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Armando Iannucci: I was saved from being a reject by comedy

The king of satire, back with a new film about Soviet-era Russia after Stalins death, talks about being uncool, Veep and building a spaceship in London

Armando Iannucci arrives for our 3pm meeting with a small amount of his lunch still clinging to his shirt. We discuss retouching the mark for the Observers pictures but, admirably, he doesnt seem to care either way. It is tempting to describe the 53-year-old Iannucci as the most feared political satirist of our age. Certainly, his output in the past decade the BBC sitcom The Thick of It, the companion film In the Loop, and latterly Veep has been untouchable in skewering the vanity, incompetence and plain childishness of people in power. But, in person, nothing about Iannucci is remotely scary: he is self-effacing, smiley, quick to laugh. At the end of the day, hes just a guy with a tomato stain on his shirt.

Iannuccis latest target is Stalin and his cronies. His new film, The Death of Stalin, is set in 1953 and depicts with unexpected historical accuracy the undignified scrabble for dominance that followed the demise of the Soviet despot. It is silly, moving and revelatory, all at once, with deft, pitch-perfect turns from Simon Russell Beale as Beria and Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev. Iannucci, who never likes to have fewer than seven plates spinning at any moment, has also just published a book on classical music, Hear Me Out, about a lifetime of listening to Mahler and Britten in open defiance of the keepers of the cool.

Was it easier than you expected to make a comedy about Stalin and his inner circle that was also factually accurate? Yeah. When we were researching it, we found out things like Vasily, Stalins son, really did lose the ice-hockey team in a plane crash. And because the comedy is the comedy of hysteria, you want to be true to what happened and how people responded. So anything that was so-bizarre-and-yet-true was a candidate for going in. I thought about having This is a true story, but then I thought, no, just watch it for what it is, and it would be great if you subsequently found out that the bulk of it was true.

These men are vicious, but your film also gives them a human side. They have families they fear for; they play practical jokes. Did your feelings towards them change? Um, no. But I did think, what must they have done to have survived and ended up so close to Stalin, and what has it done to them? The fact, for example, that he would almost taunt them and mock them and play them off against each other With all these things its about posing the question, What would you have done in those circumstances?

Power corrupts? Yeah, it was almost like Animal Farm by the end, and yet they all lived near each other and popped in and out of each others houses. He might have had your brother shot and all that, but they had to sublimate that as just part of the process of moving forward. But, you know, you read that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were the biggest enemies and are now reconciled. Im not saying they are like Stalin, but in that febrile environment where you see each other every day, in order to survive, just psychologically, you must have to close off a bit of your emotion.

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Watch a trailer for The Death of Stalin.

So there are lessons about todays political landscape? Trump gets all his closest associates in over the past three or four months, and has to say, By the way, youre fired because I need to survive now. So could you go away? And eventually hell be saying that to his daughter and his son-in-law: Youve now become an albatross, I cant be seen with you anymore. Or after the general election, Theresa May turns to her two very close advisers and says, Its you or me. And they all kind of understand that. Its like that thing in The Godfather: Its not personal, its strictly business.

Is it true there have been calls in Russia for the film to be banned? You say Russia its a person in a country of 200 million people. Just somebody somewhere said something.

Were you expecting a reaction? I was wondering what it would be. I was surprised to hear we sold it to a Russian distributor. Stalins been making a comeback. There have been busts of Lenin, Stalin and other key figures going up in Moscow for the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Its that sense of, dont be frightened of strong men. Thats the message in Moscow at the moment.

Theres a line in your book Hear Me Out where you describe film directing as an astonishing ego trip, and that you wouldnt recommend it to anyone who has the slightest psychotic tendencies. Is it a job you feel comfortable doing? Ha! It is, but you do spend all day ordering people around, and everyone will do what you say. My wife teases me when I finish a shoot that it takes about a week and a half before I stop going, Right, shall we have a cup of tea? You, get a cup of tea I can see how, especially if you do shoots that go on for months, you become like a medieval lord with all these serfs, just ordering them around and torturing them and asking them to tell jokes and fetch food.

As the creator and showrunner on HBOs Veep for the first four seasons was it a difficult decision to give it up in 2015? No. It might have been the British thing that we dont do that many episodes of TV shows in the UK. Plus, it was three months of the year going out to Baltimore, backwards and forwards, and it was an all-year-round thing of the writing, the shooting, the edit, the publicising and then the writing And I knew the show could carry on, but fundamentally Id taken it to where I wanted to take it.

The show will end next year with a final, seventh series. Do you know whats going to happen? No, no, no. They asked if I wanted to stay on, but I knew I was going to do Stalin and I just thought, I cant be on set and get a call saying, Can you look at this script? But its great, because I watch it as a viewer and you realise though I always knew this what an amazing cast it is and how funny they all are. And also, I genuinely dont know what they are going to say next, which is really great.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as vice-president Selina Meyer in Veep. Photograph: HBO

It was recently announced that youre making a new show with HBO called Avenue 5. Whats the idea behind that? Ive always wanted to do sci-fi, so this will be set mostly in space, in about 40 years time. Its not going to be Blade Runner, but there will be an element of realism to it. Ive been out to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and Virgin Galactic, looking at where it might be in about 40 years time. Ive mapped out the season and were writing the pilot episode and well shoot that sometime next year. And because its in space, its not location specific, so we can shoot it in a studio or a hanger in London. Well just build a spaceship here.

What impact do you think streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are having on terrestrial TV? Well, the good thing is that content producers writers and producers have more places to go. And also, whats great, and HBO paved the way with this: quality stuff is profitable. Thats their business model: youll only subscribe to HBO if you think youre going to get good stuff thats different from whats on the networks. So they need it to be better and well thought out and high production values and all that.

But is the quality always better? I do worry that simply because theres so much money available from the big streaming companies, theyll say, Oh well make your movie. We know no one else wanted to, and we realise why, because it was slightly indulgent or whatever, but well make it. And you watch it and you think, it was fine but For all the criticism of the studio process, if youre making something that costs someone else money and which is going to be available commercially, you want people to go and see it. So it does force you to think: have you made it as well as you can? Or have you really thought this through?

In Hear Me Out you write about the tyranny of the keepers of cool. Was liking classical music a reaction against them? Well, I was never really into fashion or clothes. I just wasnt that bothered. I wanted to read a good book. I was saved from being written off as a complete reject by the fact I could do comedy.

You started to learn piano in your 40s. Was that difficult? I found it hard. It was learning a language: Oh, I can speak music! And suddenly these dots and whatever started to make sense. But it was hard work. Some people can do it instinctively and I couldnt. My son would lean over me, hed be practising the violin, and go, No, no, no, its like this. And he hasnt had a piano lesson.

Do you listen to any non-classical music? I kind of like Radiohead, the Beatles, Bowie, its not extensive, but Im always trying. Whats interesting now is, because everything is available, kids can listen to Sinatra when theyre 12 and theres no real sense of: Youve got to listen to this because its out now. But you cant listen to that because thats from 20 years ago. They are a lot more experimental in what they are listening to and that then feeds into the music thats being produced. Its influenced not just by music from two years ago, but music from 20 or 30 years ago.

How can classical music stay relevant? Its up to the classical music establishment, for want of a better word, to open it up. Concerts neednt be off-putting and expensive and you dont have to dress up and you dont have to understand the technical complexities. Just talk to the audience. One of the weird things about a concert is that nobody says anything to you, so youve got to just accept whats in front of you and work it out. Somebody should sit down and explain: This piece, when it was first composed, caused a riot. Now it might sound a bit more conventional because its been used in a Walt Disney movie. I dont know, I think its just useful.

Stalin had a great passion for classical music. So listening to it doesnt make you a better human being then? George Steiner writes about how Goebbels was into Mozart and played the piano beautifully. Wagner was an antisemitic bastard, so actually, no. Thats the sad thing: it doesnt make any difference. It really doesnt.

Can you put that aside when you listen to the music? I dont know. I always got taken by the grandiosity of Wagner, but the more I listen to it now the more I think, it does sound fascist, doesnt it? But its interesting, that thing of, Can you excuse? Like Polanski. That whole, Great film-maker, but should you be watching his movies? I dont know what the answer is.

The Death of Stalin is released on 20 October.

Hear Me Out by Armando Iannucci is published by Little Brown (14.99). To order a copy for 12.74 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/oct/15/armando-iannucci-the-death-of-stalin-hear-me-out-interview

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