‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ star Ewan McGregor on getting to work with Mary Elizabeth Winstead again: ‘She’s the most amazing actor’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

Christopher Rosen
·5 min read
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Before they were in a relationship, Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were co-stars. The actors appeared with each other as an onscreen couple in the third season of the FX hit “Fargo” and then later, after they got together in real life, wound up on opposing sides in the superhero feature “Birds of Prey.” Now married and with a young child at home, McGregor and Winstead have teamed up again for the Paramount+ with Showtime limited series “A Gentleman in Moscow.” The project, based on the bestselling book by Amor Towles, explores their characters’ relationship across decades, from the Russian Revolution into the Cold War. As McGregor tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview: “To work with the woman you love, it’s great.”

Created for television by Ben Vanstone, “A Gentleman in Moscow” focuses on Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov (McGregor), a Russian aristocrat whose life is spared following the revolution because of a poem in support of the uprising that has been attributed to him. Still, due to his past social status, the Count is sentenced to life in prison under house arrest in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel. Jumping through time, “A Gentleman in Moscow” tracks Count Rostov’s evolution across 30 years, with a particular interest in his personal relationships. Winstead plays a famed Russian actress who is initially immune to the Count’s charms, but later becomes the most significant romantic partner in his life.

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SEEMary Elizabeth Winstead interview: ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’

“She’s the most amazing actor, Mary, and I’ve been lucky to work with her on three projects now. We’re always looking for the next one that will suit us or fit us,” McGregor says. “Because I love going to work with her. I like working with her because it’s so instinctive. We know each other so well… but even when we didn’t know each other very well, working on ‘Fargo,’ we had a very instinctive way of working together.”

Adds McGregor, “Towards the end of this story, it becomes very emotional [with our characters]. It was devastating to play some of the scenes at the end.”

Released in 2016, “A Gentleman in Moscow” was a global hit with readers due largely to its main character and the strong emotional bonds he forges throughout the story. McGregor says he was one of those readers. “The novel totally took me took me in its grasp. I didn’t want that book to end,” he explains. “I read it so slowly after I got halfway. I was turning the pages really, slowly, I’d read two or three pages a day, just because I didn’t want to be living without it. It meant so much to me, I just loved it.”

McGregor says he thought the Count, in particular, was an “amazing character” who would be somewhat “easy” to embody. “I felt like I saw him so vividly. Someone recently asked me about the risks of playing a beloved character in a book that people really love and feel sort of ownership of. When people feel a connection to a book like that, it becomes theirs. And I luckily hadn’t considered that before playing this part. But I also never had a second of doubt about it, because I felt like I saw him so clearly from the pages of the book. There’s nothing for me to do other than just try and recreate how I imagined him when I read it.”

For his lead role in the limited series, McGregor – an Emmy Award winner for “Halston” – grew out his mustache (a signature of the character) and worked diligently to make sure the aging process felt seamless to the viewer, especially because the story sometimes leaps forward in time by five years. The result is one of the acclaimed actor’s most subtle and moving performances.

“We did this amazing movement exercise at the beginning of rehearsals, which I’ve never done before. It was a brilliant way to start,” McGregor says.

As they worked out, the Count begins the story in his younger days but with an ego and attitude that belies his age. “The Count is burdened with his class at the beginning of the story. He believes that his class and his privilege are a birthright,” McGregor says. “He learns through the piece to shed that feeling, to become a real man with a job and family. So my physicality became lighter and quicker as I got older. Because I was shed of the burden of carrying around the class. I thought that was really interesting.” 

“A Gentleman in Moscow” now streams on Paramount+ With Showtime.

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