‘The Romanoffs’: Eight tales of Russian ‘royalty’
Tens of thousands of people believe they are descendants of a Russian royal family executed by Bolsheviks in 1918. “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner chronicles a handful of those would-be heirs in Amazon’s “The Romanoffs.”
“The Romanoffs,” spelled differently from the original Romanovs to suggest the unreliability of many lineage claims, spreads across three continents and seven countries in eight visually and musically sumptuous films that last up to 90 minutes, each with a different cast, storyline and tone. The first two episodes are streaming now; the others will be released weekly, on Fridays.
Already streaming: “The Violet Hour,” a tale of aging, immigration, inheritance and a Faberge egg set in a grand but fading Paris apartment, and “The Royal We,” which focuses on a bored American couple and the allure and risk of exciting temptations.
Weiner, the series’ creator, executive producer, writer and director, describes “Violet Hour” as a fairy tale, “Royal We” as a noir-ish dark comedy and “House of Special Purpose” (available Oct. 19), which features “Mad Men” star Christina Hendricks as a movie star terrorized by a bizarre director, as a horror story.
But he sees common ground.
“I loved that (descendants) could be all over the world and had this extremely autocratic, deeply unsympathetic background as monarchs. And yet monarchy has so much cachet in our culture,” he says. “I was interested in these people who had this shared past, or perceived shared past, as connective tissue to tell a bunch of different stories about identity.”
Kerry Bishe (”Halt and Catch Fire”), who plays Shelly, wife of Michael Romanoff (Corey Stoll), in “Royal We,” says “The Romanoffs” speaks to the idea of American exceptionalism. “It’s very much about the Russian royal family, but it talks to the American people in our time. These people are hungry for their sense of history, meaning and purpose,” she says.
At the start of “Royal We,” the couple are in therapy: Michael, who works at an academic testing center in a Middle American city full of strip malls and SuperCuts, is bored and depressed, feelings that can be especially burdensome to those who feel worthy of a greater inheritance, Stoll says.
“I think there’s a general sense of unfulfilled potential, that people are living lives that are pale shadows of what they should be living,” he says. (His wife, actress Nadia Bowers, is a Romanov descendant, but it’s “definitely not an important part of her ego.”)
Hendricks’ episode takes place on a film set in Austria, and “Violet Hour,” in which American nephew Greg (Aaron Eckhart) hopes to inherit an apartment from his racist, anti-Muslim aunt (Marthe Keller), sends viewers to the streets of Paris.
Bishe says she was eager to work with Weiner, an “eccentric brilliant guy,” and praises his writing and sense of humor. “He writes really excellent women (characters). They’re complex and fallible, and I think that’s pretty rare.”
Although Weiner has no plans to revisit “Mad Men” – “Not for me. I think it’s a completed work” – “The Romanoffs” has given him a chance to collaborate again with many of his former colleagues, including stars John Slattery, Cara Buono, Jay R. Ferguson and Hendricks.
“It’s a dream. I would work with those people at any time. Everybody from ‘Mad Men’ who was available was invited,” he says, explaining one downside of that show’s success. “Unfortunately, they’re usually working already.”