{"id":385565,"date":"2026-04-18T08:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T08:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/385565\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T08:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T08:53:14","slug":"alicia-vikander-on-her-vladimir-putin-movie-it-is-essential-not-to-shut-down-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/385565\/","title":{"rendered":"Alicia Vikander on her Vladimir Putin movie: \u2018It is essential not to shut down conversation\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.<\/p>\n

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.<\/p>\n

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.<\/p>\n

Your support makes all the difference.Read more<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no wonder Alicia Vikander<\/a> said yes to starring in The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/a> \u2013 Olivier Assayas\u2019s new political thriller about the turbulent beginnings of the Russian Federation. By the end of her first 10 minutes on screen, the Swedish actor has performed a punk rock song at a house party while holding a naked man on a leash, and been lowered from the rafters as some kind of metallic deity in a stage adaptation of Yevgeny Zamyatin\u2019s We. \u201cIt\u2019s a supporting role, but I get to have some very distinct moments,\u201d she agrees, flashing a grin.<\/p>\n

Neither background nor the subject, hers is the kind of tricky, underwritten character that Vikander is able to make deftly three-dimensional with her mix of edge and subtle vulnerability. For years now, directors have sought her for exactly that kind of nuance. Now 37, Vikander has spent much of her career playing women defined by restraint \u2013 androids, wives, muses, figures bound by decorum or circumstance. She won an Oscar in her mid-twenties for her quietly devastating turn as the partner of a trans woman in The Danish Girl (2015), having already outshone Keira Knightley in Joe Wright\u2019s Anna Karenina (2012) and brought eerie interiority to a humanoid robot in Ex Machina (2014). Hollywood quickly moved to scale her up: a CIA hacker in Jason Bourne (2016); the inheritor of a billion-dollar franchise in Tomb Raider.<\/p>\n

But in recent years, she has edged away from that centre of gravity. Projects like HBO\u2019s meta-fictional industry satire, Irma Vep; A24\u2019s chivalric fantasy The Green Knight (2021), and the dystopian thriller The Assessment (2024), have seen her lean into something stranger, more elusive \u2013 characters that resist easy definition. Speaking to me over Zoom from her home in London \u2013 which she shares with her husband, the actor Michael Fassbender<\/a>, and their two children \u2013 Vikander is tough to pin down too. She\u2019s in mum mode, running late after the school run, hair pulled into a loose bun, dressed in a soft cream jumper. Twice, mid-answer, she disappears from the frame to answer the door, apologising as she goes. \u201cSorry,\u201d she says, returning, slightly breathless. \u201cDeliveries.\u201d<\/p>\n

It makes for a slightly disjointed conversation \u2013 stopping, starting and stopping again; squeezed into the gaps of a busy morning. At times, it\u2019s a revealing one. Speaking about the time demands of filmmaking, she gestures vaguely off-screen, as if to the life continuing just out of view. \u201cYou spend months doing something\u2026 it takes you away from friends, loved ones, family.\u201d Another pause. Another doorbell.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m curious about her apparent shift \u2013 less ass-kicking action heroes, more curiosities (she is credited simply as \u201cExtraterrestrial\u201d in Na Hong-jin\u2019s forthcoming movie, Hope). It wasn\u2019t a conscious decision, she tells me. \u201cI probably have that itch now. I would love to do some action again.\u201d It\u2019s more about clarity of instinct. \u201cIt\u2019s very much me being like, I really want to work with these people or that person. I\u2019ve become quite good at choosing projects [where] I know exactly why I want to do them, and I\u2019m really excited about them,\u201d she says. \u201cOver the past few years, I\u2019ve just had a really good time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FancyFancy seeing you here: Alicia Vikander plays an artist-turned-oligarch\u2019s wife in \u2018The Wizard of the Kremlin\u2019 (Signature Entertainment)<\/p>\n

Vikander and Fassbender take turns being at home with their sons \u2013 who are around five and two \u2013 while the other is off filming. I read that they live primarily in Lisbon so that he can surf every day, but she corrects me. \u201cWe\u2019ve been in Lisbon; we\u2019ve been in London a lot, and we spend a lot of time in Italy and France. We\u2019re nomads,\u201d she laughs half-heartedly. I get a subtle sense she\u2019s not entirely satisfied with the situation. \u201cThat\u2019s the hard part with work,\u201d she says. \u201cWe can\u2019t plan far ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on the 2022 novel of the same name by Giuliano da Empoli, The Wizard of the Kremlin traces Vladimir Putin\u2019s rise from KGB agent to modern-day tsar through the eyes of his fictional spin doctor, Vadim Baranov, played by Paul Dano. A pasty, blonde Jude Law plays the Russian president<\/a> with a surprising fidelity. Vikander stars as Ksenia, the object of Vadim\u2019s affections, who drifts in and out of his life over the decades as he transforms from an idealistic young artist into a chief architect of Putin\u2019s regime. Ksenia evolves, too \u2013 from punk provocateur to fur-draped oligarch\u2019s wife \u2013 yet remains the film\u2019s moral counterweight, pushing against Vadim\u2019s ambition. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like she\u2019s a mirror to the beauty of what Russia could be,\u201d Vikander tells me.<\/p>\n

Vikander\u2019s career has traced a similarly circular path, taking her from Europe to the US and back again. She was raised mostly by her mother, also an actor, after her parents\u2019 divorce, and trained as a ballet dancer in Stockholm before an injury intervened and forced a pivot to acting. \u201cI always felt like Europe is where I have my base,\u201d she says. Hollywood, though, remains firmly on her radar. She follows the Oscars religiously. \u201cObviously, I watch all the [nominated] films each year,\u201d she says, matter-of-factly. \u201cI didn\u2019t watch it live this year because I have a young family, but I\u2019m always the first one to wake up and check in in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PowerPower couple: Vikander and Michael Fassbender have been married since 2017 and share two children (PA)<\/p>\n

She remembers her night at the Dolby Theatre, when she won Best Supporting Actress, and the slightly surreal fact that it was also where her and Fassbender\u2019s parents first met: \u201cThat was a pretty wild moment.\u201d He was nominated the same year for his role as Apple founder Steve Jobs in Danny Boyle\u2019s biopic. It meant a lot to her. \u201cI lost my mother a few years back,\u201d she says, \u201cand the fact that I had my family there and having that experience\u2026\u201d She trails off \u2013 the rest does not need saying. It was also the year the Academy experimented with a massive digital clock that counted down the winners\u2019 speeches on stage: 30, 29, 28\u2026 \u201cI don\u2019t have much memory of my speech other that clock, to be honest,\u201d she says. \u201cThe moment I got emotional was when Ex Machina won for special effects, because I had spent so much time in the green room!\u201d<\/p>\n

With French director Assayas, Vikander has found a collaborator worth her time away from home. They previously worked together on Irma Vep, in which she played a disillusioned American movie star drawn into a remake of a French silent film. She trusted him to handle the sensitive source material at the heart of The Wizard. \u201cWe had so many Russians and Ukrainians working in this crew, and that was extremely important for Olivier making this film,\u201d she tells me. \u201cTo get to be immersed in that real culture with real people was also a great experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"VikanderVikander brought an eerie humanity to her humanoid robot in \u2018Ex Machina\u2019 (2014) (Universal)<\/p>\n

For his part, Law has said he did not fear any repercussions from portraying Putin, despite the well-documented risks faced by many of the Russian leader\u2019s critics. \u201cWe weren\u2019t looking for controversy for controversy\u2019s sake. It\u2019s a character within a much broader story,\u201d he said at the film\u2019s Venice Film Festival premiere last year. Vikander claims she was similarly unfazed, noting that Empoli\u2019s novel had already laid the groundwork and that the film is clearly flagged as a fictionalised account. Nevertheless, \u201cI very much support the strength of and the power of art in these conversations,\u201d she says, pointedly. \u201cI think we find ourselves in a world right now where there might be a fear of making comments or speaking up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watching The Wizard, it\u2019s hard not to draw comparisons to The Apprentice, Ali Abbasi\u2019s incendiary 2024 biopic starring Sebastian Stan as a desperately approval-seeking young Donald Trump. That too was \u201cinspired by true events\u201d and, unsurprisingly, came under immense scrutiny from the US president, who described it in trademark fashion as a \u201cdefamatory, politically disgusting hatchet job\u201d. Would Vikander appear in a film about Trump, knowing the scale of Maga backlash that would inevitably follow? \u201cWhat that film did, and that ours did, is it actually went places where you have to try and visualise the world from maybe the other perspective to your own,\u201d she says, with typical Scandinavian diplomacy. \u201cTo not shut down conversation, to actually try and understand where thoughts, ideals, issues, come from is the most essential thing for us to do if we believe that something needs change,” she argues. \u201cIn that sense, I think both those films did that. It\u2019s not about simplifying anything, but about trying to paint a broad picture of those people and why and how they\u2019ve made certain choices or done what they\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Swedish actor inherited a billion-dollar franchise in \u2018Tomb Raider\u2019 (2018) (Warner Bros)<\/p>\n

As our conversation draws to a close, we gravitate naturally back to her family and the unique arrangement she and Fassbender have as two of the most sought-after actors in the business. Until recently, she says, they had avoided any scheduling clashes. Last year, they were both in London \u2013 Vikander making her West End debut in Simon Stone\u2019s reimagining of The Lady from the Sea and Fassbender filming the second season of the Paramount+ spy series, The Agency. \u201cIt was interesting to have months being like a family that actually\u2026 We both went to work in the morning and came back in the evening.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a longing there, amid an impossible conundrum. Fassbender is currently filming a new Netflix series, playing the patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr of the American political dynasty. Presumably, when his turn comes to an end, Vikander will begin filming The Worst, a buzzy British dark comedy, alongside her old co-star Knightley and Jamie Dornan. Whatever lies ahead, it seems inevitable that Vikander and Fassbender\u2019s talent will keep them in demand, and their lives perpetually in motion.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Wizard of the Kremlin\u2019 is in cinemas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[200017,430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-385565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-british-academy-film-awards-gala-2026-pa2026","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}