Citadel is a global spanning spy series which is being hailed as a watershed television event. And with good reason. Created by Josh Appelbaum and Bryan Oh for Amazon Prime Video, the series boasts Avengers makers Joe and Anthony Russo as its executive producers and stars Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas as the leads in the flagship six-episode series that streams on April 28. The series will function as the satellite show with spinoffs from across the world. The Indian version, directed by Raj & DK, and starring Varun Dhawan and Samantha Ruth Prabhu, is already on the floors.
Recently, The Telegraph was part of the virtual audience of select global media that participated in the trailer launch of the high-octane series attended by the Russo Brothers, accompanied by their fellow executive producer David Weil and actors Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra. Here are the highlights.
A FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND SERIES, A LEGIT GLOBAL SPANNING TV EVENT
Joe Russo: This is a really unique television event. The concept was an idea that Jen Salke (head of Amazon Studios) presented to us a few years ago... the notion of telling a story that could be interwoven throughout the world. It would have a flagship show and then regional shows, written, produced and directed by regional talent that could interweave with the flagship show.
We thought that it was such a novel idea for a narrative, an amazing way to create a really diverse global community of storytellers to tell a giant mosaic of a narrative together. And after our work on the Marvel films and spending so much time travelling the globe, this was really exciting to Anthony and me.
Anthony Russo: Joe and I had never heard a premise like this before. As storytellers, we really love the engagement of the global film community. And we went to work trying to find the right story that could fulfil that ambition.
Joe and Anthony Russo
THE CORE OF CITADEL
David Weil: Citadel is a story of two top spies. There’s Mason Kane, played by Richard Madden, there’s Nadia Singh, played by Priyanka Chopra Jonas. They are top spies in the most powerful spy organisation you have never heard of, called Citadel. And that’s, of course, by design. The day we meet them is the day that Citadel falls. It’s brought down by this nefarious new spy syndicate called Manticore.
We then cut eight years later. We pick up with Mason Kane, he’s living this quiet life in Oregon with his wife and daughter. He has no memory of who he was or what his past was. Until one night, a gentleman by the name of Bernard Orlick, played by the one and only Stanley Tucci, knocks at his door and needs his help to take down Manticore before they create a new world order.
Mason discovers that Nadia is still alive and the two of them journey the world taking down Manticore and unravelling the very dangerous secrets of their past. That’s just the first episode! There’s a lot more.
What’s so both beautiful and ambitious about this entire spy universe that we’re creating is that we’re doing it in tandem with partners all around the world. We have announced the India series and the Italy series.
It’s not just a Western point of view (through which) we’re viewing the story. We really are doing something original. And really holding hands and building this at the same time with our fellow creators and producers.
If the creators in Italy or India have an idea in the middle of the night and call us and say, ‘Hey what do you think about this for a character in your series?’ We can do it, we can really try and build together in that way.
It gives you the license to dream and it allows for the best idea to always win.
CASTING PRIYANKA AND RICHARD
Joe: Both Richard and Priyanka get to play multiple versions of themselves with this notion that their memories have been erased and it allows them to create new characters who then have to rediscover who they were. And then their new personalities come in conflict with their old personalities. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that before... where you have multiple characters dealing with a crisis of personality and a crisis of conscience.
To have this cast, which also includes Stanley Tucci and Lesley Manville, to be able to portray these complex characters... this show doesn’t work without the sort of elegant powerhouse performances that they have all brought to the show.
THE PULL FOR THE ACTORS
Priyanka Chopra Jonas: The show has so many layers and complexities and there’s a word that we used from the beginning which was ‘duality’ for every character. What you see is what you don’t get. Don’t believe what you see. Everything is just conceptually crazy. And it’s just so exciting to be able to share it with the world because it’s been a long time in the making since it’s so ambitious.
Richard Madden: The joy of this has been being able to play these two very, very different characters, but both in the same body. And they are both the same man in lots of different ways, but in each version of them, you pull out different aspects of humanity and who we are as people.
One of them carries a lot of scars from the past and a lot of trauma. And the other one doesn’t carry any of that baggage. And that’s kind of what was exciting to explore about them... that how much of your character traits are built into you, and how much is inherited through trauma and experience?
Priyanka: Nadia carries a lot of baggage. She has to navigate really thick waters. She has to hold her head up high while her character’s changing, her life is changing all around her, but she has to stay centred because of the burdens that she carries.
That makes her just very juicy as a character for me to play because every choice that is made by her is burdened and laden by so much pressure. And she thrives in it.
Richard and I had a great time. We dance really well together. This was just a really ambitious show and if we didn’t have each other’s understanding, this would have been hard to do.
Richard and Priyanka on the show
Richard: And keeping each other in check because sometimes you’re like, ‘Wait? What character am I now?’
Priyanka: ‘What do I know? What do I not know? What is it? What did we do that time?’ The show is completely non-linear. You are kind of going back and forth, and we had to remind each other of the story. It was like a big jigsaw puzzle. And it was so much fun to do.
ACTION & EMOTION
David: It’s very cutting-edge. It’s very modern storytelling. True to the genre, there are some very, very large set pieces throughout the series. The mission here was to bring large-scale spy storytelling to Amazon and to digital distribution.
Anthony: The technology we explore in the show is very forward-thinking. It is grounded in a world that we all know and recognise, but as you peel back the layers to the unknown, part of the unknown is just these very sophisticated tools and systems that spies can use to do things most of us can’t.
David: This show allows the viewer to sort of step into the world of Citadel and feel they too are an agent within it, a spy within it.
Priyanka: I have a scar on my forehead on my eyebrow. That’s courtesy of Citadel. I don’t even cover it anymore. Joe and Anthony brought the most incredible stunt team onto the show. They have worked with the best in the business. And we were really lucky to be able to work with people like that. I really think Nadia’s character is a badass, and she comes from a place of trusting her body, and her instincts. And I got to explore a lot of that with the stunts that we did. Every time I would read new pages, the stunts would just get bigger and bigger and bigger! And it was amazing to be able to imagine that and then walk on set and actually execute it.
Richard: Oftentimes, we see shows that are 80 per cent drama, 20 per cent action or vice versa. This show aimed to be 100 per cent of both. What we’ve managed to pull off in the middle of these huge sequences with explosions and cars blowing up and all of that is this really kind of intimate drama between these two characters and how they dance together.
Priyanka: Like the choices in the action pieces are made because of what their characters are feeling, and so there’s a story interwoven in all the stunts. That was just very cool and new for me as well.
Anthony: For them (Richard and Priyanka) to pull off this movie on a physical level, on an acting craft level, on an emotional level, it’s just something that Joe and I and David, we just sit back and marvel at as they bring it to life.
Joe: It’s exhausting to watch. I can’t imagine what it’s like to play.
Richard: We would be in the middle of a fight sequence and then go into a piece of drama together and try and pad down the sweat a little bit so that you looked good in a close-up, and then back into a fight sequence again. So we kind of really got to spin between it all at all times.
DEMOCRATIC SETUP AND GLOBAL REACH
Priyanka: All of these guys have an insane filmography. So you walk in with nerves about what to expect. But what I didn’t expect completely was the collaborative nature... like we would just sit down, talk about it, and if we had suggestions, ideas, changes, it would be done immediately. It was always about putting the show first and what was best for the show.
Joe: The reach of a company like Amazon and its digital distribution network for storytelling is unique... each region is critically important to the storytelling of the show. Everyone that we invite into this has an equal level of weight and importance to the story. I’m not sure that it’s something that we could have done with a theatrical release.
Anthony: This show is capitalising on two very exciting trends that we’ve seen in storytelling over the past several years, which is developing a strong passion for narrative universes that have a sprawling expression to them, an interconnected yearslong expression to them, where characters change and morph and move between different iterations. And at the same time, we’ve seen this rise in global filmmaking and the ability of non-English language movies and shows to travel to other cultures, and typically the more English language-dominated cultures. So this show is almost kind of taking those two trends and smashing them together for the first time.
Priyanka: It was so exciting to me as someone who worked for a very long time in a non-English medium to see the success of subtitled work in Englishlanguage territories. The ambition of this show, which was so attractive to me in the beginning, is the social experiment (aspect) of it. The flagship show is in the English language, you have an Indian show, you have an Italian show, and the characters and the storylines blend into each other and intersect.
Are the audiences of the Italian show going to want to watch the Hindi language show, where they have no similarity in language? That’s so exciting and interesting to me, the cross-pollination of cultures and how entertainment goes beyond borders and language now. It’s just about storytelling.
Which is your favourite international film/ series starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas? Tell t2@abp.in
