How to Play Putin

Keen sidestepped the head chair, saying, “I’ve sat at the end long enough this evening.” He looked the part—wolfish eyes, imposing cranium—but his affect was warm. Musa brought shots of horseradish and cranberry vodka, and they toasted: “Chin-chin!” Both actors had studied their characters’ quirks, like Kremlinologists. Stuhlbarg, who has a wall of Berezovsky photos in his dressing room, had watched a “Frontline” interview from “a year or so before he died—or was disposed of, depending on your perspective.” Berezovsky, he observed, had “a head bobble that I’ve factored in, in places where he was content with himself,” and, at other times, a mathematician’s intensity: “It’s absolute stillness—and then he pounces on the answer.”