Screen Realm spoke with Star City creators Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi, along with series star Rhys Ifans, about Apple TV’s upcoming For All Mankind spinoff, which is heading behind the Iron Curtain for a Soviet-side look at the alternate-history space race. Watch the full interview above, then read on for more on how the series came together, why it is not just For All Mankind from another angle, and what to know about its Apple TV release.
Star City Was Born From For All Mankind Research
The idea for Star City was not there from the beginning. According to Nedivi, it grew out of the research process for For All Mankind, as the team found themselves pulled deeper into the Soviet space program and the stories sitting just outside the frame of the original series.
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“When we started working on For All Mankind, there’s a lot of research involved in that show. And I think a lot of the research started becoming more and more into the Russian space program,” Nedivi said.
What they found was too rich to ignore, but not quite right for the main series. “The stories we read and the characters we read about were fascinating. Too fascinating to put in For All Mankind because it’s an American show. It’s based on [the] American system.”
That planted the seed for a spinoff that could stand on its own, with Nedivi saying the Soviet side offered “a lot of fertile territory” to explore. And it is not hard to see why: a secretive space program, moonshot ambitions, real history, and a franchise already built around massive “what if?” questions. Plenty of fuel there.
Rhys Ifans Says Star City Is Its Own Beast
Ifans, who plays the mysterious “Chief Designer,” said the draw was not just the link to For All Mankind, but the chance to dig into a very different world.
“Aside from For All Mankind for one minute, it is a standalone, absolutely fascinating excavation of a really incredible period in history,” Ifans said.
He described Star City as a very different show, connected by the moon but separated by culture, perspective and genre. “They have the moon in common and their yearning and desire to get to it, but beyond that, culturally and anthropologically, they’re completely different worlds in reality and different TV genres,” he said.
That sounds like the right way to build out this universe: familiar enough for For All Mankind fans to feel at home, different enough to avoid feeling like a simple side mission with a new flag on it.
The character also helped seal it. Ifans called the Chief Designer a “wonderful, complicated, mysterious, puzzling character,” adding that he has been “really fun to play every day.”
Star City Brings the Soviet Moonshot to Life
Like For All Mankind, Star City is built on a big “what if?” In this case: what if the Soviet moon program had achieved what it never did in our reality?
The team was fascinated by the real ships, suits and mission designs created for the Soviet moon program, many of which never fulfilled their purpose.
“The Soviet program, they built ships to go to the moon. They had plans to go to the moon, but they never got to the moon,” Nedivi said.
For the creators, part of the thrill is giving those abandoned dreams a second life on screen. Nedivi said he loved the idea of someone who worked on those designs seeing “the things I imagined, the things I envisioned that I thought would never happen” finally brought to life.
Wolpert said the series also draws from real stories and figures connected to the Soviet space program, while still taking some creative licence. It is a television drama, after all, not a documentary.
“A lot of the events that we tell in Star City are based on true stories of wild things that actually happened in the Soviet space program or based on people that existed in that program,” Wolpert said.
He added that the Soviet program’s secrecy made the world especially compelling to explore. “The Soviet program was so secretive that I feel like a lot of people don’t know much about it at all. And so being able to shine a light on this fascinating world, I’m just excited for people to see it.”
Star City Release Date on Apple TV
The highly anticipated Star City series stars Rhys Ifans as the Chief Designer and comes from For All Mankind creators Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi.
The series will make its global debut on Apple TV with two episodes launching on Friday, May 29, 2026, followed by one new episode weekly every Friday through to Friday, July 10.
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