Trivia / The Death of Stalin

• Actor-Inspired Element: Jason Isaacs decided to have a large scar put on his face to show that Georgi Zhukov had been to war. The real Zhukov didn't have a scar on his face. It was also Jason Isaacs's decision to play Zhukov with a Yorkshire accent (though he himself was born in Liverpool) because "The bluntest people I know are Yorkshiremen."
• All-Star Cast: Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Jeffrey Tambor, Jason Isaacs, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurylenko, and Rupert Friend all headline the film.
• Approval of God: Writer of the original graphic novel Fabien Nury adored the movie.
• Banned in China: The film was banned in Russia under the accusation that it is western propaganda: at the time of the movie's release, the party line of the Russian government was to whitewash Stalin and present him as a strong and competent leader first and foremost, downplaying or justifying the atrocities done during his reign.
• Billing Displacement: Paddy Considine gets top billing in plenty of posters. He's the radio director in the opening scenes and then shows up in one shot at the film's very end.
• California Doubling: Kyiv and London doubled for Moscow, though a few scenes were actually shot there.
• Corpsing:
  • After the committee members have moved Stalin to his bedroom but are struggling to arrange him on the bed, Adrian McLoughlin (Stalin) has a visible smirk on his face in several angles of the scene.
  • When Vasily is pathetically struggling with the officer over the handgun, Andrea Riseborough is visibly struggling not to laugh, looks straight into the camera before looking away, and coughs to regain composure.
• Deleted Scene: A whole extra ten minutes can be watched on YouTube. Most are just additional bits and lines to existing scenes, but others include:
  • A man in the concert's audience being waved at by a guard and growing paranoid... then his wife waves back at the soldier, and the husband gets even more paranoid.
  • Before Stalin's Dacha is purged, Khruschev notices Beria creeping over the underage maid and quickly asks her to take some things to his car before subtly glaring at Beria.
  • The fate of Dr. Lydia Timashuk, whom the Presidium hires to get some doctors for Stalin (and whom they intended to use as a scapegoat and execute in the event that the doctors failed to save him). Beria seemingly lets her run away, only for her to be blown up by a mine as she tries to escape into the woods.This would have been a case of Death by Adaptation as she did not die until 1983.
  • At the funeral, Svetlana says that Stalin called Those Two Guys Mikoyan and Bulganin, "the Hammer and the Sickle", and asks them to clarify which one is which.
  • When Vasily arrives, the Politburo goes to get him as in the movie, but Khrushchev is worried about breaching protocol and leaving Stalin's corpse unguarded. He calls the representatives of the steelworkers to replace them, but they are unavailable, so they have a bunch of cooks dress like steel workers and do it instead.
  • Beria creeping even more — on the Dacha maid, on Svetlana, and on Yudina while she plays at Stalin's funeral.
  • Vasily describes the coming Molotov as saying that he will call them comrades, hug and kiss them. He immediately calls then comrades and spreads his arms.
    Vasily: I'm not kissing him.
  • Zhukov pranks Bulganin when he accidentally comes on him and his guards as they are waiting for Beria to arrest him.
  • Beria is trying desperately to talk his way out of the coup while they are locked in the lavatory, only for Leonid Brezhnev to shut him up.
    Brezhnev: I'm this close to examining the contents of your fucking stomach.
• Fake Russian: Most of the main cast are British and not Russian or former Soviet. The exceptions are Jeffrey Tambor and Steve Buscemi (both American), Dermot Crowley (Irish), and Olga Kurylenko (Ukrainian-French, she has Russian ancestry and was a citizen of the Soviet Union).
• Harpo Does Something Funny: The trial of Beria was mostly improvised, with the only direction being "Just go in there and get him tried and shot in two minutes."
• Orphaned Reference:
  • Khrushchev goes over his notes from the night with Stalin and one of the notes is "Slippers?". In the script, while watching the Western, Beria tells the others that one of Stalin's guards is on the list because his wife bought him slippers, and Stalin is convinced that he's going to use them to sneak up while he's sleeping and kill him. When he gets home, Khrushchev mentions the slippers but has already forgotten the context.
  • During the Committee meeting, Molotov pressures Khrushchev to take charge of the funeral by reminding him that Khrushchev had told him the previous night that he wanted to honor Stalin's legacy. Khrushchev did say that in the script, but in the film itself he doesn't.
• Real-Life Relative: When the replacement doctors are summoned following Stalin's death, the actor playing the young doctor is Armando Iannucci's son Emilio.
• Sleeper Hit: At least in America, where it became one of the few films released by IFC Films to perform well enough in limited release to get a wide release.
• Throw It In!: Ianucci gave little direction or line direction to the actors for Beria's "trial" and execution scene. Simply telling the actors the broad strokes and having them follow their instincts for the sequence.
• What Could Have Been: Timothy Dalton and Toby Kebbell were originally respectively cast as Georgy Zhukov and Vasily Stalin.

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