Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner’s next show is a bold undertaking. Set in seven countries, using eight languages and featuring over 200 speaking parts, The Romanoffs centres on the separate stories of people who believe themselves to be descendants of the Russian royal family.
Speaking at an Amazon Prime Video launch in London on Tuesday, Weiner said that he had spent a lot of time binge-watching shows since Mad Men concluded, and wanted to create an anthology-style show where any episode could be watched without prior knowledge of another.
“We’re also lucky enough to go on once a week [as opposed to all episodes being released at once],” he said, “so that people will be able to have a conversation about each episode and catch up,”
His new subject of Romanoff imposters may seem niche, but Weiner claims that it taps into a wider embracing of identity by modern society.
“With The Romanoffs – I feel like that’s an issue for everybody right now; who are you connected to?” he continued. “The world is so divisive, we’ve become more and more isolated, and we kind of cling to those aspects of our life that form our identity. It produces a few things, it can make you say ‘I’m entitled, don’t they know who I am?’ or, ‘I’m really special and nobody knows that’, or ‘I’m nobody, why would I coast on that?’”
The Amazon Prime show features some familiar Mad Men faces including Christina Hendricks, John Slattery and Jay R Ferguson, but also new additions like Isabelle Huppert, Aaron Eckhart and Corey Stoll, along with a host of relative newcomers.
Speaking to The Independent at the launch, Weiner discussed how “painful” it had been witnessing tribalism first-hand around the globe during shooting.
“Making an actual international show that’s in eight language, seven countries – and a boat, I don’t know what country that counted as – and that has 200 speaking parts in it, that is actually international, that has subtitles, that was a way of saying like... I’m a patriotic person, but being abroad this last year and seeing people’s tribalism it’s very painful. It doesn’t feel like the Olympics, you know, I don’t feel any good version of it.”
The Romanoffs season one begins on Amazon Prime on 12 October.
