Here’s Why Everyone’s Speaking English In Apple’s New Soviet Sci-Fi Series
Don’t expect Russian accents in Star City.
Because the alternate history series For All Mankind initially focused on a new kind of space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, nearly every actor who has played a Russian in that show has been of Russian descent. On top of that, including the most recent episodes in Season 5, when people speak in Russian, we get subtitles. As one easy example, Actress Svetlana Efremova, who plays mastermind Irina Morozova in For All Mankind, is from Novosibirsk, Russia. Ditto Costa Ronin, who was born in Kaliningrad and plays Leonid Polivanov in Season 5. But, as For All Mankind becomes a franchise with multiple series, the new show, Star City, is going back to the USSR in 1969 and 1970, and in this show, the performers are playing Russians, but nobody is speaking Russian, nor are there Russian accents.
For some viewers, this may be jarring at first, but the propulsive and addictive quality of Star City means that you’ll get used to it very quickly. And, as the star of the series, Rhys Ifans, and showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert tell Inverse, there really was no other way to make this all work.
According to Nedivi, early in the process of developing Star City, there was a consideration to use all Russian actors and to have the show be done in Russian. “It was a thought,” Nedivi tells Inverse. “Because I think you know how important it is for us to make things feel authentic and real. So, of course, we always think, let's aim for that. But early on in the process, we realized, especially with what's going on right now, how impossible that would be.”
Rhys Ifans and Anna Maxwell Martin in Star City.
The showrunners also explain that they consulted with Craig Mazin, who was behind the powerful 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, because, like Star City, that show uses English-speaking actors playing people from the USSR. “He very quickly told us: ‘This is the only way to do it. Do it this way. Trust me.’ And I think he was right. At the end of the day, if you are able to embrace the world, the setting, the authenticity of it, and I think you quickly forget.”
This fact also means that individual characters aren’t speaking with Russian accents either, but instead, the cast has found a way to distinguish the sonic signature of their characters with specific creative decisions. As the Chief Designer, Rhys Ifans did put some thought into how his character speaks and why he has the accent that he does.
Because the Chief Designer is modeled on a real figure in Russian spaceflight history, Sergei Korolev, Ifans used Korolev’s background as inspiration. “Sergei Korolev was a proud Ukrainian. And I'm using a Welsh accent. So if we were to place the sonic accent landscape of the U.K. onto the Soviet Union, coming from Wales, Ukraine kind of makes geographical, sociopolitical sense — but I wouldn't read too much into that.”
Ifans also points out that because there are so many different varieties of Russian accents, the idea of English-speaking actors all putting on Russian accents could become a problem very quickly.
“I think Russian accents are beautiful,” Ifans says. “But as beautiful as the Russian accents are, when someone who isn’t Russian is doing the Russian accent, it works well for 10 minutes. And then you think, oh, come on, please.”
Wolpert also echoes Ifans’ point that not everyone in the USSR spoke with the same accent in the 1960s and 1970s. “It’s not like everyone sounded the same,” Wolpert says. “I think that’s what we’re trying to capture here. The characters are not all from the same places in the Soviet Union. So, giving them different accents also makes it feel more real, or as real as possible in the long tradition of doing this kind of thing. In the end, it was a difficult decision, but it felt like the right one.”
