The Soviet Union repeatedly humiliated the United States in the Space Race, launching the first artificial satellite and putting the first humans in space. The U.S. caught up and then exceeded its Cold War rival after the Soviet program fell apart when its lead engineer Sergei Korolev died in 1966. But what if the Space Race played out differently?
Apple TV’s alt-history series For All Mankind imagines what the world might have looked like if Korolev had lived longer and put the first man on the Moon (spoiler alert: it made space travel so much more competitive that there were rival lunar bases in the ‘70s and competing trips to Mars in the ‘90s). Now the spinoff Star City is offering a peek behind that alt-history universe’s version of the Iron Curtain, and ahead of the show’s premiere, Polygon checked in with the show’s creators and stars for our 2026 Summer Preview.
Paranoia is constant in Star City, named for the isolated base hidden outside of Moscow where the Soviet spacecraft designers and cosmonauts worked. The program’s leader, played by House of the Dragon star Rhys Ifans, is referred to only as the “Chief Designer” in order to protect his identity.
“In a way that it wasn’t for NASA, the Soviet space game was very much all down to the genius of this one man,” Ifans says. “So much of the knowledge required to get them to space, only he had it, which explains why he was hidden away and kind of protected at such great lengths by the state.”
Ifans knew nothing about the Soviet space program before joining Star City, but he read everything he could about Korolev to prepare for the role.
“Ordinarily, a man like this would be celebrated by society,” Ifans says. “He’d be out on the streets in ticker tape parades time and time again. But I don’t think that ever was his driving ambition. His ambition is getting humans away from Earth’s atmosphere into space.”
The Chief Designer’s work is constantly undermined by Communist Party officials who value showy victories over missions that will advance science, and KGB agents who torture and kill innocents to cover up their failings.
“So much of the program that they were so proud of was based on the idea of secrecy and security,” For All Mankind and Star City co-showrunner Ben Nedivi says. “It felt only natural in telling this story that the intelligence apparatus and the KGB would be a big part of the story, much more than in For All Mankind.”
World War II veteran Lyudmilla Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin) leads KGB surveillance at Star City, often butting heads with the Chief Designer by prioritizing secrecy over mission success. As she tries to root out a mole working with U.S. intelligence, Raskova takes a special interest in Irina Morozova (Agnes O’Casey), an ambitious new KGB agent tasked with eavesdropping on the cosmonauts and their spouses.
“They are in such a strange relationship where they find each other alluring and fascinating,” Martin says. “With Lyudmilla, there’s the control and treating [Irina] like her toy or her pet, but then valuing her as well at the same time, or valuing the potential of her.”
Balancing the show’s spy thriller elements with the high stakes space missions and personal drama that drive For All Mankind was a challenge. The showrunners found inspiration for fitting the elements together in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar-winning 2007 film The Lives of Others and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller The Conversation, which both focus on people conducting audio surveillance.
“[Lyudmilla and Irina are] listening to the cosmonauts and the engineers,” Nedivi says. “That ended up becoming one of the fun things of working on the show because suddenly sound and the idea of voyeurism was something we were able to explore in a way we only touched on briefly in For All Mankind.”
The people being surveilled have to watch what they say and do, but the very act of surveillance deeply affects the spies themselves. Irina becomes obsessed with Tanya Markelova (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis), the carefree wife of one of Star City’s top cosmonauts.
“She spent hours of her life listening to her and she’s fallen in love with her,” O’Casey says “She’s so lovable. She’s everything Irina’s not.”
The first two episodes of Star City premiere on Apple TV on May 29. New episodes will release Fridays through July 10.
