Entertainment
‘Star City’s Opening Credits Are Boldly Different From ‘For All Mankind’ for a Reason
Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for Star City’s premiere.From the very first scene of Apple TV’s Star City, it’s clear that this is going to be a very different show than what For All Mankind fans are used to. When a cosmonaut’s wife is pulled out of her bed in the middle of the night by the KGB, her first instinct is to assume much worse has happened — until the Soviet space program’s Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans) informs her that her husband, Alexei Leonov (Sam Wilkinson), has just become the first man to set foot on the Moon. That sense of tension, paranoia, and secrecy threads through the spin-off, with the very different opening credits only solidifying your impression of the type of show you’re about to watch.
According to Star City (and For All Mankind) co-creators Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, that was absolutely intentional. “I think audiences can watch Star City without having seen a frame of For All Mankind,” Nedivi told Collider during our sitdown with the creators ahead of the show’s premiere, “and that was intentional on our part.” Below, Wolpert, Nedivi, and Ifans discuss where Star City sits in the overall franchise, whether we’ll ever learn more about the Chief Designer’s real identity, how many seasons the creators have in mind, and more.
COLLIDER: Matt and Ben, in terms of approaching this show, which sits in a really fascinating place in For All Mankind history, how did you want to strike the balance between building the backstory of characters that we already know, like Sergei and Irina, while you’re pulling back the curtain on what’s happening in Star City within the overall timeline?
MATT WOLPERT: Honestly, it was such a great creative challenge because it was very important to us that the show was not just constant Easter eggs of For All Mankind, and winking at the audience like, “Oh, you recognize this, you recognize that!” There is a little bit of that, but I think what excited us more was introducing the audience to these other fascinating characters who, because they were kept behind the Iron Curtain in this secret city in the middle of the woods that wasn’t on any map, there would be no way for them to interact with Americans at all. So that gave us a freedom. Because so much of what happened in the Soviet Union was kept secret, it gave us a freedom to tell different kinds of stories that didn’t have any overlap with For All Mankind.
One of my favorite elements with that is the story we tell with Anastasia Belikova, because in For All Mankind, you see her smiling on a television screen once, and maybe her photo in a paper, and it seems like this kind of triumphant moment, and you only get this small glimpse of her. We took that challenge to build her out, and everything that led up to that moment, but even more so, what came after that moment and how difficult her life was when she came back to Earth, because that really is the essence of the difference between the two shows — is that in Star City, it’s more dangerous once you get back to Earth than it even is in space.
‘Star City’s Chief Designer Is Meant To Be Mysterious (and Anonymous)
“It was one of the key inspirations of doing the show in the first place.”
Rhys’ character is obviously such a focal point of the show, but we only ever really know him as the Chief Designer. Is there a storytelling reason for that, and will we ever get a little more about his real identity?
BEN NEDIVI: [to Ifans] I’ll have to kill you if you answer this question. [Laughs] Strangely enough, this was accurate to history. The real Chief Designer was anonymous, and there was a reason for that. One, they were worried about his security. They thought, if he were discovered, if his name and identity were out there, then the Americans or some foreign agents would come for him. He was that valuable to the Soviet Union. He was a genius who basically was responsible for almost all of the successes in the Soviet space program. And then there was another element to it, that if his identity was known within the Soviet Union, he would be so big and so famous and popular that it would threaten the state, which was just as worrying to them. So that, to us, honestly, was a fascinating approach to a character.
Even though we learned a lot about the character on which he was based and inspired, for us, it was more about these other elements, as writers, that make him so intriguing to us as a kind of lead of this ensemble to bring us into this world. Also, in For All Mankind, the divergence point happens in 1966 with his death. That’s how much we respected the man on which this is based. We felt he was so crucial to the space program and so crucial to space exploration that if he wasn’t to die in 1966, the Russians would have beat the Americans to the moon and achieved many other successes. It was one of the key inspirations of doing the show in the first place, and I think just as a character study, a fascinating way to approach this incredible figure.
Rhys, I couldn’t help but think, as I was watching this show, that this is the second spin-off series that you’ve been a part of now where you’re joining an existing world, following House of the Dragon. Is there something that appeals to you as an actor about getting to join an existing story and help fill in the margins?
RHYS IFANS: No, that’s never a consideration. A good role is a good role, whether you start with them or whether they appear further down the line. And I think, actually, in both these cases, they don’t feel like second seasons; they feel like just another limb, a necessary limb. So no, it’s not like the second album, you know what I mean? That’s a whole other thing. The second season or series doesn’t figure into my choices whatsoever.
NEDIVI: And just to be clear, we approach this not as an extension of For All Mankind or a companion piece. We really looked at this as a new show, a different show that happened to be in the filmmaking universe and shared some characters. I think audiences can watch Star City without having seen a frame of For All Mankind, and that was intentional on our part.
‘For All Mankind’s First Official Spin-Off ‘Star City’ Is a Tense, Gripping Spy Thriller | Review
‘Star City’ premieres May 29 with its first two episodes on Apple TV.
Star City definitely has its own distinct identity, and I think one of the ways it really does feel distinct is the opening credits. That was something I wanted to pick your brains about, deciding on what that was going to look like, because it’s just so stark and austere, and it really sets the tone for the type of show that this is going to be.
WOLPERT: It’s a brilliantly done piece. My favorite image in that is this concrete hand holding a rocket. It’s both inspiring and threatening at the same time. Part of what we were trying to capture with that is the juxtaposition of these massive brutalist structures and monuments, and then these tiny people in shadow, and living in the shadow of those buildings, and this city kind of rising up in the middle of the forest and surrounding everyone. But there’s also a sense of things moving up, as if launching up into the sky, that kind of draws you up into the final image. So, it felt like a great juxtaposition of those two ideas, which is really what Star City is all about.
Rhys, I spoke with your fabulous co-star, Anna [Maxwell Martin], and one of my favorite dynamics in this show is between Lyudmilla and the Chief Designer. You don’t know, anytime they’re in a scene, who’s going to walk away triumphant and who’s going to be licking their wounds, so to speak. In terms of the experience of working with her and also how we see these characters develop over the course of the season, what can you tease about how that dynamic evolves? It does feel like as much a personal conflict as a professional one.
IFANS: Yes, there’s a great tension, and working with Anna is exquisite, because she’s so generous and playful. It’s at once gladiatorial and affectionate between the Chief Designer and her. One likes to think that if they, God forbid, were ever to make love, it would herald the apocalypse.
[Laughs] That feels like an idea for a potential follow-up season.
IFANS: Why did I say that in front of two writers?
NEDIVI: [Laughs] Spoiler alert.
‘Star City’s Co-Creators Explain Why the Spin-off Won’t Follow ‘For All Mankind’s Format
“I don’t think we’d do those kinds of time jumps, but there might be some jumps in time.”
Talking about the future of the show, I will say, in speaking with some of the actors, someone did drop a, “Hopefully, if there’s another season…” so now, I feel like I have to turn that question to Matt and Ben.
NEDIVI: Who said that?
WOLPERT: We want names.
NEDIVI: I’m kidding.
I think it’s good your cast wants to do more! I’m just wondering about the overall plan for the show. We know For All Mankind is coming to its natural conclusion, but I feel like there’s also so much left to scratch beneath the surface with this series. I’m not going to hold you to a firm number.
NEDIVI: We have a 30-season plan. No, I’m kidding. Obviously, we would be so lucky as to continue to tell this story, because I agree. I think the characters are so rich, the world, the setting. But if we are able to continue, I think we wouldn’t do it the same as For All Mankind. The more we worked on this, we felt one of those time jumps in For All Mankind each decade cost Matt and I many years of our lives, including the prosthetics and the actors and everything. But on the other hand, I think this world, there’s enough story to tell within it with these characters where we can stay in the ‘70s in the world of Star City. I don’t think we’d do those kinds of time jumps, but there might be some jumps in time.
Doing any TV show is a magic trick, how you’re able to pull it off. I think what happened with this show was so special. This group of people that came together in the winter in Lithuania to make this happen has really come out beyond our expectations. So yes, if we’re able to continue telling the story, we’d love to.
Star City‘s first two episodes are now streaming on Apple TV.
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