Paul Dano hasn’t talked about his new film yet. “You’re my first,” the American star laughs to The Hollywood Reporter in his first interview about the Venice-bound political thriller. “So let’s see.”
It’s another midweek New York day for Dano, but in no time at all he’ll be setting foot on the lido — for the first time in his career — to present Olivier Assayas‘ The Wizard of the Kremlin, premiering in competition on Aug. 31. The French filmmaker is beloved on the festival circuit having served on both the juries in Cannes and Locarno. He won best screenplay in Venice for his 2012 movie Something in the Air and in 2016, took home best director on the Croisette for Personal Shopper with Kristen Stewart.
But it was the five-and-a-half-hour TV show/movie hybrid project Carlos (2010), centered on the life of Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, that caught Dano’s attention. “Carlos, in particular, I think is a pretty astonishing piece of work,” Dano says about getting the opportunity to work with Assayas, a filmmaker he describes as “a fiercely intelligent human being.”
This precursory knowledge came in handy when flipping through Assayas’ and Emmanuel Carrère’s Kremlin script. “Knowing the scope he could achieve, the length of time this covered — it was quite an ambitious piece on first read,” Dano says, recalling that there was something “lean and spare” about the draft. The desire to sign on was immediate. “It was pretty cut and dry, frankly: if I’m going to try be an actor, this is the kind of work I have to challenge myself with.”
In The Wizard of the Kremlin, Dano, star of Little Miss Sunshine, There Will Be Blood, 12 Years a Slave and more recently, The Batman, is the enigmatic and cunning Vadim Baranov, the fictional character from Giuliano da Empoli’s 2022 novel of the same name. Now retired from business, Baranov is recounting his time as a theater director and reality TV producer-turned-politician. He becomes something of a puppeteer at a tumultuous time for the Russian government — the country is wading through the final years of the Soviet Union and into the stormy seas of the Russian Federation — and we become privy to Baranov’s influence over a middle-aged Vladimir Putin (Jude Law), who soars to power in the early 2000s.
Paul Dano in ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin’.
Venice Film Festival
“It’s called The Wizard of the Kremlin, right? Like The Wizard of Oz. And I think we all want to see behind the curtain,” Dano says about the elusive inner workings of the Russian court in Moscow. “I certainly found reading the book completely illuminating — getting a window into a country and into a world of politics and power that I do not know much about. There’s incredible psychological complexity and it has moral complexity as well, and I think that’s actually really important right now.”
Dano confesses he can’t believe the word he’s about to use even exists. “It’s amazing that ‘post-truth’ is something that is part of our lexicon,” he tells THR. “[But] I felt like we had the chance to explore a character like Baranov and try to tell the audience something… And I do think that these politicians have played a big part in creating and perpetuating [a post-truth landscape]. The theater of power, the control of optics and information, and I think in some ways, the obliteration of of truth.”
Needless to say, the actor was “endlessly compelled” arriving on Assayas’ set: “I don’t know that I’ve ever kept reading so much about a subject matter while working on something.” Admittedly, it wasn’t an era of history that Dano was over-familiar with. He took to documentaries and books to get up to speed as quickly as possible — Kremlin‘s director and titular star were dedicated to creating a character they were both satisfied with.
“It feels very far from who I am, actually. So I was surprised how compelled I was by it,” says Dano about his soft-spoken, quietly commanding portrayal of Baranov. “It was like a new part of me getting tickled and getting awoken and having to work with: how do I lust for power? What’s my relationship to power?”
Baranov ended up taking a long time to craft. “He is not just based on one character, so you really have to just forge your own path. His father and grandfather were both victims of change in Russia, and [I thought about] what that might energize a young man to want. The desire to be great, to have purpose… He just found that the right vessel to work in ended up being in politics.”
Dano adds: “I think working in television was the first step to that, especially in trashy television and reality TV — something of the dark arts. You might set out to be a white wizard and you become a dark wizard. You know?” When THR suggests this reality TV-to-politician pipeline sounds awfully reminiscent, the actor simply nods. “I didn’t think [this] while we were making it, but when I saw it for the first time, I really thought it was about complicity, how many of us are complicit, how easy it is to be complicit.” Baranov’s alignment to Putin, he says, “is purely about being able to touch and wield and influence power.”
Law, in particular, had an abundance of material to work with embodying someone who remains at the forefront of the geopolitical stage. The final product is a no-nonsense and charmless ex-KGB agent who discovered an insatiable appetite for power when thrust to the top of the Kremlin food chain. For a split second, Dano considers what’s the more difficult task — playing a real-life politician or a fictional one. Then: “I would wager to say it’s scarier to play Vladimir Putin than probably many people. I know Jude put in a lot of work… And I’m sure he was scared, but he did not seem it one bit. I remember [on] his first day, I think I was more nervous to be working with him for the first time than he was to be playing Putin.”
The pair of them will join fellow castmates Alicia Vikander, Tom Sturridge and Jeffrey Wright on the red carpet for Kremlin at the end of the month. Dano is raring to go ahead of his Venice Film Festival debut — the star has a suit fitting booked after the interview to ensure he’s looking “snazzy” — but still, at the height of his career, he’s juggling movies with parenthood. Filming in Riga, Latvia for Kremlin wasn’t the most ideal of commutes for the father-of-two (Dano is married to fellow thespian Zoe Kazan), but he’s making it work. His approach to taking on roles is something akin to “an atom of energy bouncing off of one wall to go in the other direction,” he explains.
And while he might be a newbie on the lido, Dano’s feeling good about Kremlin. “I can’t wait to see what other people think,” he tells THR. “I hope that we have some fun reactions and I hope that it stirs something in the culture.”
What does Dano think about sending this film out into the world at a time when democracy often feels as precarious in the West as it does in Russia? “I suppose that is part of the energy in there, in terms of the characters, the creativity, the research,” he responds. “If I’m being honest, I think my first hope with film and with art is that it somehow just either moves you or provokes you in some way, shape or form. I don’t think we’re ringing the bell, it doesn’t quite feel like that. [But] hopefully we’re uncovering something and it resonates with people out there.”
“I learned a lot,” he adds, referencing the sweeping authoritarianism oft associated with the Soviet Union, a system some might say we now find scratching at the Western world’s door. “And I think we all have to tread carefully right now.”
