Andrea Riseborough on Co-Parenting With The Regime’s Dictator

“I spent a great deal of time moving air purifiers and bowls of steaming potatoes in and out of rooms.” Photo: Miya Mizuno/HBO

This article contains spoilers for The Regime episode five, “All Ye Faithful.”

After four-and-a-half episodes allowing her boss to cosplay as her son’s mother, Agnes, the loyal, long-suffering aide to The Regime’s dictator Elena Vernham, played by Kate Winslet, finally decides to seek freedom for herself and her child. As rebel forces storm Elena’s palace in a coup, Agnes searches frantically for her son, Oscar, so they can flee to safety in France. But she never finds him. Instead, Agnes is shot and killed instantly by one of the insurrectionists; her death is sudden, barely noticed in the chaos.

Agnes is played by the gifted Andrea Riseborough, who evokes quiet desperation just below the character’s surface right up until the moment she expires. The actress, who takes long, thoughtful pauses as she describes how she crafted the character, made specific choices to render Agnes relatable: She was the one who suggested to creator Will Tracy that Agnes be “the representative of the proletariat.” During discussions with Winslet while the two were filming another project, she decided to keep her hair short and her appearance unglamorous, a reflection of Agnes’s deference to Elena. And in keeping with the constant changing priorities of Winslet’s mercurial chancellor, Riseborough played the part with the malleability of a woman constantly hustling to satisfy her boss’s latest whim. “If I think about that time,” Riseborough says of her filming The Regime, “I think about Agnes pushing things in and out of doors.” Agnes is always in a rush, literally until the very end.

When you took this part, did you get to read all the scripts before starting production?
You know, I can’t remember. I came to it because Kate and I were shooting Lee and she mentioned she was about to do this. She thought I would be good for the part. Stephen Frears was attached, and I have always wanted to work with Stephen. He was the first person I talked to about it, and Agnes was a blank canvas at that point because the backstory had been slightly different. Then I’d suggested to Will that it would be wonderful if she were the working-class character through which we see the effects of all these political decisions — how this one person, in spite of trying to survive and also being complicit, is jolted around by a system that cares nothing for her.

You see that in Zubak, but Zubak has been harnessed as a tool for war against his own people, so he’s broken to the point of near madness. Initially, Agnes might have lived in the palace before, or her family may have run the place. We landed at her being the representative of the proletariat, the long-suffering worker.

When did you learn Agnes was going to die?
Six months before we started shooting. We all knew the whole story at the beginning. Kate is so brilliant as Elena and it was hysterically funny filming. That was one of the really surprising things as we got into it: how weighted it was. That was certainly on the page, but when you read something at first glance, the humor lifts you from the gravity. That led to a lot of hilarity on set because the situations were so impossible and ridiculous. I spent a great deal of time moving air purifiers and bowls of steaming potatoes in and out of rooms. If I think about that time, I think about Agnes pushing things in and out of doors.

There’s a lot we don’t know about Agnes. Did you put together a full backstory for her or did you go by what’s on the page?
I don’t love talking about all the processes because I think they’re very personal, and I wouldn’t want to jeopardize their effectiveness. But there’s such a great lead-up to most characters that you play — at least, there has been in my experience. I had quite a long stretch of time before playing Agnes to really let her settle in.

As we were shooting Lee, Kate and I talked about the relationship between Elena and Agnes and their backstory. At that time, I’d played a character who had gone through chemotherapy, so my hair was really short. The tufts of it were just growing back. Kate and I talked about the idea that perhaps Elena had requested a utilitarian look for Agnes because of her own insecurities. She requested that Agnes keep her hair short.

When we were all in prep together, that was when the realizations came: what was going to be appropriate, what was going to be authentic, what was going to be hysterically funny, and what was going to be horribly tragic. One of the horribly tragic things, unfortunately, is poor old Agnes’s trajectory. She moves in and out of rooms ghostlike and then is taken from us in such a cruel, anonymous, fleeting way.

Her death is so sudden.
It’s so abrupt, you almost don’t know it’s happened. The way that Jess Hobbs, who co-directed, and Stephen and Will constructed that scene so beautifully reflected how meaningless those lives are to people in power who have no idea what it is to work a day. They’re making huge decisions for people whose lives they have no relationship to.

When was it like to shoot that scene where the coup is happening? Obviously you’re acting, and you know it’s not real …
I’m not very good at knowing it’s not real. When an emergency happens, you’re propelled instantly to that fight-or-flight zone, which involves clarity of thinking. You become hypervigilant in the most useful ways, as we’re supposed to in those moments. It felt like there was just one thing to do, and that was to ensure Oscar’s whereabouts and safety. The only thing that was happening for her — up until the millisecond at the end of her life — was reuniting with Oscar. The only thing she was engaged in was Oscar’s safety. And then life ended. And that’s the tragedy. There was no moment of epiphany. It’s over, everything: the hope of escape, his future, any hope she may have had for herself — it’s all gone.

Was there ever a version of this that went differently, where she didn’t die?
I don’t know. I’ve actually not asked Will that.

Why do you think Agnes is so loyal to Elena? Why does she allow Elena to basically co-opt her son?
In those societies where we feel like we have an illusion of freedom, you perceive things through a certain set of familiar moral constructs. Whereas the reality with Agnes is that if she tries to leave, she will be shot.

She doesn’t really have a choice.
She doesn’t have choices. Before Elena takes a shine to Oscar, Agnes is complicit because, as one might in a situation of such terror, she’s self-preserving-ly maintaining this role within the palace because it gives her an illusion of power, so that she can cope and provide for her son and know that they’re not going to be starved or put in a position of horrible danger. They’re close to the enemy.

Then, unfortunately, Elena takes this huge shine to Oscar and thinks she wants to explore motherhood, so Agnes has absolutely no choice but to co-parent with a dictator. There are no options because Agnes has to stay alive to try and preserve Oscar’s wellness. Were she to rebel, that would probably end her life. And then Oscar would have no one.

Eventually, when a chink of light comes through that there might be hope of an escape, as that escape begins to be followed through, that could also lead to death. This is just the lesser of two evils at this point.

And for every character in this situation, if you don’t have some delusions, I don’t know how you would go on.
It’s a bit like having a period every month. You have to forget how bad it was, or there’s no way forward.

I was trying to think about a scenario in which Agnes survives, but then I was like, That wouldn’t even make sense in this show.
The reality is that the pawns in these situations are the people who suffer. And she is one of those pawns. It’s essential that we see that she is eradicated and that she goes quietly, unceremoniously, and all of the love that she’s put into this place — in the way that she has been able to show it — just dissolves. I haven’t spoken to Kate about this, but I’m sure Elena will miss Agnes as things move on. I’m sure she will miss her sorely and deeply. She was really maybe the closest woman to Elena, and as much resentment and anger and repressed rage as there was between the two of them, there was also a complicity.

This interview has been edited and condensed.