roles were written for an American audience, which is exactly the problem. These films are watched everywhere. The rest of the world has spent decades watching itself reduced to a supporting stereotype in someone else's story. That is finally starting to shift, and I want to be part of pushing it further.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/64/c7/64c7f8e7-273c-4606-ad9c-8a12269b9b66/content/images/2026/09/Homewrecker-Set-Photo-from-Soma-Creative.JPG)

Tiana Pongs on the set of Homewrecker, Paris. Photo courtesy of Tiana Pongs.

## **You've built a 25-year career across modeling, acting, and producing. Does it feel like one continuous path or three separate chapters?**

*Tiana:* Honestly, it feels like two, not three. There was modeling, and then there was everything after. Acting and producing belong together for me. On the projects I produce, I am usually also in front of the camera, as an actress or as a host, so it is not two separate jobs.

Even the first chapter was less separate than it looks from the outside. As a model, I did a lot of TV commercials and music videos, not just print, and I always preferred that work. A photoshoot gets repetitive very quickly. The moment there is movement, a scene, and something to play, it becomes interesting. But acting is a different profession entirely, especially in German television. Moving into it meant starting at the bottom of a completely different structure, with different rules and different people, and no guarantee that any of it would work. That is what made leaving modeling so hard. I had been doing it since I was sixteen. It was my identity, my income, the entire structure of my life.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/64/c7/64c7f8e7-273c-4606-ad9c-8a12269b9b66/content/images/2026/09/Tianapongs-from-Dasha.jpg)

Behind the scenes on set. Photo courtesy of Tiana Pongs.

## **Over a thousand commercial productions is a number most people cannot even picture. What did those years teach you that still serves you now?**

*Tiana:* A few things, and one of them sounds strange when I say it out loud. If a job is meant for you, you get it. The less desperately you want it, the more likely you are to book it. I know how that sounds. But after enough castings, you see the pattern.

The second surprised me completely. I always assumed that once you worked for one brand, their competitors would not touch you. It turned out to be exactly the opposite. I booked my first Wella campaign in Paris in 2002, and after that came Schwarzkopf, a worldwide Paul Mitchell campaign, and more Wella campaigns over the following years. Once you are in, other people trust you because someone else already did. Breaking in is the hard part, but after that, it gets considerably easier.

The third is the least glamorous and the most useful. There are the shoots and the videos, and then there is the entire business side: taxes, agents, contracts, buyouts, negotiating your own rates. Nobody teaches you any of that. There is no school for it. You learn it by getting it wrong, and getting it wrong is expensive.

## **You left modeling deliberately – you've described quitting smoking knowing it would change your body and give you the reason you needed to stop. That is a very specific kind of courage.**

*Tiana:* By my early thirties I knew it was over. The bookings had not stopped. Nothing external had gone wrong. Something inside me had simply shifted. It is that subtle, undeniable feeling you get when you have outgrown a life but have not yet found the courage to admit it.

I needed a definitive reason to say no. By the end, I was smoking nearly two packs a day, substituting food with nicotine to stay a size zero for the camera. So I quit. Deliberately, knowing it would make me gain weight, because that would give me the excuse I needed to stop taking fashion jobs. My body took it further than I planned. I started getting physically sick before every shoot. That was the final signal. I celebrated that last cigarette like a ritual. I knew exactly what I was letting go of, and I did it anyway.

I was completely out and had no idea what came next. I felt like an eighteen-year-old again, staring into the void. So I looked up acting classes in Santa Monica and booked a flight. I fell in love with the city on that trip. Standing alone at the beach, looking around, I just knew. In 2021, I packed my suitcases, secured a work visa, and moved to Los Angeles.

## **Tell us about EA Media and the gap you saw.**

*Tiana:* European talent and European stories are still underestimated in the American market. I have felt that from the talent side for years, and at some point I wanted to try doing something about it rather than only waiting to be cast in someone else's version of it.

I should say one thing clearly: this is not a complaint about Hollywood. I chose Los Angeles deliberately. I left Europe because I wanted to be here, and I love working in this industry. That is exactly why I can see where it is still stuck.

Old Hollywood built an entire vocabulary of shortcuts: the American is the hero, the German is the Nazi, the Russian is the villain, the Mexican is the fool, the Arab is the terrorist. Those roles were written for an American audience, which is exactly the problem. These films are watched everywhere. The rest of the world has spent decades watching itself reduced to a supporting stereotype in someone else's story. That is finally starting to shift, and I want to be part of pushing it further.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/64/c7/64c7f8e7-273c-4606-ad9c-8a12269b9b66/content/images/2026/09/Jafar-Jackson-Tiana-Pongs-1.jpeg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/64/c7/64c7f8e7-273c-4606-ad9c-8a12269b9b66/content/images/2026/09/Michael-Premiere-Los-Angeles.jpeg)

**Tiana Pongs with Jafar Jackson at the Michael premiere, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Tiana Pongs.*

## **You work across both industries. What are the biggest differences you've noticed, especially for women?**

*Tiana:* The biggest difference is how the two countries approach the gender gap at all. Germany tries to solve it with policy; on the other hand, America does not. Germany has public film funding, quotas, and initiatives built specifically to close the gap. And yet women still direct only about a fifth of German films, and the funding money largely does not follow them. America has no quota system at all, only market forces and relationships, and the share of women in key roles on the biggest films has actually gone slightly backwards in recent years. So both systems are stalling, just in different ways. People tend to assume Europe has solved something America has not. Worth saying: that it has not.

> And yet women still direct only about a fifth of German films, and the funding money largely does not follow them. America has no quota system at all, only market forces and relationships, and the share of women in key roles on the biggest films has actually gone slightly backwards in recent years.

## **You've spent more than two decades in industries that are famously difficult for women. What has genuinely changed, and what has stubbornly stayed the same?**

*Tiana:* MeToo changed something concrete, and I think people underestimate how concrete it was. When I started at sixteen, there was no vocabulary for any of it. Things happened, and it was too frightening to say anything, and there was nobody to go to anyway. Now there are intimacy coordinators on set. There are formal protections and reporting structures. On Homewrecker, which I shot in France with Xavier Gens as an American-French co-production, every single person had to complete harassment prevention training before we started. That would have been unimaginable when I began.

What has not changed is that a woman's professional relevance is still measured against her age in a way that men's is not.

## **As a Telly Awards judge, what do you look for?**

*Tiana:* It has to touch me somehow. Visually, or through the story, or through the music. I want to feel something. That sounds simple, but it is the whole thing. Technically competent work that leaves me cold does not stay with me, and I have watched a lot of it.

What I do not care about at all is budget. Some of the strongest work I have judged was made for very little money by people who knew exactly what they were making and why. Some of the most expensive submissions are beautifully shot and completely empty.

## **Now that you're producing, do you feel a responsibility to open doors for other women?**

*Tiana:* Absolutely yes, and it shapes the work directly. I look for female directors. I look for strong female characters rather than women written as someone's wife or someone's motivation. In 2022, I produced a project with Abigail Breslin about abortion rights, called 'Magda'. That is not a subject I would have found my way to if I were only taking the roles offered to me. So the answer is not just that I feel a responsibility. It genuinely changes what I say yes to.

## **One piece of advice for a young woman starting out today.**

*Confidence.*

*Tiana:* This industry will tell you what is wrong with you before it tells you anything else. Too tall, too short, too old, too much, not enough. If your sense of your own worth depends on what a casting director thinks of you on a given afternoon, this job will take you apart. The women I have watched last are not the ones who were most beautiful or most talented. They are the ones who walked into a room already knowing what they brought, and could walk out of it without the answer changing anything.

*Tiana Pongs is also the author of* [*Ready for Your Close-Up: What Every New Model Should Know*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G3JHDR3L?ref=filmoiselle.com)*, a practical guide to the business side of the industry she spent two decades wishing had existed when she was sixteen.*