Kate Winslet says new series The Regime is “completely insane”
"It's totally absurd."
Kate Winslet has described her new dystopian comedy series The Regime as "completely insane".
The iconic actress has turned her hand to a new comedy drama, in which she stars as a tyrannical and rather delusional leader of an imagined country in Central Europe.
Speaking to Radio Times and other press ahead of the series arriving on screens in the UK, Winslet said of her character Elena: "I tried to make her someone who you really should not feel like you can trust at all. But yet she believes that they love her.
"It's a belief. She's trying to will herself into believing that they do because that's Elena, that's who she is. Her whole existence is built on trying to make herself feel better all the time. She wants approval from her dead father who's lying in a glass coffin in the basement.
"I mean, it is completely insane and totally absurd. I did love the fact that the creator Will Tracey chose to have this country be led by a woman and not a man. I thought that was very, very cool.
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"But it also meant that my job was, in many ways, so much harder because I had to lean into the absurdity of her and how delusional she is and paranoid she is, but I did have to kind of give her a heart and a soul without also trying to make the audience love her."
Winslet, who also serves as an executive producer, stars alongside Matthias Schoenaerts as Corporal Herbert Zubak, Guillaume Gallienne as Nicholas and Andrea Riseborough as Agnes in the six-part series.
Chatting to RadioTimes.com, Schoenaerts explained that he and Winslet wanted to surprise each other when it came to their scenes together.
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He said: "We didn't talk everything through because we wanted to surprise each other and see what happens in the moments where we both have our specific journeys as characters.
"It's also fun not to know what what somebody's going to throw at you and what they're going to come up with. I think when we spoke, we mostly spoke about about a certain texture that that we envisioned for their relationship, but without being too specific or highlighting certain things before we got to do them."
The Regime will be released on Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK on 8th April. Sign up for Sky TV here.
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