Since Michael Schumacher’s 2013 skiing accident in the French Alps, his wife Corinna Schumacher has kept his condition strictly private, and her own public appearances have been counted on one hand.
She has now made another. In Schumacher ’94: The Birth of a Legend, a feature-length Netflix documentary released globally on Friday, October 2, Corinna speaks directly to camera about the year her husband won his first Formula 1 world title with Benetton.
Netflix released the trailer on September 4, and Corinna’s voice is featured in it.
“Not many people know Michael the way I know him,” she says.
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“That was the beginning, the beginning of something great.”
The film is directed by Christin Freitag and produced by LEONINE Documentaries. It runs to more than 100 minutes and pulls in Bernie Ecclestone, Flavio Briatore, former manager Willi Weber and David Coulthard alongside Corinna.
Early years, in her own words
Much of Corinna’s contribution focuses on the couple’s early years and how a young pair from small-town Germany adjusted to sudden global fame.
“Whenever I raised my voice, he would speak more softly,” she says of their marriage.
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She also details how her own family reacted at the start of the relationship.
“My mother was completely against it,” she recalls.
Fan mail and a name that stuck
Corinna also lifts the curtain on the odder side of Formula 1 celebrity in the mid-1990s. Michael, she says, was regularly sent underwear by female admirers, one in particular whose parcels arrived so often that her name became a household joke.
“He received a lot of it. Also from a young girl who always sent underwear along with his mail,” she says.
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“At some point, ‘Come on, Jutta,’ became his standard phrase.”
Music from the period still lands hard, she adds.
“That was our song back then. When I hear it today and I’m in the car, I cry to myself.”
The championship the film revisits
The 1994 season was Michael’s first Formula 1 title, sealed by a single point at the controversial Adelaide finale after a collision with title rival Damon Hill, and framed by the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna at Imola.
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It follows the family’s 2021 Netflix film simply titled Schumacher, in which Corinna also appeared. Michael has not been seen in public since the fall in Méribel in late 2013, and access to him has been limited to a small circle of relatives and close friends.
Schumacher ’94: The Birth of a Legend arrives on Netflix on Friday, October 2.
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