Anna Maxwell Martin has given us a glimpse into what we can expect from her new “monstrous” character in Star City.
The For All Mankind prequel, which also stars Rhys Ifans, takes us back in time to the 1970s to imagine what might have happened had the Soviet Union won the space race, delving into the lives of cosmonauts, engineers, and intelligence officers.
It sees Martin play ruthless KGB handler Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova – but she’s teased there’s more to the character than meets the eye.
Speaking exclusively to Radio Times, the Motherland legend said: “With Lyudmilla, we learn that she’s not an android, that she does have a slither of humanity – that’s all I can say.
“ At the moment she seems like an automaton, but she’s gonna break out of that. Not much! But a little bit.
“But that side of her being seeming like a monster and trying to control every fibre of oxygen in a room is really great about her. We do see a bit later on that there’s a bit of secret sadness to Lyudmilla.”
In the “paranoid” Apple TV drama, Lyudmilla oversees the KGB’s surveillance unit, listening in on key figures in Star City.
Speaking about getting into the character’s mindset, along with co-star Agnes O’Casey, who plays a younger version of For All Mankind character, KGB handler Irina Morozova, Martin added: “I think we both had to understand about KGB culture and living in a communist society rather than a democratic one. So I think we both tried to kind of get to grips with that.”
Meanwhile, the actress has also revealed she found inspiration for her “terrible” character in a rather unexpected place – her Motherland co-star Lucy Punch.
“It’s good fun, playing a really terrible person,” she told us. “It’s funny – often I would think of Lucy a lot when we were doing Motherland, because Lucy had to play high status, whereas the rest of us didn’t.”
She added: “With [my character] Julia, I could just throw myself in a bush and that was the scene done! And just fluff around lines and make them up. She’s always in a state.
“But when you play really high status – and I remember Lucy going through this sort of pain – you can’t make a line casual. You have to have such specificity, because you’re really holding the line, so you have to be really clear and really specific, and that takes quite a lot of concentration.”
Star City will premiere on Apple TV+ on Friday 29 May.
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