The series "Ekaterina Great" this year has become a notable event. The historic era of the XVIII century, the costumes stitched by genuine lecales, and Marina Alexandrov as an empress. Womanhit talked with the actress - about the series and not only.
- Marina, you are not first playing a historical character. I remember your work in the TV series "Star of the Epoch", where you played Valentina Serov, and here, of course, the scale of the personality is even more serious. How did you perceive the offer to play Empress Catherine and did not give you responsibility?
- I believe that this role is a gift and such a multifaceted person, which was Catherine Great, would not refuse any actress to play. I initially understood that the image of Catherine is in the minds of any Russian citizen, and even more so in people who studied the story. But each of them is in the head - their own Catherine, so I could not please everyone. It was important for me to create my character, the origin and the formation of the personality of which would happen in front of the viewer. I wonder what it was in the period we were shielded - from her arrival to Russia to coronation. To a certain extent, I was given creative freedom, and then, we shot no documentary cinema, but still an artistic work. To some extent, this is a fairy tale based on the life of the Great Woman. The film has historical facts that intertwined with "historical inaccuracies", logically woven into the scene line of the script. But all the characters, of course, were in her life, and she went hard for becoming an empress.
- How did you manage to penetrate her inner state to understand how her character originated? I had to reread a lot of literature?
- I read a lot of literature, but then I refused it. Books gave me a certain sense of the era and the circumstances in which she was immersed, but I still had a scenario framework in which my character lived. Therefore, if I tried to insert certain facts or emotions in our artwork, which she worried, it would be a rotation with a manifold screenwriter.
- As far as Catherine has opened up for you in a new way compared to those knowledge about it, which you got at school?
- I initially knew enough about the Empress, I still, I was the Petersburg girl, grew among those architectural monuments that were built in her era. Of course, some new subtleties and the nuances that I learned by reading her own diaries and memories of contemporaries were opened for me. But in all this, I brought my own thoughts. For example, it made her alternative diary for himself, consisting of letters to Peter. Flight of creative fantasy, and it was very cool. Such a diary did not really exist, but it helped me to create her inner world, feelings and thoughts, which then managed to embody on the screen.
- I think you really helped to enter the image and historical costumes partly delivered from Europe. There are very complex dresses, which, probably, is not easy to wear?
- It was the dresses of incredible beauty, and I felt very harmoniously in them. I am probably a person of the past, and when I play some historical characters, I feel comfortable. I am very grateful to our film crew with which we lived side by side of some time. These people stood behind my back, defeated, holly and cherished and thought over each of my image in each scene. I understood that even the color of the dress or some separate item play a certain role. All this we discussed to the filming. Repeatedly met with an artist on the makeup, which marina is also called, came up with hairstyles, chose decorations, watched me, and what is not, and I was looking for some compromise that I would give me a feeling of the historic era, and would not interfere with working in Frame. I was surrounded by one of the best teams in my life, with which I worked, and the brilliant operator Maxim Shinkorenko, who created images of incredible beauty and very accurately transmitted some psychological moments. I got some incredible feeling that some kind of rebirth really happened in me, and I felt my acting nature in a new way.
"On the set there were incredible beauty dresses, and I felt very harmoniously in them." .
- Did you leave yourself some detail of the props or costume?
- Not. But for each member of the film crew, I made a coin with the inscription: "From Catherine Marina." And they, in turn, prepared a surprise to me - on the last shooting day, dressed in t-shirts with my photo. I came to the playground and did not notice anything, because everyone was in jackets and jackets. And then at some point they unzipped them, and I saw T-shirts with my portrait there. It was very touching. I still get a lot of responses to this series, and many people stop me on the streets and ask: "Tell me, will the continuation be? .."
- Part of the filming took place in ancient Czech castles. What is the atmosphere felt inside these buildings?
- In the Czech Republic, an incredible number of beautiful castles that are in private ownership. On the one hand, the owners have a reverent feeling for these buildings as their own, and not as a state. On the other hand, they gladly go to concessions: we were lying there in vintage beds, washped with jugs, looked in the mirrors, which belong to that era. We really wanted to plunge at that time. True, there is no central heating, so it's very cold in the rooms. Not only floors, but also all exhibits, paintings, curtains are just ice. Moreover, we were filmed in March-April, so it was warm enough to warm up.
- You don't seem to have forgotten about the morning journey?
- We were very lucky, we lived almost in the castles themselves. At night there was a hotel, and we actually left the same door to another. Each castle had his own park - they are crazy beauty there, somewhere they are more enlarged, somewhere natural. And here in one of such wild parks somehow in the morning on the jog, I met deer, and in another hare ran in me. And on the site, we generally entered the frame of Pavlin, and all this only because of these parks due to care and care.