Category: A Gentleman in Moscow

A brand new still of Mary and Ewan in their upcoming series ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ has been released via Empire.  Set in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov (played by Ewan McGregor) is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. If he ventures beyond the hotel’s walls, he’ll be shot and killed—and so inside he stays, dining and grooming and sleeping and chatting away with anyone and everyone in his vicinity. Mary will play Anna Urbanova, a glamorous, independent and self-made film actress, at the height of her fame. She uses her wit and beauty to dazzle Count Alexander Rostov. She’s an enigmatic character who keeps her cards very close to her chest. Reluctant to reveal her true self.

“In-between takes we were just bawling our eyes out,” Winstead chuckles, looking back on a particularly tender sequence. “It was so beautiful to get to play the scene and make that moment feel so real. But it was really, really hard for us as well.” With a backdrop of world-changing politics, there are plenty of forces that threaten to keep the Count and Anna apart. “It’s about the making of the Russia that we know now,” states McGregor of the series. “It starts in 1921 after the Revolution, and everybody’s in turmoil. There’s a lot of discussion about belief in something – people who believe in the Communist movement and people who don’t, and what it does to their lives.”

A Gentleman in Moscow will begin streaming on Paramount+ March 29th.

Vanity Fair exclusively shared a batch of first look photos of Mary’s newly upcoming series, ‘A Gentleman in Moscow‘ which will premiere on Paramount+ March 29th. Based on the 2016 novel of the same name, AGIM’s story is set in 1922 where Count Alexander Rostov (played by Ewan McGregor) is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. If he ventures beyond the hotel’s walls, he’ll be shot and killed—and so inside he stays, dining and grooming and sleeping and chatting away with anyone and everyone in his vicinity.

In the Showtime/Paramount+ series, Mary will play Anna Urbanova, a glamorous, independent and self-made film actress, at the height of her fame. She uses her wit and beauty to dazzle Count Alexander Rostov. She’s an enigmatic character who keeps her cards very close to her chest. Reluctant to reveal her true self.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, this is what Ewan said about acting alongside Mary:

“To be in love and married to somebody, and then to get to play all those cold shoulder scenes, was just hilarious,” McGregor says. Near the shoot’s end, as the relationship took a tragic turn, the pair found the emotional intensity of their scenes following them home. “You just have to see what she’s done with this role—she’s such a brilliant actor, and the way Anna ages is absolutely heartbreaking at the end,” McGregor says. “We have a scene where we have to part, and we just were an absolute mess [after filming].”

It is also revealed during the interview that Mary’s character is expanded in the series compared to the book version:

In this series, Anna’s presence expands from the book, which stays closer to the count’s perspective. “The novel is necessarily very count-focused, and you don’t get that broad an impression of Anna’s life away from the count,” Vanstone says. “It was really important to us to create that in a world for Anna, and to give that character more agency through the story.”

Be sure to head to the gallery to check out the full-sized photos!