In February 2012, Clarissa von Anstetten, who now owns fifty percent of Ligne Clarisse Lahnstein, brings Rebecca back to town to impress Ludwig on his birthday and stabilize her place in the Lahnstein empire. Rebecca forgives her father and shows her family that she has grown up a lot while being in New York and now knows what she wants. As Clarissa promised her a position at Ligne CL, Rebecca demands that she gets her own fashion line or she would return to New York after all. Tanja isn't happy about Rebecca's return at all. After Tanja blackmails Clarissa of her shares of the company, Rebecca makes it known that she won't answer to Tanja. As Elisabeth is named co-CEO of Ligne CL, Rebecca goes strictly to her. Right after her return, she gets into a quarrel with her sister-in-law Marlene, the ex wife of her brother Hagen and girlfriend of her brother Tristan. But the fight ends quickly when Marlene reveals a painful secret to Rebecca. Rebecca decides to support Marlene, and they become friends. And then happens what you can watch in this playlist ;-)
The VL production did recast the character, Rebecca was originally played by the actress Jasmin Lord - she had a brief love affair with the "No Limits" waitress Miriam - and is now portrayed by Tatjana Kästel.
Nina & Erika were the lesbian pioneers (1998-1999) on the German TV screen, and it's impossible to tell the story of this popular couple without telling you the history of the storyline and its meaning for the German lesbians at that time. What happened:
Erika, succesfull holder of a publicity agency and mother of two adolecent girls was together with her longtime boyfriend Arno for ages. She needed a storyline, which meant in a daily soap: a little love affair to stir up her relationship to Arno. Actress Raphaela Dell (Erika) suggested that she could have a female lover for a change and, surprisingly enough, TPTB agreed. So the casting started: Raphaela Dell had to kiss a lot of women, and the one with the best kissing chemistry got the job (maybe they thought the new actor wouldn't need to do much more than kissing anyway...)
However, when Freya Trampert (Nina) and Raphaela Dell (Erika) appeared on screen together the situation got quickly out of hand: Nobody had expected that the relationship would come as a real bombshell: The actresses received thousands of letters from lesbian fans who begged them to continue the story, and on the other hand concerned parents protested strongly against the lesbian couple. Raphaela Dell and Freya Trampert understood very well that their characters had suddenly become role models and their storyline a political issue. They encouraged the lesbian fans to live their love and did their best to show a lesbian relationship as beautiful as possible (in a daily soap). So the originally intended little love affair turned into true love and Erika left her longtime-lover Arno to be with Nina.
Unfortunately, the ARD (German TV channel) got cold feed and decided to backpaddle: The tender love scenes almost disappeared from the screen, and suddenly Erika was again attracted to her ex-boyfriend Arno. She spent a night with him and started to lie to Nina about it. She got tangled up in all her lies and eventually her relationship to Nina broke apart. Unexpectedly, Raphaela Dell's contract ended and Erika decided to move to London leaving a devastated Nina behind in Düsseldorf.
The unexpected, bad development of the storyline caused a huge wave of protest, supported by an angry "open letter" that Raphaela Dell published in a well-known magazin (EMMA). Maybe the huge protest was the reason why TPTB of the show "Verbotene Liebe" ("Forbidden Love") got the two actresses back on screen five years later for only one scene: a happy ending of Erika and Nina in Greece.