Vladimir, a subversive eight-episode series, charts a middle-aged professor’s (Rachel Weisz) all-consuming obsession with her younger colleague (Leo Woodall). “It’s like a heightened fairy tale,” says Weisz, who also executive produces the series.
No matter how mischievous or unhinged her fantasies may be, they unfurl onscreen as she cooks dinner or zones out during a faculty meeting, providing an intoxicating escape from her stale reality. “It explores what women feel like they’re allowed to desire, and how they’re allowed to desire,” says Julia May Jonas, who helms the show, adapted from her 2022 novel. The protagonist’s crush is contagious, and her eight-episode undoing pulls you in like a riptide.
When we meet the unnamed protagonist, she’s feeling out of step. Her writing career has stalled, and each semester, fewer people sign up for her once-legendary capstone course. Even her only daughter, Sid (Ellen Robertson), keeps her at arm’s length. “She’s relatable because of her insecurities about aging,” says Jonas, “and her fears that as you grow into an older woman, you’re asked to want less, take up less space, be more of service.”
She no longer feels sexually desired, which strips her of an agency and a power she once wielded deftly and often. Her marriage to a fellow professor, John (John Slattery), is also sluggish, after years of being in an open relationship. She also has just learned that the liberal arts college where she’s taught contemporary fiction for decades is bringing a sexual assault case against John. “The series explores themes related to desire, obsession, sexuality, lust. It also delves into the world of campus gender politics and cancel culture,” says Weisz. His dalliances — which happened a decade ago and which he believed were consensual — involved students.
It’s against this backdrop that the protagonist is swept up by an all-powerful crush on Vladimir (Leo Woodall), a hot-shot young writer, who, along with his enigmatic wife, Cynthia (Jessica Henwick), joins the faculty. The protagonist quickly falls down a rabbit hole of obsession. “There’s definitely comedy and drama. It’s mischievous and a good tonal cocktail for exploring some very serious subjects and issues,” says Weisz. “Her fantasy is about the power of desire — the invigorating, stimulating, inspiring, and revivifying feeling that she gets from her obsession with Vlad. What it’s about is coming back to life in a certain way [after lying] dormant for some time.”
You have direct access to what the character is thinking and then also what she wants you to think. What she wants you to think is a little distant from the total truth.
Rachel Weisz
Vladimir also resuscitates a version of the protagonist’s former self. “It’s that feeling of being so full of creative energy because you have this lust or obsession for someone. Many people have felt that kind of opening [up] — how fun it is to want something,” says Jonas. “Her mind is going wild. She hasn’t been writing for 15 years, and he breaks her writer’s block.”
“He’s interested in her writing career. He asks her questions that other people don’t ask her,” adds Weisz. “Of course, it’s helpful that he is staggeringly handsome and beautiful. But it’s really his personality — his kindness and the fact that he notices her. She feels seen.”
The series’ title embodies Vladimir’s playful flipping of the script. “It’s a nod to novels that name themselves after the young woman who the man is obsessed with,” says Jonas. “This is the subject of fixation that we’re going to be talking about, and I wanted to flip the script and have it be coming from a woman’s perspective.”
To capture the specific tone of the book’s narrator, Weisz speaks directly to the camera, granting access to the protagonist’s innermost thoughts. But this mode just as often reveals what she’s not saying, or the tension between her perception, fogged up by her fantasy, and the reality. Says Weisz, “You have direct access to what the character is thinking and then also what she wants you to think. What she wants you to think is a little distant from the total truth.”
“In Shakespeare, if you have an aside, that’s the character telling the truth,” adds Jonas. “We thought, what if we flip that? It’s about self-presentation.” Weisz adds, “The protagonist is reliable in the sense that she wants to control her narrative. 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.”
Was that flirting? Was it friendliness? Am I making this up? Is it real? Am I crazy? It’s for every audience member to interpret.
Leo Woodall
This is especially true as it pertains to Vladimir, the titular object of her affection. “The show is told through the protagonist’s POV, so a lot of what you see of Vlad is up to interpretation,” says Woodall. “There are a lot of moments where you are supposed to wonder about the intention of that hand touch, or lingering look. ‘Was that flirting? Was it friendliness? Am I making this up? Is it real? Am I crazy?’ It’s for every audience member to interpret.” Jonas adds, “What makes the whole dynamic so fun is she really doesn’t know where she stands with him, and hopefully the audience doesn’t really know either.”
Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix
The protagonist’s unraveling — from her sexual awakening to her husband’s impending trial — is heightened by the pressurized campus setting. “It’s set in this delicious world of academia,” says Jonas. “I know the romance of fall — walking around, holding your books, and all these fresh faces. They’re all falling in love with the subject matter, and also the ridiculousness of the minutiae. All of the politics feel huge inside of this bubble, but it is very much a bubble.”
Led by this slippery, inscrutable narrator, Vladimir offers an antihero to root for, a heightened depiction of how it feels to get older as a woman, and a winking sense of mischief and sexiness. “The story we’re telling ourselves in our heads is so much better and more exciting than the one that actually exists in reality, especially when it’s that kind of obsession,” says Jonas. “It’s all about the feeling and not about the actual reality of the situation.”
Fall down the rabbit hole of obsession yourself when Vladimir comes to Netflix March 5. In the meantime, read up on the show’s syllabus on Tudum.
