FAMILY BUSINESS
AMC’s ‘McMafia’ explores the workings of a closely held criminal enterprise
As anyone who has watched mobster films knows, “The Godfather” films — the first two, anyway — are the gold standard. AMC’s new series “McMafia” will bring those Francis Ford Coppola films to mind. The show stars James Norton as the son of an exiled Russian-Jewish mafia boss who lives in London with the Anglicized name Alex Godman.
“Alex reminds me of Michael Corleone,” says Juliet Rylance, who plays Alex’s fiancée, Rebecca, “in that you wonder if he’s cut out for this world that he’s being thrown into.”
The series’ creators, Hossein Amini (“Our Kind of Traitor”) and James Watkins (“The Woman in Black”), freely acknowledge they couldn’t help but be influenced by “The Godfather.”
“What it did so brilliantly — as well as ‘Goodfellas’ — was find the human side in them,” says Amini. “Because 98 percent of the time they’re not being gangsters.” Adds Watkins, “We want to have the richness and tapestry of ‘The Godfather’ but also make it intimate. A lot of action in crime dramas is heightened, and we aimed to be as authentic as we could be in that.”
Amini notes an important difference between Michael Corleone and Alex Godman. “It was very important for our character never to die inside. He’s fighting inside the whole time.”
While “McMafia” may draw upon the world of mobsters, it is set on a very different landscape. The series is inspired by Misha Glenny’s nonfiction book about organized crime and corporate corruption.
“The book is really a factual thesis about how the world’s economy has become globalized and how mobsters have started to cooperate and compete as corporations,” says Amini. “The illegitimate has entered the legitimate world, and that line has become blurred.”
Watkins says Glenny helped them get in touch with “experts and law enforcement officers as well as crooks to help us in their research.”
The pair then spent a month coming up with a fictional concept that would incorporate all the elements mentioned in the book — such as Mideast money launderers, cybercriminals in India, black marketeers in Croatia, druglords in South America, and human traffickers, all of which became aspects of the series.
As for the root of the story, Watkins and Amini were inspired by something in their own backyard — “a Russian oligarch who was exiled in London by (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and couldn’t go back,” says Amini.
But Watkins says they didn’t want to center just on the Russian mob. “We wanted to look at the whole globalized nature of illicit capitalism and the shifting alliances.”
As an investment banker managing a large fund, Alex is already on the legit side, a place Michael could never reach in “The Godfather” movies.
Alex has all the trappings of wealth and privilege. Rebecca has an even more high-powered job than his, as the top aide to one of the world’s wealthiest men who has turned philanthropist — although his fortune may have been built illegally.
Alex knows the truth about his own family business but has tried to keep away from it, cultivating an English façade even though he grew up in Moscow. His father, Dimitri, is suicidal and often drunk. But when Alex’s investment fund has troubles, his uncle persuades him to talk to “an investor” and he suddenly finds his life bleeding into the illegitimate world.
Alex is introduced to an Israeli shipping magnate, Semiyon Kleiman (brilliantly played by David Strathairn). As a banker, Alex immediately smells money laundering in Kleiman’s massive offer to invest in his fund.
“Alex wants to do the right thing. He’s standing by his life, his girlfriend, his family, but he’s tempted,” says Norton. “We see it all the time in every walk of life, but particularly in the world of finance and banking: men and women who are offered a pact with the devil. And Alex is offered that.”
The showrunners say it was crucial to have someone like Norton — who has been rumored to be in the mix to be the next James Bond — play Alex.
“We’ve seen him in ‘Happy Valley,’ where he plays a very nasty character, and then we’ve seen him in ‘Grantchester,’ where he is a handsome, charming clergyman,” says Watkins. “So this is sort of the collision of those two characters.”
One story Amini and Watkins took directly from the book was in the trafficking of a Russian woman, who was taken in Egypt and delivered to Israel, to be a sex slave.
“I wasn’t aware of the depth of the trafficking of women, which I found really shocking,” says Rylance, whose stepfather is Oscar winner Mark Rylance.
Watkins, who directed all the episodes, says they wanted to “create a riproaring tense thriller about this journey our character goes on, but it’s also very much about the world we live in now.”
The eight-episode series was shot over some 150 days, included ritzy settings like Versailles and used an array of international actors.
“We shot it like a film,” says Watkins. “It was very economical, but also I think, creatively, the fact that we were all there throughout the process was very helpful.”
Juliet Rylance, who is known in America for her role on Cinemax’s series “The Knick,” says having one director for the entire series “really helped us really focus in.”
Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” was another touchstone film for the showrunners. “That was a three-hour movie,” Watkins says, “but with eight hours of television, it is really fascinating to discover what you can create in the character’s journey.”
“McMafia” has recently finished playing in Britain, and there probably won’t be any word on a second season until after it plays here.
Even if there is a Season 2, it wouldn’t necessarily be the same characters. But the showrunners see that there are plenty of opportunities for stories.
“We have yet to dip our toes in the world of American corruption, which seems a ripe arena,” Watkins says.