Warning: Spoilers for the finale of The Regime follow.
The Regime has come to a close on HBO, but Chancellor Elena Vernham’s (Kate Winslet) fictional European reign is far from over. That whole shtick with new beau Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schaoenaerts) and hating America? That was nothing. It was all just a “wobble,” Elena says, after nearly being killed in a civil war that takes place in her country.
“That’s right, a ‘wobble!’” The Regime creator Will Tracy says with a laugh on a Zoom with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “That’s the only way you can phrase it without having a complete collapse in her brain.”
We’ve spent six episodes watching the Vernham regime unravel under a joint partnership between Elena and Herbert. After alienating their people and every ally—including the ever-powerful Americans—a rebellion threatens the palace. As the country falls into complete disarray in the finale of the series, Elena must make a decision: Will she stay loyal to Herbert and his gonzo vision for the country, or will she take back her power as chancellor?
This is really a no-brainer. Needless to say, Herbert does not make it out of the episode alive—Elena will trade anything to maintain her tyranny. Below, Tracy unpacks the finale, from Kate Winslet’s accent and many wigs to Elena’s betrayal of Herbert and whether or not there’s a chance for a Season 2.
A moment that really struck me in the finale was when we finally see Elena with her wig off. She’s been sporting these powerful blonde hairstyles, but, underneath it all, she’s a balding brunette. What’s the significance in that?
From the beginning, Kate had the thought that the character would have thinning, not-great hair. In some ways, the character’s fear is that she’s all presentation. Beneath whatever the wig is saying in the scene or whatever her dress is supposed to be saying, to whoever she’s addressing in that moment, the mind within is not really saying anything. That’s her great fear. The hair gets to the heart of that insecurity.
We’re revealing that at the end. It speaks both to that problem that the character has and, also, finally, the veneer gets stripped away. There are little moments where her cognitive dissonance breaks and she really allows herself to acknowledge what’s happening to her in that last episode. We do see the brittle, vulnerable person underneath the wig. It sounds a bit trite, but I think it’s quite effectively played by Kate in those moments.
Right after that, Elena confronts Herbert about the Americans encroaching on the country. She tells him they can fight back, but then only a few moments later, Herbert winds up dead. Is she lying to him? Or does she not know he’s about to be shot?
Anyone’s interpretation is valid. But my interpretation is that they both, at this point, finally know each other and their vulnerabilities so well that, as soon as she starts telling him, “We’re going to fight it,” she knows that he knows that she knows—it’s another dream. It’s bullshit, but it’s like, “Let’s have one more of these beautiful bullshit dreams.” They both know it. He’s no political scientist, but he knows what the pressures are. Ultimately, survival is her only animated principle. She knows that there’s no world where this guy is spared. He has to be a sacrificial offering to the geopolitical gods to show that she’s learned her lesson.
Also, [she needs to] make him wear this hair shirt to pin [everything] on him, that there was someone in this regime who was trying to steer things in the wrong direction so that she doesn’t have to be accountable for her actions. She can press the reset button on the Nintendo and say, “Alright, we’re back to the old arrangement!”
Those dreams are such a huge part of Herbert and Elena’s relationship. Again, they’re an aspect of the show that can be left up for interpretation, but what’s your read on them?
To me, it’s right there in that first scene. The love story of the two characters begins right there in their office. I have young kids, so it’s pulled right from Sleeping Beauty—“Oh, I know you. I walked with you once upon a dream.” Right there, they begin this dreamy love story. When we see glimpses of their dreams, they’re often quite upsetting. But the dreams they talk about are like, “What if this was the kind of world where we could be powerful and make each other feel powerful and make our country feel powerful? We can tell the U.S. how things work. We can do land reform. We can have it all while still continuing this very luxurious lifestyle.”
The bigger dream is that we [Herbert and Elena] can make sense, that two people like us can have a loving, equitable partnership. But it’s starting from such a flawed foundation, because his pain and his traumas, he’s a product of the system. Well, she created the system. And then her mind’s just been warped by the years of unchecked adulation of people like him. They’re never going to get to a point where they can be honest brokers with each other and be on a truly level playing field, which is the only way that partnership—or any relationship—makes sense.
Everyone wants to know what happened to Oskar (Louie Mynett). But I want to know how Elena reacted when she realized he was gone. Does she even care that her fake son has disappeared?
She fancies herself someone with strong maternal instincts. She excuses herself in a not entirely convincing way on why she’s never had kids—some kind of cervix issue that sounds a little bit like, “Hmm, is that something you had the doctor to tell you because you wanted the doctor to say that you’re not able to have kids?” Essentially what she wants is the superficial joys of motherhood, which is a kid who adores you and makes you feel like a mother, makes you feel loved and powerful. But she doesn’t want any of the mess.
That’s ultimately how she functions as a leader—she wants the love, but she doesn’t want the mess of other people. She doesn’t want that actual connection with people’s lives, because as soon as you get close to them, then their pain becomes your responsibility. It makes you think about how you’re not able to fix them, and it also makes you think, “Hm, well, maybe I’m responsible for their pain.” It’s best to avoid all that and keep it at an arm’s distance.
So Oskar has just left her mind completely.
She can’t hold both ideas—survival, and preservation of this boy and whatever my status as his “mother” is—in her head at the same time. She just has to divorce herself from that idea completely. It’s all about movement. As soon as she starts feeling guilty, then all of her other crimes—both legal and extralegal and emotional—will come down on her and she’ll collapse.
Even when she’s out there in the world in Episode 6, confronting the world that she made, she’s not able to quite see that she’s responsible. It’s the same way people who commit terrible crimes or murder somebody, over the course of their criminal trial, will actually convince themselves that they are innocent and actually start to believe it. In some ways, I think O.J. Simpson thinks he’s innocent. He’s convinced himself, even though he knows he’s not. That cognitive dissonance is what [Elena] allows herself to survive.
What went into the decision to have Elena’s country remain nameless? Did it ever have a name?
No, the country never had a name. From the outset, I thought it would be cool to never really know where you are. Also, I was a little bit worried, because as soon as you pick a fake name, it all starts to feel a little bit like duck soup. Once you put a name to something—“unobtainium”—it starts to feel a little eyeroll-y. So I thought: Let’s just put that off until it becomes a problem that I have to deal with.
It just never became a problem. Even in writing the scripts, at no point—even on set!—did a problem ever arise where we were just banging our heads against the wall, saying, “This would be so easily solved if we could just say the name of the fuckin’ country.” That never happened. Everything was about [Elena] and, to a lesser extent, [Herbert] and their love story. The name of the country, and many other facets of the country, become subsumed in her name and her essence, which is how [Kate] designed the character. Hopefully it wasn’t a problem for viewers either. Might’ve been somewhat of an annoying problem for TV critics who had to keep saying “the country” or whatever.
Well, as I was watching, I kept worrying you’d slip the name in somewhere and I’d miss it.
No! I think that would be cruel.
Somewhat similarly, Kate has a vaguely European-ish accent. How did the two of you conceive of what that would sound like?
I can’t really take credit for almost any of that. All I ever said to any of the actors was—well, it’s kind of like the name. As soon as everyone’s doing the same fake funny accent, it starts to feel a little bit too satirical. And also, what is the accent? Do we just default to something that sounds central European or, even worse, something that sounds vaguely Russian? That tends to be the default. I thought, “Well, let’s just bypass the problem. Anyone can talk in their natural voice or however they wish to speak.”
Sometimes, when everyone’s trying to get on the same page with a voice—like a whole ensemble of actors—everyone’s just thinking about their voice. That gets in the way of things that feel emotionally honest or real, what really matters. Fuck the voice. Speak however you want.
Interesting. So that led to the somewhat-European, somewhat-Julianne Moore in May December accent.
Kate wisely felt that, for her, she needed something that spoke to the character and something that took her outside of herself, which is a wise thing that a lot of actors do. My only thought that I ever had was that, oftentimes with these figures, when they first arrive on the scene, these authoritarian figures, there’s something a little off about them. They feel a little funny. They sound a little funny.
People laugh at them because they’re so strange and implausible, like, “What, this person? They think they can be the leader?” And then it happens. They take that broken part of themselves that’s off or strange and it becomes part of their weird charisma because they don’t look like and sound like the way a politician usually looks or sounds. People find that appealing. That there might be something a little bit off about Elena was my only note, and [Kate] took it from there.
This show is billed as a mini-series and it comes to a conclusion, but would you ever see The Regime coming back for a second season?
I really did think of it as “one and done,” otherwise I would’ve structured it differently. There’s probably more stories you could tell with her. But in terms of big A-story plots about a regime like this, it kind of hit all the big milestone events. I don’t see how it’s possible, but never say never!
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