Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey, Adam Nagaitis, & Ruby Ashbourne Serkis Talk “Star City”
Since 2019, Apple TV+’s For All Mankind has turned our attention to the sky. The show exists in an alternate history where the space race never ended after the Soviet Union first stepped on the Moon. For All Mankind’s fifth season premiered at the end of March, with a final sixth season on the horizon for 2027. Fans will be happy to know that the world of this alternate history doesn’t end with For All Mankind. On May 29, 2026, Apple TV+ will release the first two episodes of Star City. Named for the real-life Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Star City takes place in the Soviet Union, where the space race is not about exploration, but a means of political power. Star City picks up after the first cosmonaut made it to the Moon and just as the first female cosmonaut is about to take those historic steps.
Apple TV+
Ahead of the premiere, stars Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey, Adam Nagaitis, and Ruby Ashbourne Serkis sat down with Beyond the Cinerama Dome to talk about expanding the universe and the strain between the cosmos and life below. Martin and O’Casey’s characters are part of the surveillance department in Star City. Martin plays Lyudmilla Raskova, head of KGB surveillance at the complex, and O’Casey portrays Irina Morozova, a new hire to the department. Fans of For All Mankind will recognize Irina Morozova from seasons four and five. Nagaitis and Ashbourne Serkis play husband and wife Valya and Tanya Markelova. Valya is a widely respected cosmonaut and Tanya is stuck on Earth, in the confined world of Star City.
I would love to start with you, Agnes. Your character is present in For All Mankind and played by Svetlana Efremova. Was there something from Svetlana’s performance that gave you an insight into Irina that you wanted to carry over into your performance?
Apple TV+
Agnes O’Casey: It’s funny, because I feel like where we start with Irina in Star City couldn’t be further away from where we see her in For All Mankind. She’s so glamorous, so beautiful in that show. I’m like a little greasy rat.
Anna Maxwell Martin: That’s why she was cast.
AO: As you can see, grease in my hair every day. [laughs] When I watched For All Mankind, I was like, okay, great, Irina has this confidence, she has this knack for brutality. Then I sat down with Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi and they were like, absolutely not. We want to see her from the beginning.
It was fun, because everyone will know where she ends up, so I get to show everyone Irina from the genesis of her.
Anna, you’ve played Janet Armstrong in Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11…
AMM: Did I? I was a child playing Janet, I hardly remember it. [laughs]
Does it feel any different to play a character who’s on the other side of the space race?
Apple TV+
AMM: I don’t think Lyudmilla is bothered about space. What she’s delivering on is the safety of the space race. I don’t mean safety for cosmonauts. Protecting the state, protecting state secrets. Because it’s alt-history, we’re dealing with the first moon landing. It’s about protecting that and then what goes on after that?
Of course, that really unleashes hell because it unleashes huge paranoia and then a more crushing need to protect the space program. That’s what she has to deliver for her bosses, the secrecy of the space program. Lyudmilla is a true landlubber, and she ain’t going anywhere near space. I don’t think she goes outside. She’s low on vitamin D for sure.
Adam and Ruby, your characters are at odds with one another in the marriage. Adam, you get to go to space while Ruby’s stuck on Earth. How do these themes of isolation and exploration ebb and flow for your characters?
Adam Nagaitis: I think what is hopeful and what’s well-written about the relationship is that there’s actually a conflict between them. He goes off to space and she stays at home, isolated by this horrible authoritarian regime. Love is what keeps the conflict contained. Also, love wins out in the end because it brings them back together and it’s more powerful than all the other forces against.
Ruby Ashbourne Serkis: But also, arguably without any spoilers, it’s kind of what ends up being their downfall, isn’t it?
AN: You killed my point. [laughs]
RAS: Maybe it brings them together, but it also destroys them. I think it’s one of the really clever things about the show. The idea that it’s potentially equally as isolating being in space as it is on Earth. It’s equally dangerous being in space as it is on Earth in the Soviet Union.
AN: At one point, Valya says it’s much easier being up in space. Much easier being up there in a lot of ways, because you can actually escape. You can’t escape down on Earth. You know your job, your boundaries are more defined.
It’s not that your boundaries aren’t defined on Earth. It’s that every particle of your body wants to break out of them, and you’re perpetually inculcated so you can’t do that when you’re in space.
RAS: Tanya is like a caged bird. There’s a moment where she’s cleaning the house. She’s given up everything to be here with Valya, and she’s terribly lonely. It causes her to make decisions she’s not proud of, but she kind of has to in order to survive, in self-preservation. She’s been cleaning and she looks across the way to this other woman on a balcony.
I just found that as a mirror image in terms of where she has ended up and the plight of the Soviet woman. The fact that Tanya was living in Moscow where these people could gather, chat in kitchens, share music, ideas, books, and poetry. Now, Tanya’s just not got any of that. The series is her breaking out of her isolation, I guess.
For All Mankind and Star City both play with the idea that space travel is a key to immortality. Anna and Agnes, how do you see that theme in your roles as surveillance employees?
AO: It’s survival. Do they have time to think about immortality?
AMM: Lyudmilla is probably drinking herself to death. I think it’s like Tudor times. They weren’t drinking water, they were just drinking vodka.
In reality, Star City…I don’t think it is a space program. I think it’s a thriller and space is part of that storytelling. I think the thriller element is strong, and that it’s about the difficult and myriad lives of lots of characters we follow, whether they’re cosmonauts or whether they’re in the intelligence services as we are. That makes a really interesting jigsaw of a show rather than just space.
AO: Because our whole storyline is so specific that, when I watch the show, it’s great because I get to experience the space story in it as a viewer. It’s so emotional.
Apple TV+
Adam, is this an idealistic quest for immortality, or is it essentially a life vest that’s keeping them alive another day in this regime?
AN: I think I can understand why an amateur would think space travel was the key to immortality. You’ve got a whole history of men wanting to be great. Men go to space and we put a flag on all these planets, isn’t it great how great we are? I think the beginning of this disease…I’m not saying it’s a disease to be technologically ambitious to help people, to travel, to explore the universe, to learn, to fly to space. That’s wonderful, but when you make it your purpose, when you make it more important than life on earth, when you make it a national necessity, people suffer. Thousands and thousands of animals died to get these things into space. Also hundreds of men and women we don’t know about, who flew up in these rickety Soviet vessels and never came down again or came down too fast, too quickly.
This is not about immortality. This is not a hero’s game. If someone’s going to shoot you up into space and say, not necessarily that you’ll live forever in everyone’s memory or anything, but that your life wasn’t just complete detritus. You weren’t just cannon fodder for a nationalistic regime; you did something all humans can relate to as something brave. As a species, I hope we’ve learned that there are other things we can do on Earth that are just as brave.
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