The cast and crew of The Regime descended upon the Museum of Natural History in New York City on Monday to celebrate the premiere of their new HBO project.
The political satire series follows Kate Winslet‘s Chancellor Elena Vernham as she becomes increasingly paranoid and unstable, turning to volatile soldier Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) as her unlikely confidant.
Will Tracy, who worked as a writer on Succession, serves as the showrunner for The Regime and explained his elevator pitch for the series was “Downton Abbey but in an autocrat’s palace instead of an English manor house.”
Related Stories
“It’s an imaginary country, but it hopefully feels as though it’s taking place within a geopolitical reality that we would recognize, and that it says something about how foreign policy works and how these regimes thrive and operate,” Tracy told The Hollywood Reporter of the tone. “At the same time, once you’re within that palace and within that kind of dreamy love story between these two characters, yeah, there might be a strange kind of middle European kind of whiff of a Habsburg kind of fairy tale to it.”
Director Jessica Hobbs, who also helmed episodes of The Crown, echoed Tracy’s sentiment about how the show, in addition to shining a light on foreign policy, also tells a love story “about two people who never should have met.”
Through the lens of satire, Tracy explained that the series details the intersection between the personal and political, and how many authoritarian leaders have one thing in common. “They want to accrue more power to show them, the people who laughed at me. But the more power they accrue, the more ridiculous, so the problem compounds,” he said.
Directors Hobbs and Stephen Frears, who also serve as executive producers on the series, agree that The Regime details how dictatorship and authoritarianism are often “ridiculous.”
“I’ve never lived under a dictator, mercifully, but I’m sure we’ll find out in the next few years,” Frears told THR, adding that the show’s message is simply: “Support democracy and have a good laugh.”
Actor Stanley Townsend went a step further with his thoughts on what the message of the six-episode series is, noting that it portrays “a danger of power.”
“How do you cope with the power? It’s one thing to get yourself into a powerful position, but then, what do you do when you get there?” he told THR. “Do all the people that backed you want you to do one thing? But now that you’re there, after a while you kind of go, ‘Well, maybe I could do something that will make a difference.’ And then you realize nobody’s gonna want you to do that. So then, you’re in trouble.”
Martha Plimpton, Andrea Riseborough, Guillaume Gallienne, Danny Webb, David Bamber, Henry Goodman and Hugh Grant round out The Regime‘s cast, which made for an exciting dynamic during production.
Hobbs admitted that she had more fun on the set of the series than she has on any other project she’s worked on, sharing that the cast truly bonded and were sad when filming ended.
“It was like being in a [theater] company the way Kate runs it, and all the actors would hang out together, and they were very funny. It was great,” the director said. Townsend agreed, noting, “One thing Kate does is she raises your game, because she sets the bar so high. So you better matchup.”
Plimpton, who portrays fictional U.S. Secretary of State Judith Holt, also praised Winslet for her role in the series and on set as an executive producer, calling her “a total pro” who is “completely game” and “the best.”
In his review, THR‘s chief television critic Daniel Fienberg wrote, “After watching six episodes, the power I found myself most invested in was Kate Winslet’s capacity to make any HBO project worth checking out.”
As for her hopes for the political satire, the Oscar-winning actress told reporters on the carpet, “I hope that they love the story and that they love the writing, and that they find it surprising and weird and funny — obviously funny — but also a little bit scary and sort of a, ‘what’s going to happen next?’ kind of thing.”
The Regime premieres on HBO Sunday at 9 p.m.
