Seat of POWER

KATE WINSLET and MATTHIAS SCHOENAERTS on a political comedy with a 'twisted' romance at its heart

- SEAN MARLAND

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Kate Winslet finds herself sitting atop a crumbling throne of corruption and lies when she plays the dictator of a fictional European country in Sky Atlantic’s new political satire, The Regime.

The six-part series sees the Oscar-winning actor star as Chancellor Elena Vernham, the paranoid leader of a modern-day autocracy. Completely detached from reality, Elena believes her people love her. But when she turns to volatile soldier Corporal Herbert Zubak (Django’s Matthias Schoenaerts) – whose brutal past has earned him the nickname ‘The Butcher’ – as an unlikely confidant, her true unpopularity is laid bare as her world starts to unravel.

‘It’s a twisted love story about two people who should never have fallen in love,’ says Kate, 48. ‘But it’s also a geopolitical satire where, at times, nothing makes sense at all and things that happen are so absurd all you can do is laugh your head off.’

In one of the opening scenes, Elena serenades a room full of sycophantic supporters at a stage-managed state event which has been an annual tradition since she ousted the previous Chancellor, Edward Keplinger (guest star Hugh Grant, who previously starred with Kate in the 1996 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility), seven years ago.

‘I’ve seen Hugh down the years, but we hadn’t worked together since then and it was a delight to be in a room with him,’ says Kate.