00:00What attracted you to the project and made you want to participate to Star City?
00:07I've always been, I've always really found the whole Soviet period really interesting.
00:16I studied at a school and there's something about it that I just think is a really kind of,
00:21it's just a fascinating backdrop for storytelling and a fascinating kind of, you know,
00:26world in which to, yeah, to tell stories.
00:31To be honest, one of the biggest selling points was Nick Murphy,
00:36our kind of foundational director who directed the first block.
00:43And because we didn't really know, we didn't really have any of the episodes to begin with,
00:48when we were auditioning and when we had, I think maybe one episode,
00:53but his vision for it, to be honest, really sold it to me.
01:00He's always searching for the truth of things.
01:03And that's something that I, you know, always think is the most interesting.
01:09And just his references, he had this whole Bible, he had brilliant references,
01:13like, you know, Woman on the Verge by John Cassavetes and like, and Leviathan,
01:21brilliant films that are kind of completely grounded in the truth.
01:26I agree, all of those things.
01:28Also the, Nick's introduction to the character telling me, which I can't tell you,
01:34but which actually changed as we went through the audition process.
01:37the main conflict changed.
01:39And I thought, oh no, you've ruined it if you've changed it.
01:41And then I realised, oh, actually it's not.
01:43It's actually got harder to play, but more interesting.
01:46But also two of the things, one, that the majority of the leads were women,
01:53which is not that you don't pick up, I don't pick up scripts and see that all the time.
01:57And the other thing that was important was the idea of the rickety spacecrafts,
02:01the USSR's rickety moon missions, the rickety space missions.
02:05And I'd never even, I'd never, I'd given it some thought in my life when I'd come across it,
02:10but I'd never thought, I should read about this and figure out.
02:13When you start to learn about the risks these people were taking,
02:18you know, floating around in orbit in a little shell with very little direction.
02:23You have no power in there at all.
02:25It's being directed from downstairs, you know, from Earth.
02:27And you're just going around the Earth in an orbit a hundred times or whatever it was,
02:31you know, and you, that's either psychopathic or brave.
02:36I can't figure out which way that is.
02:38But that was what drew me.
02:40I wanted to see how they built it.
02:41And I wanted, and the writing, Matt and Ben are so good at the specificity of space flight,
02:48which is, again, not something that I've seen in many productions before, if ever.
02:53And so they're so passionate and so specific.
02:57And Nick is, as you say, so good at translating other people's passions and adding his own.
03:04It was actually really exciting.
03:06I was looking forward to getting there and seeing the sets.
03:09And First City is not a proper sci-fi show because it's most alternate history.
03:16So how do you create an alternate history when the real world today,
03:22the real history today is so absurd that it almost seems fake?
03:30I guess for that very reason, we're so used to, you know, anything can happen.
03:38And so I think it's not been too difficult to suspend your disbelief.
03:44It just adds a level of, I don't know, a level of intrigue.
03:49We're making an alternate history.
03:51But at the same time, you're looking at the speculation of what might have happened if.
03:56So it's called an alternate history.
03:58You know, it's, you know, the difference between, like, Orwell and Philip K. Dick kind of thing.
04:03You know, and 1914 is a speculative future.
04:05It's not an alternate history.
04:06It's written in the 1940s.
04:08But this is, you know, this show has been going on for years.
04:12You know, I think five or six years and presumably seven, eight years in production before that.
04:17So what was going on in the world at the time is entirely different from what's going on now.
04:24And the premise of what happens if the Russians win the space race is a fascinating one.
04:30I think if I understand your question right, how do you, is it easier to believe in this alternate history?
04:36I agree. I agree.
04:37And your question is good and it's sad that it's a good question.
04:41Yeah.
04:42Every day is a new day.
04:43So I have hope.
04:44Yeah.
04:45Yeah.
04:46We all have hope.
04:47Yeah.
04:48Because we do and we talk about art.
04:51So we have hope.
04:52Exactly.
04:52Yes.
04:53Thank you very much.
04:54Thank you very much.
Commenti