Trivia

Kate Winslet said of the outrageously dark and twisted spoof "I had never read a script like it, I I had never come across the character quite like her. And I knew that as a role for me, I had never played anything like her before and I wanted to do comedy. I love the fact that, yes, it's about a dictator, but she's also a female dictator. It's not a male dictator. And I knew the nuances and the feminine fragility that I could explore behind that mask."

Kate Winslet worked with a neuroscientist and a psychotherapist to try and understand trauma a bit better and how that can manifest itself in people's bodies and lives and how they move and how they speak, she added "because I wanted to make sure that I was rooting her in some kind of reality, it's really looking at her childhood, where her trauma began, and how that has stayed with her and how it absolutely impacts every single one of her close personal relationships." The toxic orbit surrounding Elena fueled Winslet's performance and allowed her to question what could make a damaged person turn so deadly an entire country would bend to their every whim, Winslet added: "It's her sense of entitlement and the abandonment issues that she clearly, clearly has. It's her fear of the outside world, how she speaks, and the things that she then subsequently feels she has to keep hidden as a leader because she's got to be beautiful and everyone has to love her. She just gets it all wrong. It's really kind of tragic. And that's where my empathy kicks in."

Showrunner Will Tracy pitched the show as "Downton Abbey (2010), but in an autocrat's palace."

Kate Winslet recalled intense feelings of insecurity when she first began to envision the show. The walls of text required to perform a public figure particularly one who gives as many scripted speeches as she does impromptu monologues gifting age old cuss words didn't help. She revealed "I was so terrified because it was a very daunting task, and so much dialogue, but honestly, the work and the prep that had been done by the creative team of writers was so phenomenal that as long as I was with that script and I was reading it over and over and over and over, and more and more, and deeper and deeper, I found that was the best way for it to sink into my bones. I knew that putting her together was going to be really challenging, and it was. But then ultimately playing her, once I'd done all the groundwork, I knew it would be a lot of fun, and it really was."

One of the inspirations for the character Chancellor Elena Vernham may have been Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko, who served as Prime Minister twice in the 2000s. Tymoshenko is known for her skills as a public speaker, and for her strategic embrace of traditional dress at public appearances. Many of Elena's hairstyles resemble the traditional Ukraining plaited hair that Tymoshenko has worn during her photo ops.