\n<\/p>\n
The first time that Ewan McGregor<\/a> and Mary Elizabeth Winstead<\/a> shot a scene together, they were in a bathtub, mostly naked. McGregor, in a maximally unflattering wig, was sticking his gut out as far as it would go.<\/p>\n \u201cYou were just trying to be as grotesque as you could be,\u201d Winstead said affectionately.<\/p>\n This was on a recent afternoon in the chilly basement of a midtown hotel where McGregor and Winstead perched on a love seat, his jacket over his shoulders, his hand on her knee. They met in 2017, on the set of the third season of \u201cFargo,\u201d<\/a> co-starring as Ray Stussy, a hapless parole officer, and Nikki Swango, his grifter sweetheart. (McGregor also played Emmit Stussy, Ray\u2019s twin.) Two years later, in 2019, they filmed \u201cBirds of Prey\u201d<\/a> but did not share scenes. They are also both participants in the \u201cStar Wars\u201d franchise \u2014 McGregor in the \u201990s and \u201900s films and the more recent \u201cObi-Wan Kenobi\u201d series, Winstead in \u201cAhsoka\u201d<\/a> \u2014 though again they did not share scenes. In 2021, Winstead gave birth to their son. The next year, they married.<\/p>\n Now, they have reunited onscreen for \u201cA Gentleman in Moscow,\u201d<\/a> which premiered Friday on Paramount+ and debuts Sunday on Showtime. An adaptation of Amor Towles\u2019s novel,<\/a> it stars McGregor as Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, a mustached aristocrat sentenced to house arrest in a luxury hotel in the years following the Russian Revolution. Winstead appears as Anna Urbanova, an actress and the count\u2019s sometimes girlfriend. Somehow, in the confines of the hotel, they make a life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In an hourlong conversation, in a hotel somewhat more modest than Moscow\u2019s Metropol, they discussed claustrophobia, facial hair and the benefits and detriments of working with a spouse. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n How did you get involved with \u201cA Gentleman in Moscow\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n EWAN MCGREGOR <\/strong>It came to me first. I loved the grand nature of the drama, the love and loss and romance. I feel like it\u2019s rarer and rarer to get a chance to play that stuff. At the heart of it, it\u2019s about a man who\u2019s learning to be a husband and learning to be a dad and crawling out of his ideas of the aristocratic way of life to find who he really is.<\/p>\n MARY ELIZABETH WINSTEAD<\/strong> You had hinted, cheekily, that there was a great female character in there. Reading the book, I just thought, \u2018Oh my God, what a great, juicy opportunity that would be to play her.\u2019 But I was very tentative because the last thing I wanted was to try to win a role and then have somebody think I was trying to get something out of being married to you. I just wanted to quietly say, \u201cI think it\u2019s a great role if you think I\u2019m right for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Did you ever worry that it would feel claustrophobic, shooting in these few hotel rooms?<\/strong><\/p>\n MCGREGOR <\/strong>It had to feel like that. It should feel like that. It focuses a magnifying glass on these characters.<\/p>\n WINSTEAD <\/strong>That\u2019s one of the great things about confined spaces. As an actor, it\u2019s exciting because there\u2019s nowhere to go but into the words. It\u2019s great to know that\u2019s going to be the focus, rather than pyrotechnics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Did you grow your own mustache?<\/strong><\/p>\n MCGREGOR<\/strong> I had to. I couldn\u2019t have a stuck-on mustache. I\u2019ve had them in the past and they\u2019re terrible to wear. You come in in the morning, you\u2019ve had to shave and then you put glue on that shaved skin, which is [expletive] horrible. Then you stick it on and it stops you from moving your face. The last thing you want to be thinking about when you\u2019re acting is not moving. So I grew my own.<\/p>\n During the strike, I didn\u2019t know when we\u2019d be going back, so I just grew a beard around it. Because you don\u2019t want a mustache in your real life. I mean, you do if you like mustaches, but I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n Tell me about Alexander.<\/strong><\/p>\n MCGREGOR<\/strong> He\u2019s an aristocrat. He enjoyed the high life of his class at that time. Then it\u2019s taken away during the revolution. He\u2019s allowed to live, but the rest of his class is destroyed. So he\u2019s somewhat lost.<\/p>\n And what about Anna? Is she a good actress?<\/strong><\/p>\n WINSTEAD<\/strong> Anna believes that she is. I do think she takes it very seriously. It\u2019s something positive in her life that gives her a sense of purpose. She does hang in there, even if she\u2019s not always a star. That has to count for something.<\/p>\n They have a superb meet-cute, when the count tames Anna\u2019s Russian wolfhounds. What\u2019s their initial attraction?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n WINSTEAD<\/strong> I instantly find him very intriguing. The way that he handles my dogs, it sparks a little something. Our repartee makes me further intrigued. Then hearing about him and knowing that he\u2019s imprisoned in this hotel, the mystery is interesting to me as a woman who gets bored very easily by most men that I\u2019m around. Over time, that leads to much, much more.<\/p>\n It\u2019s so lovely how much time it takes. It\u2019s many years into their relationship before they realize they\u2019re in love. There\u2019s something beautiful about that slow progression. Especially for Anna. She resists that feeling. But it hits her like a wave.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I understand that you didn\u2019t know each other before \u201cFargo.\u201d But Mary, is it true that you had a crush on him as a teenager?<\/strong><\/p>\n WINSTEAD<\/strong> The thing is, if you were a teenager when \u201cTrainspotting\u201d<\/a> and \u201cMoulin Rouge\u201d<\/a> came out, I don\u2019t think you could not have an awareness. But I didn\u2019t have any posters on my wall. I wasn\u2019t writing his name in my notebook.<\/p>\n Good, that would be creepy. What was it like working together on \u201cFargo\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n WINSTEAD<\/strong> We loved it.<\/p>\n MCGREGOR<\/strong> We did. It was amazing writing. I feel like there were two shows because I played the two characters. But our story line was amazing. To play Ray and Nikki, what a great pair, what a great partnership, what a great oddball couple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n WINSTEAD<\/strong> I remember meeting with Noah [Hawley, the showrunner] and my only question was, \u201cDoes she really love him?\u201d And he was like, \u201cYes.\u201d And that made it so much more interesting, to play a grifter with a heart, as cheesy as that sounds. So much more fun to have something real at the center of it.<\/p>\n Mary, earlier you alluded to a downside of working together, in that people might think you were offered a role for reasons other than your talent.<\/strong><\/p>\n WINSTEAD<\/strong> Of course, there\u2019s always going to be one person on the internet who makes that comment, but I\u2019m secure enough to not worry about that because I know the truth, which is that people want to work with me. When we were first together, I was up for a role in something that he was in. They were worried we would bring some sort of drama to the set, which we thought was very funny because we\u2019re not very dramatic people. But you have to let time deal with that. Now it\u2019s clear that we\u2019re a pretty levelheaded couple, that we\u2019re not going around smashing vases. Other than that, it\u2019s really been just upsides, which is that people who know us and like our work are happy and excited to put us together occasionally, which is a really lucky thing for us.<\/p>\n MCGREGOR<\/strong> There\u2019s no downside in terms of actually doing it. It\u2019s only great to go to work together, get to work together, come home together. It\u2019s as good as it could be, really.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What was it like working together this time?<\/strong><\/p>\n MCGREGOR <\/strong>It made it so much more fun to play all the cold-shoulder stuff at the beginning of the story. After they\u2019ve spent the night together, she won\u2019t speak to him or look at him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n WINSTEAD<\/strong> Then the later stuff, when things get deep, it was very emotional. I can\u2019t talk about it without crying. It was just all there, which is an amazing thing. It\u2019s just like, Oh, I\u2019m here in front of my partner. So I\u2019ll just let all those feelings wash over.<\/p>\n Did you like him with that mustache?<\/strong><\/p>\n WINSTEAD<\/strong> You know, I did. I did for a long time. But I did start to miss his face underneath it.<\/p>\n Will you work together again?<\/strong><\/p>\n WINSTEAD <\/strong>I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n MCGREGOR <\/strong>(simultaneously) Yes!<\/p>\n WINSTEAD <\/strong>We hope so. It\u2019s just about finding the right beautiful thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n