“While space is hostile in this story, the most hostile environment is on the ground”: Rhys Ifans, Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey, Alice Englert, Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert and Nick Murphy on Star City

Fans of For All Mankind rejoice. The team behind the alternate reality series are back with Star City. This time, they envisage a world in which the Soviets beat the Americans to the moon. Following an exclusive screening in London, the cast and crew opened up about this ambitious project.

“Working on For All Mankind, early on, we did a lot of research about the American programme but also about the Russian programme, or the Soviet program, I should say,” said co-creator Matt Wolpert. “And we were just fascinated, but all of these interesting stories that we were reading about, the… way they put their lives on the line, these cosmonauts, to push forward into space was really kind of mindboggling, you know? A lot of the events in these episodes are based on real things that happened.”

What proved challenging was the secrecy surrounding the Soviet space programme. “The difference was with American space programmes, everybody knew everything,” explained co-creator Ben Nedivi. “Everywhere there were documentaries, movies, articles, books written about it… There’s so little known about the Soviet space programme. I think that’s what fascinated us, the idea that there’s a city in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere, with no street signs, it’s not on the map, started our obsession with it.”

Playing the unnamed Chief Designer, Rhys Ifans was drawn to the role of such an enigmatic figure. “I was just fascinated to explore how someone navigates and negotiates their way through such obstacles and oppressions, while still retaining a modicum of moral fibre and humanity. What you have to jettison, what you have to retain, changes from interaction to interaction,” he reflected.

As for Anna Maxwell Martin, she plays the ice-cool, calculated surveillance expert Lyudmilla, which proved similarly intriguing. “What interested me is that she is a sort of product of this system that she’s in, so she seems like a baddie, but she isn’t,” she said. “She was just doing her job. That’s how I view Lyudmilla. She is dedicated to the Soviet Union and to communism. Yes, she’s doing her job very well.”

Having previously been played by Svetlana Efremova, Agnes O’Casey takes on the role of Irina, who unwittingly becomes Lyudmilla’s right-hand woman. “It is a joy to play Irina, but for those people who haven’t seen For All Mankind, we meet her in a completely different stage in her life,” she said. “And so when I saw that I initially had maybe the wrong idea about Irina, I was like, ‘Well, she’s confident, she’s maybe at peace in brutality!’… And it’s so fun to play her because every moment she is learning what it’s going to mean to fulfil her ambition, and we meet her at a time when she thinks that doing the right moral thing will be the right thing in the world and sort of the glass is smashed and she begins to warp.”

Alice Englert, who plays cosmonaut Anastasia, opened up about the more meaningful message the show conveys through space exploration. “I’m thinking about Japanese knotweed. And I’m thinking about how recently I read that it cracks the pavements and stuff, and I really see the show as a kind of like root system, the people are the root system,” she mused. “And then the oppression is the cement, and then it gets all wobbly and the flowers sort of come out anyway. And it’s a bit messy and sort of weedy, but it’s also kind of beautiful.” 

Nick Murphy, who directed the first few episodes, discussed how the series deviates from cookie-cutter TV, eschewing for hard-hitting, thought-provoking drama. “Without being too pompous, I think our job is to make distinct cocktails for the audience, and I think too often television turns them into gin and tonics and stuffs them out,” he said. “The process of production turns them into gin and tonics, and I think what the three of us galvanised ourselves around is that we are going for it. We are swinging for the fences. It is a bold style. It’s very point-of-view driven, redolent of Russian filmmaking.” 

Meanwhile, Wolpert spoke about the enduring appeal of alternate history. “Everybody knew that the Americans got to the moon and the Russians, the Soviets, couldn’t follow, and it just kind of petered out and became like a way to get satellites up into orbit,” he said. “And then so if you change the beginning, all bets are off… On so many levels that opened up the storytelling in it and created a tension of you never know what’s going to happen.”

It’s important to note that this is, fundamentally, a human story. Accordingly, it has appeal for both fans and non-fans of space exploration alike. “What appeals to me about the scripts is it’s not all space: ‘So interesting! Isn’t space interesting!’ I don’t think the guys find space that interesting!… We came to the idea that while space is hostile in this story, the most hostile environment is on the ground,” Murphy explained.

Ifans shared similar sentiments, stating, “I think with all these characters I admire their resilience more than anything else. It’s a testament to all their humanity that some of it, at least some of the time, remains intact.”

Antonia Georgiou

Star City is released on Apple TV+ on 29^th May 2026.

Watch the trailer for Star City here: