Mary Elizabeth Winstead on the fun, games and humanity of A Gentleman in Moscow

Open this photo in gallery:

What a difference a few years make. When Amor Towles’s novel A Gentleman in Moscow came out in September, 2016, its story of a wealthy Russian count imprisoned in the cushy Metropol Hotel after the 1917 revolution was universally praised for its charm. But though the new Paramount+ limited series adapted by Ben Vanstone retains the book’s arc – Count Alexander Rostov (Ewan McGregor) befriends the servants who wait upon him and gradually becomes one of them – it arrived March 29 in an atmosphere much more skeptical about the 1 per cent.

“It is interesting to wonder why we should care about this man who comes from such privilege,” Mary Elizabeth Winstead said during a press blitz in Toronto last week. She plays Rostov’s lover, the flamboyant actress Anna Urbanova, and in real life is married to McGregor. “But we do, because it’s so beautifully told. We fall in love with his adamance that whatever happens, he’s not going to crumble.”

The series, shot in Manchester and populated by actors who speak in their own English accents, begins feather-tiara light. Yes, dissenters and “social parasites” like Rostov are being shot in the streets (he’s spared because he wrote a popular pro-revolution poem). But inside the splendour of the hotel, which Rostov explores alongside Nina (Alexa Goodall), a precocious child guest who owns a skeleton key, it’s mostly fun and games.

Rostov transforms his drab attic rooms into a luxurious garret and beguiles the staff, guests and Communist apparatchiks with his sparkling conversation and impeccable manners. Winstead sweeps into Episode 2 with haughty, old-Hollywood aplomb, all barking wolfhounds and backless gown, and promptly wraps Rostov around her bejewelled finger, summoning him for vigorous rolls in the hay and then booting him out at her pleasure. The sets, props and costumes are magnificent. (The couple snagged a few dresses and pieces of furniture for their homes in Scotland and Los Angeles, where they co-parent their two-year-old son and McGregor’s four daughters from a previous marriage.)

But as Rostov’s detention continues for five, 10, 20-plus years, and the promises of communism are violated, the series deepens, touching on themes of loyalty, self-sacrifice, parental responsibility and the idea that humans, as Towles wrote, “deserve not only our consideration but our reconsideration.”

“You can see it as a reflection on what’s happening now in Russia, and how the ground was laid for that,” Winstead said. “But it’s also about finding purpose in life, which is to connect in big and small ways with people you love, and to hold onto that.”

As well, the series asks questions about moral compromise that feel urgent: How many concessions can you make, how many horrors can you ignore, before your soul erodes? If you were introduced, as Rostov and Anna are, to people whose cruelties you abhor, would you shake their hands out of kindness – or self-preservation – or would you refuse on principle?

“It’s hard enough to be an actor now, trying to be nice to who you’re supposed to, and to do and say the right things,” Winstead said. “Imagine if falling out of favour means that you disappear and no one hears from you again?”

Winstead is 39; she’s been acting since she was 13, in everything from horror (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) to action (Birds of Prey, Live Free or Die Hard) to indies (Smashed). She played Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and met McGregor when they co-starred in Season 3 of Fargo. On various sets, or in discussions with agents who said things such as “If you want to be on prestige TV, everybody’s taking their clothes off,” or during supposed filmmaker meetings that turned into suggestive dinners, she “smiled and nodded my way through a lot, without saying anything, because I didn’t want to look like the loser who has a problem,” Winstead said. “I was lucky that things didn’t go beyond just discomfort for me. But those discomforts add up over time.”

Now she’ll simply stand up and leave those situations, and she believes younger actors should, too. “Things have evolved since I was starting in the 1990s. Young people today know right from wrong in abuses of power. They know when someone who’s hiring them for a job is putting them in a compromising position.”

(Speaking of hiring, Winstead was recently interviewing potential business managers. One told her she “had to take into account that my finances were going to dwindle after I turned 40.” He didn’t get the job.)

Another thing that’s changed for the better in recent years: On A Gentleman in Moscow, an intimacy co-ordinator supervised Winstead and McGregor’s sex scenes. “For both of us, it was a comforting thing,” she said. “Just because we’re married doesn’t mean we won’t have questions about the choreography of it. It’s amazing to know that this is what film sets will be like from now on.”

Romantically torturing her husband’s character was “delicious” though, Winstead admits. “Ewan is so much fun to act with. We’re a pretty grotesquely lovey-dovey couple in real life. We really love to charm one another on screen. We like to needle each other, make each other laugh, but in character. We both revel in the scenes, that’s part of what we connect over as actors.”

The showrunner’s stated mission for A Gentleman in Moscow was a lofty one – “To capture the breadth of human experience” – and by the end, both Anna and Rostov have suffered loss: her state-sponsored career; some of his dearest friends. “To be with my partner doing these scenes about love, parenthood and sorrow hit me so hard, harder than I expected,” Winstead said. “I think it will resonate with a lot of people, coming out of a pandemic, to watch a man who’s isolated yet learns how to find closeness and his humanity. I hope people come away feeling hopeful, that we can feel warmth for our loved ones and the people in our orbit. That we can reach out and connect.”

Sign up for The Globe’s arts and lifestyle newsletters for more news, columns and advice in your inbox.