Kate Winslet’s Character is The Voice of Authority But Not Necessarily The Voice of Reason in THE REGIME

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Kate Winslet is well aware of what she sounds like. And having been a famous actress for a long time, the British OSCAR® winner thinks that her fans around the world have a pretty good idea of how she sounds, too. So given the general setup of Winslet’s new HBO limited series THE REGIME, which debuts Sunday, March 3 on Crave, she knew she had a big task in terms of her character’s speaking voice and verbal mannerisms. “What I needed to do was just get really (bleep)ing brave, actually, and talk immediately about the fact that I was very hesitant to sound anything like myself – there was a red flag in that for me,” said Winslet, during a panel interview with the cast and creators of THE REGIME. Winslet, who is also an executive producer on the project, stars as Chancellor Elena Vernham, the leader of a fictional but modern Central European authoritarian nation. So why the red flag, exactly? “Because the show was originally called ‘The Palace,’ and we’ve had many shows in quite recent decades about recreations of real historical events to do with the British monarchy,” Winslet explained. “If you call the show ‘The Palace,’ and you put me in that role, and people know how I sound in real life, even though I very rarely use my own accent, I was worried that the audience might spend the whole of the first episode, if not part of the second episode, trying to come to understand exactly where they were. So I knew for the penny to drop quickly, I had to come up with something else.” The penny definitely drops quickly, as Winslet put it, in the first of THE REGIME’s six episodes. Viewers are immediately immersed in a world that seems both comically made-up, and all-too-real, simultaneously. Having not left her palatial home for quite some time, it’s clear that Winslet’s Elena rules her people, her personal staff, and her ministers with an uneven hand, and there are cruel consequences for those who don’t comply with her whims. Her paranoia has reached ridiculous levels – “if she smells mould, tell her you smell it, too,” a newcomer is advised – and she still has in-depth conversations with the encased and deteriorating body of her dead father. Summoned into this bizarre and delusional existence is a volatile soldier named Herbert Zubak, played by Matthias Schoenaerts. Zubak emerges as an unlikely close confidant for Elena, with simmering sexual tension, much to the chagrin of all those around her, who have perfected the delicate dance of managing her idiosyncrasies. As Zubak’s influence grows (notwithstanding some serious ups and downs along that path), Elena’s careening attempts to expand her power have dire ramifications that she couldn’t possibly have imagined, particularly given her stubborn obliviousness to certain realities. Showrunner, writer, and executive producer Will Tracy said his earliest drafts of THE REGIME featured an isolated Elena dealing with bureaucracy and being dismissive of government officials, and while that was a fun playpen on its own, he felt the story needed more, for the purposes of accessing Elena emotionally. “Originally Zubak was just a narrative device, almost like an audience avatar character – you enter the show through his eyes, he sees the palace, he gets a job, and then he kind of fades into the rest of the ensemble,” Tracy recalled. “And then I realized, ‘Oh, if you make it a bit more of a strange, toxic love story, you really get to see all these other dimensions to Elena’s character.’ In a way, it does become a toxic love story. It’s certainly not, you know, The Notebook. But it is still a love story.” For anyone tempted to make the direct comparison, 2004’s The Notebook, starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, is available for streaming on STARZ. Either way, THE REGIME examines love in many different forms: love of power, love of money, love of another person, love of yourself. “Whenever (Elena) says, ‘do I look nice? Yes, I look nice.’ She answers the question for herself. She doesn’t wait for an answer,” Winslet said. “She has hot-wired herself not to need, because she never got what she needed when she was young. But we had to be very careful that we didn’t just do it funny, or create a voice, or do a gimmick. When you’re doing something that is sharply and cleverly funny, you have to play it for reality. And of course, there are these much bigger themes, and there is our geopolitical backdrop, and people will take from that whatever they do. But there’s also the love story, this unexpected, twisted, extraordinarily, weirdly beautiful love story between these two social misfits, who come crashing together and become obsessed with one another. There’s something phenomenally touching about Elena and Zubak.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv