— Please tell us about your hero in the TV series “GDR”.
— My heroine Svetlana is the wife of the main character, an agent of the Soviet secret service. She also works as an analyst in the secret service, so she is indirectly involved in the story of the search for the archive her husband is looking for. She then naturally finds herself in very difficult conditions.
The important thing is that she is the wife of a Soviet intelligence officer, this is a kind of legacy of our cinema. I believe my hero has all the archetypal characteristics a hero’s wife should have.
— How was it working with the leading actor Alexander Gorbatov? This isn’t the first time you’ve met him on set, right?
— Actually, this is not the first time we worked with Sasha Gorbatov. We studied together at the Shchukin Theater School and made our debut in big cinema in the film “Quiet Don” by my father’s director, Sergei Ursulyak. We’ve been shooting together periodically since then, and each time it’s like returning to something familiar.
Sasha has outstanding qualities in his work: he knows how to passionately immerse himself in a project, seriously analyzes the material and takes a serious approach to the choice of roles. I follow him with great respect and interest, working with Sasha has always been a very comfortable partnership for me.
— The series takes place in 1989, the year you were born. How do you perceive this time?
– Naturally, I don’t know anything about this time. Everything about our country’s recent history is always a matter of which source you get information from. However, there is always a multipolar view, a multipolar evaluation here. I am very wary of actors’ discussions of history and geopolitics, after all, everyone should mind their own business.
— How did you prepare for the role? Have you had to read historical literature about the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Stasi and the intelligence services of other countries?
— I read and watched 80s newsreels and television programs and was inspired by the looks of the TV hosts. I also watched the movies “The Lives of Others” and “Germany 83”.
In the project, I was interested in visually conveying the feeling of that time: how a Soviet woman could behave, how she could look, what features she could have. The human was more interesting to me than the ideological.
— The end of the 80s was the period of collapse of the post-war world order. Is it possible to transfer the emotions of the crisis we are in to the duration of the series?
— Naturally, I am waiting for this project with interest and some excitement, because I have not seen it in its entirety and do not know how all the lines in the series develop, what the general message is (see interview took place before the premiere. — socialbites.ca). The events that take place are of course important, but they rather intensify the dramaturgical part of the series. I think we should approach this work like a genre film, an action-packed detective story. And don’t try to find some political subtext in this.
— You played your first movie role at the age of eight in Sergei Ursulyak’s film “Trial for Victory Day”. What impressions did you get from the shooting? What was it like working with your father? How did things work when you were already a professional player?
— It was actually a small part at the end, and my voice-over was heard throughout the entire movie. The memories are good, I remember that it was very cold and I remember sitting in the caravan with Oleg Nikolaevich Efremov, Vyacheslav Vasilyevich Tikhonov and Mikhail Aleksandrovich Ulyanov – an absolutely incredible thing. I didn’t understand then why it was so important for my parents to introduce me to them, but now of course I understand.
My director father’s attitude has not changed since then: he was always making demands of me, both when I was eight and when I grew up, we have a very professional and rather uncompromising relationship. He’s not that loving and attentive father on the field, and that’s actually fine and true.
— Why didn’t you enroll in theater after school, but chose the Faculty of History and Philology of the Russian State Humanitarian University? So why, after graduating from university, did you still go to study at the Boris Schukin Theater Institute?
— When I was 17 years old, my development was shaped by my environment of reading and thinking young people from scientific and philological families. It intrigued me and I wanted to go there, so I entered the Faculty of History and Philology. Then I grew up, began to know myself better, my interests changed – so I entered the Shchukin Theater School. In my childhood, I often went there for exams and graduation performances, and to be honest, I never thought I would go there, partly because my parents studied there and I wanted something else. But when I arrived, I realized that I felt very good there. And I stayed.
There I met my artistic director, Vladimir Vladimirovich Ivanov, whom we did not know. I really liked his look and the way he listened. He is a magnificent teacher, a unique master. Our meeting impressed me greatly and I have not regretted my choice even for a moment.
— Does primary education help the acting profession?
– No, it is of no use, because the text I read does not require me to study philology. Yes, shooting in “East Germany” required learning German words, and having studied the language helped me quickly understand the structure, but it was more a matter of hearing; My colleagues coped well with training without a philological exam. But of course, I would like to have a project where I can apply the experiences I have gained from the books I read.
— Your parents probably tried to show you movies they thought were important when you were a kid. Which movies were these?
– They showed what they themselves grew up with, so I am completely a member of Soviet cinema: these are Stanislav Rostotsky, Eldar Ryazanov, Leonid Gaidai, Georgy Danelia, Vladimir Motyl, Vladimir Menshov, and later – films by Marlen Khutsiev, Ilya Averbakh , Andrei Tarkovsky, of course , Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Konchalovsky. This is the entire golden fund of Russian cinema that I know and love. That’s a lot of my cultural baggage. I try to instill this in my children, but they have a harder time with it.
—Which of your film works to date would you call your favorite?
– It’s hard for me to say. Probably because I believe that the most interesting and beloved things are ahead of me. I hope this is true.
— Is it easy to combine shooting a series of films with work at the Satyricon Theater?
— Frankly, it’s easy because I haven’t worked there for two years (laughing). But when we worked, it was possible to combine them, one did not burden the other, in fact it nourished the other.
“Your name cannot be found in gossip columns.” Are you deliberately avoiding publicity?
— I’m practically not going anywhere, nothing will force me to go anywhere again. It must have been an incredible combination of my desire and need to be seen somewhere. And then I’ll go through the back door, sit in the hallway, watch the movie, and then disappear. Again, this is not any achievement, but rather a character trait; I am a very introverted person, we can say that I am socially phobic (laughing). I sense a kind of global waste of time in this secularism. I hope one day I will overcome this, I am working on this myself.