Highlights
- Star City, Apple TV+’s spinoff to For All Mankind, their alt-history of the Space Race, has cast Rhys Ifans as their first major character.
- In a history where the Soviet Union beats the US to the moon landing, Ifans will play the Soviets’ Chief Designer, the driving force behind their space program.
- Apple TV+ announced the spinoff series in April 2024 alongside news of For All Mankind’s fifth season renewal.
Apple TV+’s Star City
Star City is an expansion of the For All Mankind universe created by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi. They will executive produce the new series along with Maril Davis of Tall Ship Productions. Wolpert and Nedivi will showrun Star City.
RELATED: Apple TV+ Announces For All Mankind Spinoff Series
The new series will begin at the precise moment as For All Mankind did when a Soviet cosmonaut was the first person to land on the moon. But Star City will tell the Soviets’ story. “Our fascination with the Soviet space program has grown with every season of For All Mankind,” said executive producers Wolpert and Nedivi in April 2024. “The more we learned about this secret city in the forests outside Moscow where the Soviet cosmonauts and engineers worked and lived, the more we wanted to tell this story of the other side of the space race.”
Chief Designer
As the Chief Designer, Rhys Ifans‘s role may parallel For All Mankind’s Margo Madison’s (Wrenn Schmidt) or, more probably, her mentor Werner von Braun (Colm Feore). Historically, Sergei Korolev was the Soviet space program’s Chief Designer, responsible for the first human spaceflight. However, the real Korolev died in January 1966.
The Kremlin hid Korolev’s identity as Chief Designer during his lifetime. Even those in the space program only ever referred to him by “Chief” or the initials of his first and middle names, “SP.” Will Ifans’s role in Star City also be cloaked in government-decreed anonymity? If his character is based on Korolev, will there be a Vladimir Chelomey to dog his days and haunt his nights?
RELATED: Read our For All Mankind recaps
With the time rollback to 1969, many For All Mankind characters may appear as their young selves. Specifically, Sergei Nikulov (Piotr Adamczyk) could return. Who was he before meeting Margo? What light will Star City shed on the risks the Soviets took to win the space race?
Seasons 1-4 of For All Mankind are streaming on Apple TV+.
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