Rachel Weisz has built a career playing women who refuse to be easily understood. From the scheming Lady Sarah in The Favourite to the twin gynecologists in Dead Ringers to the grieving widow in The Constant Gardener, she specializes in characters whose surfaces hide depths that aren’t immediately apparent.
In Vladimir, the new Netflix limited series, Weisz brings that complexity to an unnamed protagonist—a literature professor whose obsession with a younger colleague threatens to unravel her carefully constructed life.
Weisz’s character is a writer and professor who has ruled her small-town liberal arts college’s literature department with her husband for decades. But now, as she puts it in the show’s opening moments, “it has come to my attention that I may never again have power over another human being.” This is a woman losing her throne, watching her relevance fade, and desperately seeking something to reignite her creative spark.
She finds it in Vladimir, played by Leo Woodall, a celebrated novelist in his early 30s who joins the faculty and becomes the perfect vessel for her projections.
Creator Julia May Jonas, adapting her own 2022 novel, has constructed a narrative that Weisz describes as “a heightened fairy tale of desire.” The protagonist tells her own story, which means the audience sees everything through her potentially unreliable lens. “The protagonist is reliable in the sense that she wants to control her narrative,” Weisz explains. “The narrative she tells isn’t always accurate.
But that seems like a very human trait, to adjust the truth for one’s audience when things are going out of control.”
John Slattery plays John, the protagonist’s husband of 30 years and the English department chair currently suspended due to a Title IX hearing involving affairs with former students. Their open marriage, once a symbol of anti-establishment rebellion, is now strained to breaking. “John and the protagonist love each other very much, and there’s a lot about the marriage that really works for them,” Weisz notes, but “he’s pushed her right to the edge of what she can handle with his behavior.”
Woodall’s Vladimir is deliberately inscrutable. “Because the show and the story is told through the protagonist’s point of view, a lot of what you see of Vlad, by nature, is up to interpretation,” the actor explains. “There are a lot of moments where you’re supposed to wonder what the intention was—a hand touch or a lingered look or a little bit of flirting.
Was it flirting? Was it friendliness? Was it real? Am I crazy?” This uncertainty drives the narrative, as Weisz’s character projects her desires onto a man who may or may not be reciprocating.
Jessica Henwick plays Cynthia, Vladimir’s wife and an adjunct professor struggling with her own mental health. The protagonist projects her insecurities onto Cynthia, constantly reminding colleagues that she’s merely an “adjunct.” The supporting cast includes Sasha Frolova as Sid, the protagonist’s daughter; Tattiawna Jones as Alexis, Sid’s girlfriend; and Kayli Carter as Lila, a former student who joined the Title IX case against John.
Weisz threads the delicate needle of making an unreliable narrator sympathetic. Her protagonist is passionate, a fantasist, desperate to be seen as a good mother while making increasingly questionable choices. “As you’re going to grow into an older woman, you’re going to be asked to just want less, take up less space, be more of service,” Jonas notes. “She’s really just not ready to do that at all.”
Vladimir is incendiary television—provocative, uncomfortable, and anchored by a performance that reminds you why Weisz is one of our most interesting actors. She makes desperation look like strength, obsession look like creativity, and delusion look like truth. Whether you trust her narrator is up to you. Whether you can look away is not.
Stream Vladimir on Netflix now and watch Rachel Weisz deliver a master class in controlled chaos and unreliable narration.
Also Read: Joe Manganiello Stars In One Piece Baroque Works – Netflix