The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Democracy's dead! Are you not entertained?
`The Regime's' creator tells how he mines the absurdity of authoritarianism
Imagine a world where a country’s leader lives a wildly self-indulgent lifestyle and dictates what is to be considered true, and the leader’s followers either cravenly indulge this or blindly believe it all.
No, this isn’t a documentary. HBO’S “The Regime” may have a bland title, but the fictional series, which premieres today, is a wild ride, a dark and absurdist satire of authoritarianism that finds the funny in the sinister and the brutality in the outlandish.
Set in a fictional Central European country, it centers on the chancellor, Elena Vernham (a mesmerizing,
A deeply weird Kate Winslet), Herbert originally was a narrative who rules according to her device for the audience whims and her paranoia. (She fears to enter this world — a simple her dead father’s disapproval, visiting country guy who asks, “What is his glass coffin to pathetically all this?” and “Who are these people? plead her case.) — and he meets everybody,
When she brings in violent, possibly but around Page 15 in the pilot, unhinged army Cpl. Herbert he just faded into the ensemble. Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) as But I was having trouble making an aide, sparks fly. He becomes her Elena emotionally accessible, adviser on everything from his awful and the story felt mainly bureaucratic country diet to foreign policy, and political. Then I realized creating new layers of chaos in the he was interesting and had palace and the country. the idea that he might actually
The show’s creator, Will Tracy, have something to say, and what honed his political comedy chops he says makes her feel very powerful. writing for “The Onion News Network” and “Last Week Tonight So just going back to old precepts With John Oliver” and refined his of how watchable television skills writing about power and works, it became a kind of love wealth (and tantrums) on “Succession” story like Sam and Diane. There’s and his film, “The Menu.” a way in which they make themselves
He spoke recently by video feel for little glimpses like about the central relationship and the best version of themselves, the geopolitics, the laughs and the even though it is an incredibly fears. This interview has been edited nontraditional and toxic love story.
Q A Q
Elena has a ruthlessness Exactly. Keplinger is a representation How did you balance the humor when it comes to holding of the leftist exasperation with everyone’s outlandish This is obviously a political onto power; she will sacrifice everyone — “Why do you people love but often brutal behavior and show, but it also feels like and everything. There are her and not me?” We were being the realism of the geopolitics? you were creating the most toxic obviously real-life parallels, but careful to remember that about the
A
version of the Sam and Diane dynamic how do you make the point without left — he’s certainly the preferable One thing I learned just in from “Cheers.” making it too on the nose? option but he is quite craven and my research is just when you needy and narcissistic in his own think you’ve written something ridiculous specific way. and over the top about an authoritarian leader, you read about real-life figures and think, “Boy, maybe we didn’t push it enough.”
The world of the show is so extreme because the character is so extreme and so powerful and has access to unlimited kinds of material resources — Elena can create her own reality, and then everyone around her has to pretend as though it is reality. To me, that is an inherently funny, absurd, dark situation.
The comedy is ingrained in the subject matter, and the challenge is remembering that there’s real fear and cruelty and pain that comes out of the world that she creates.
We have to remember that she’s a dangerous figure and we owe it to ourselves, especially in the world we live in now, to try to make the geopolitics and the consequences of all that feel real and not like a joke. for length and clarity.
QA
We were interested in making a show that had something to say and felt relevant to our world without feeling like a polemic or didactic in any way. Obviously, humor helps with that. And the characters are not emotionally expressive; they’re very presentational and masked, which helps because they would not get on a soapbox and say what they’re thinking about politics because that would not be in their best interest to do so.
Q
Keplinger, the imprisoned former chancellor, says of Elena that her behavior is born of pain and “you turn their pain to anger and then use it as a cudgel.” But he also says of her, Herbert and their followers that “Broken people love broken people,” which is not so far from Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” perspective.
Q
Do you feel any empathy for Elena’s cabinet members as they accommodate and appease in ways we’ve seen in real life?
A
It’s hard for me to feel that. There’s a story that they tell themselves that they’re doing this for virtuous reasons. But there’s opportunism baked into that feeling of “I’m going to be the steady hand in there” and sometimes what that means is “I can be that in case this guy gets booted.” They all want to be in pole position. It happens until the moment in which it becomes impossible. And then they’ll do anything to protect themselves. They’ll throw anyone or any idea under the bus to survive.
I was also inspired a bit by reading about Hitler’s big four cabinet and how even when the Soviets were just days from the bunker and all was lost, there was still a sense they were kind of still positioning themselves; they wanted Papa H to like them the best.
Q
What did you learn from your days writing for “The Onion News” and “Last Week Tonight”? Obviously, “Succession” feels like a natural bridge from there to here.
A
I think it still stems from “The Onion” in a way. We were writing these insane, impossible comic stories but remembering all throughout, even down to the editorial voice style, that it had to have this veneer of verisimilitude. It had to look, sound and feel real, even if what you’re describing is insanity.