No one notices Mary Elizabeth Winstead at first as she steps into the elegant dining room of Moscow’s Hotel Metropol, an avatar of Jazz Age decadence in her black feather boa and backless dress. Her yapping dogs have raced ahead of her and are now scampering among terrified diners. Silverware clatters, and at least one guest is knocked to the floor. Heads turn to find the source of the commotion, while the culprit’s eyes sparkle with mischief.
These events are not unfolding in the actual Hotel Metropol, the Art Nouveau building just minutes from the Kremlin. Rather, this facsimile—a gilded lobby, endless nooks, and a labyrinth of rooms—was constructed in Space Studios in Manchester, England, as the setting for A Gentleman in Moscow, the limited-series adaptation of Amor Towles’s best-selling 2016 novel of the same name.
