‘Patriots’ Star Will Keen: How I Got Vladimir Putin Ready for Broadway

Focus on Will Keen’s right hand for the duration of Peter Morgan’s Broadway play, Patriots (Barrymore Theatre, booking to June 23) in which he plays Vladimir Putin, and you will notice it stays immobile—or as still as Keen can possibly make it. His Putin is so menacing the audience tangibly stills with his every icy appearance; at London’s Almeida Theatre—where Keen first performed the role that he won an Olivier Award for—he was so convincing he was booed at some curtain calls.

“I have studied lots of videos of Putin, and it is actually something he does that people speculate is part of his KGB training,” Keen said of the immobile hand, while sitting in his incredibly tidy dressing room one recent afternoon. “Various other ex-KGB people do the same, and it’s speculated that it’s for keeping their hands next to a gun or whatever weapon they may have—and need fast—in their right pocket.”

Patriots, directed by Rupert Goold, follows the relationship Putin has with Boris Berezovsky (Michael Stuhlbarg, recently in the news after being attacked while out jogging), the Russian oligarch who first courted Putin when the latter was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. In their first encounters, Berezovsky thinks Putin will be as pliable as he and his other rich compadres need him to be, backing his political rise, fatally assuming it is they who will remain in control.

Read more at The Daily Beast.