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Both of his parents were involved in the art history field. After graduating from high school in 1976, Willemsen began studying German, philosophy, art history and ethnology. He initially studied in Bonn, but then also went to Florence, Munich and Vienna. His preferred area of research, which also influenced his doctorate, was the work of the writer Robert Musil. Willemsen initially worked in the scientific field. From 1984 to 1986 he was an assistant for literary studies, then in 1986/87 he was a lecturer at the University of Munich. From 1988 to 1990 Willemsen lived in London, where he worked as a freelancer for print media and broadcasting. At the same time, the humanities scholar also began working as a freelance writer and translator. He primarily published art and cultural travel guides, but also studies on social issues and portraits of special people and their fates.
Willemsen entered television in 1991/92, where he initially moderated the interview program "0137" on the pay-TV channel Premiere and interviewed numerous international stars and celebrities. In 1993/94 the talk show "Willemsen - The TV Talk" followed on the same station. As a moderator, Willemsen made a name for himself primarily because of his sensitive conversation style, his spontaneous conversation and his grammatically correct and linguistically sophisticated expression. However, Willemsen became known to the wider German television audience through his popular talk show "Willemsen's Week", which was broadcast on ZDF from 1994 to 1998. It went down in recent television history as an intelligent and intellectual TV talk.
Willemsen then moved to WDR at the beginning of 1999 to present the cultural program "Nachtkultur mit Willemsen", which was broadcast until November 2000. Willemsen also appeared again and again as presenter of the ZDF cultural format "aspekte", alternating with other colleagues. In the 1990s, Willemsen also produced and/or directed several TV productions that were shown as documentaries on ZDF and Arte. The contributions were created as part of his own TV production company, which Willemsen founded under the name "Noa-Noa Fernsehenproduktion GmbH". From 1995 to 1996 he took on a visiting professorship for literary studies at the University of Munich. He also taught at the University of Film and Television in Munich. In 1996 the portrait episode "Willemsen's Contemporaries" was broadcast. In the same year he made his directorial debut with the documentary "Non Stop - A Journey with Michel Petrucciani" on ZDF.
From 1999 to 2001 Willemsen also produced and presented "Willemsen's Music Magazine" for the Second German Television. Willemsen contributed his own project to the EXPO in Hanover in 2000: the video installation "Welcome Home - Artists See Germany" documented the image of Germany by numerous artists in the German Pavilion. He also moderated the "Stage Talk" at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg during the 2000/01 season. From the summer of 2001, Willemsen continued to distinguish himself as a producer and presenter of the interactive AOL program "Talk am Millerntor" and the ZDF portrait series "Gipfeltreffen". In the latter, until the end of 2001, he presented double portraits of two prominent residents for a selected city. After 11 years of commitment to television, Willemsen temporarily withdrew from the TV business at the end of 2001. He then undertook a trip through the Federal Republic that lasted several months, the literary result of which was Willemsen publishing the successful book "Deutschlandreise" in 2002.
In February 2004, Willemsen returned to electronic media as presenter of the "Literature Club" on Swiss television (SF). In the same year, the book "Gute Tage. Encounters with People and Places" marked another highlight in his literary work. The work, which was also presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004, describes the author's encounters with people of our time and around the world, from the Dalai Lama to Harald Schmidt to Madonna. Willemsen was awarded the Golden Cable and the Bavarian Television Prize in 1992 for his "0137" moderation. A year later he received the Adolf Grimme Prize. Since 2010 he has been an honorary professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He also became a member of the PEN Center Germany and the editorial advisory board of the magazine Kulturtausch.
He was awarded the German Audio Book Prize in 2015 for "The High House. A Year in Parliament". In the same year it was announced that Willemsen was suffering from cancer.
Roger Willemsen died on February 7, 2016 in Wentorf, Hamburg.
