Flula Borg
Flula Borg is an actor, born 1982.
Flula Borg is a German comedian and musician from Erlangen who built an audience online and converted it into a screen career, largely by being the funniest available version of a German man taking English idioms literally. It is a narrow premise. He has extracted a remarkable amount from it.
Pitch Perfect 2 was the breakthrough, as Pieter, one half of a German a cappella act, delivering insults with total sincerity and no apparent idea why anyone would take offence. The joke works because Borg never signals it, and that same instinct is what James Gunn saw. Gunn has now used him three times: as Javelin in The Suicide Squad, as a bartender in the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, and as a voice in Creature Commandos.
Javelin is the best thing he has done and it is barely a comic performance. He is a man with a spear who believes completely in what he is doing, in a film that finds this ridiculous and then, quite deliberately, stops finding it ridiculous. Borg plays the sincerity straight the whole way through, which is the only reason the shift lands.
Everything else is voice work and one-scene comedy: a unicorn in Luck, a troll in Trolls World Tour, a DJ in Chip 'n Dale named after a Bavarian town a few miles from his own, guest turns on Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Good Place and The Rookie. The genuine outlier is Bonhoeffer in 2024, where he plays Hans Dohnanyi, a real member of the German resistance, entirely straight. Nothing in the comedy prepares you for it, and he is fine.
Movies (20)
- The Suicide Squad (2021)
- Luck (2022)
- Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
- Pitch Perfect 2 (2015)
- Ferdinand (2017)
- Trolls World Tour (2020)
- The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022)
- Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip (2015)
- Good Burger 2 (2023)
- Ron's Gone Wrong (2021)
- My Spy The Eternal City (2024)
- King Tweety (2022)
- Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)
- Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin (2024)
- Champagne Problems (2025)
- Bad Therapy (2020)
- Killing Hasselhoff (2017)
- The Boss Baby: Get That Baby! (2020)
- Dirty 30 (2016)
- She's in Portland (2020)
TV (15)
- The Rookie (2018)
- Teen Titans Go! (2013)
- @midnight with Chris Hardwick (2013)
- Rock, Paper, Scissors (2024)
- Creature Commandos (2024)
- Chelsea (2016)
- Hamster & Gretel (2022)
- The Boss Baby: Back in Business (2018)
- The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show (2015)
- Centaurworld (2021)
- StuGo (2025)
- Captain Fall (2023)
- Win or Lose (2025)
- Inventions That Changed History (2022)
- Grave Conversations (2024)
Where to start with Flula Borg
The Suicide Squad is the place to start even though the part is small, because it is the only time anyone has used him for something other than the accent. Javelin is played with complete conviction and the film rewards him for it.
Pitch Perfect 2 is the popular answer and still the funniest he has been. Pieter's insults land as helpful observations, which is a far better joke than the one written on the page.
The animation is where the volume sits. Luck gives him a unicorn with an unreasonable amount of personality, Trolls World Tour and Ralph Breaks the Internet are the mainstream picks, and King Tweety is strictly for people who will watch anything with Looney Tunes in it.
Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin is the one to see if you want to know whether he can do anything else. He can. The film is not good enough to prove it properly.