'The Last Czars' Creators Chose to Have Actors Use British Accents Instead of Russian Ones

From Good Housekeeping

• The Last Czars, a six-part miniseries about the fall of Russia's Romanov dynasty, premiered on Netflix on July 3.

• In the series, the actors all speak with British accents.

• Now, viewers are asking: Why doesn't the Last Czars cast use Russian accents?
  

What do Netflix's new miniseries The Last Czars and hit show The Crown have in common? Loads of drama based on real-life royal families, all sorts of stunning period costumes — and British accents.

Let's back up a minute: The Crown, Netflix's hit royal drama (formerly) starring Claire Foy and Matt Smith, follows the life of Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, so the actors' use of British accents makes absolute sense. But The Last Czars, a six-part docu-drama created for Netflix by production company Nutopia, uses documentary-style clips of historians and dramatized scenes with actors to tell the story of Russia's last Romanov emperor, Czar Nicholas II. So, shouldn't the actors be speaking with Russian accents?

Considering The Last Czars is essentially intended to be a master class in Russian history, the actors' use of British accents in the show is somewhat confusing, to say the least. And since the show's July 3 premiere, viewers have taken to Twitter to call out what appeared to be an oversight:

Actress Susanna Herbert (who plays Czarina Alexandra) recently told Harpers Bazaar UK, however, that the show's creators actually intended to inspire just the opposite reaction in viewers when they took this creative liberty. In fact, they hoped that the actors speaking as they normally do would come off less forced and more believable than it would if they were speaking with an accent other than their own.

"The director and the producers were really clear that they wanted people to connect with the characters as humans, as people they could relate to, so I didn't have a German accent or a Russian accent — I had my own accent," Susanna said. "I didn't go for heightened, royal period drama accents ... In that sense, it's very different from other period dramas. It's not clipped or held back. We lay it all out on the table."

Very interesting, indeed.

Of course, The Last Czars is hardly the first drama to take this creative liberty: Other TV shows set in Russia, such as HBO's recent hit miniseries Chernobyl, have defaulted to having actors use British accents as well.

You can watch The Last Czars on Netflix now.

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