Deluded dictator!
Kate Winslet plays an autocrat who loses her grip on reality and power…
Hollywood star Kate Winslet plays the populist leader whose regime crumbles around her in this six-part political satire from Sky Atlantic.
The story begins in a fictional country in ‘Middle Europe’, where Chancellor Elena Vernham lives in luxury, believing her people love her unconditionally.
Yet when Elena’s palace manager, Agnes (Andrea Riseborough), employs Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) as a servant, the volatile ex-soldier becomes the leader’s unlikely confidant.
‘It’s a twisted love story about two people who should never have fallen in love,’ says Kate. ‘But it’s also a geopolitical satire where, at times, nothing makes sense at all and things that happen are so absurd all you can do is laugh your head off.’
In the first episode, Elena serenades a room full of supporters at a glitzy state event that’s been an annual tradition since she ousted previous Chancellor
Edward Keplinger (Hugh Grant).
Out of touch
‘This is a global leader singing Santa Baby as her Christmas message,’ explains Kate. ‘We decided to lean into the sheer lunacy of it!’ Elena spends hours talking to the corpse of her dead father in the basement and worrying about imaginary spores and moisture levels in her palace.
But as her relationship with
Zubak grows and she continues to reject her ministers to take his advice, her country starts to fracture around her.
‘Elena is a fragile, emotionally disjointed, paranoid loose cannon of a woman,’ says Kate. ‘The scenes with her dead father show what she’d gone through as a child and how much she still exists in that terrible pattern of wanting approval!’