We catch up with the writer ahead of his new film The Death Of Stalin.

Over the past 26 years or so, Mr Armando Iannucci has been at the heart of the best satire in Britain, skewering the news in the influential 1991 radio show On The Hour – which launched the careers of long-time collaborators Messrs Steve Coogan and David Schneider and was made into the timeless TV version The Day Today – and dismantling British politics with 2005’s The Thick Of It (and later In The Loop). In 2012, he ventured off home turf, setting his sights on US politics with four seasons of the wildly successful Veep. But his latest feature-length project is his most ambitious to date. Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Messrs Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin, The Death Of Stalin sees the filmmaker head to Russia – tackling the farce and fear that surrounded the demise of the titular dictator. Ahead of the release of the film – which stars Messrs Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Jason Isaacs and Michael Palin – we grabbed Mr Iannucci for a quick chat to discuss his new project, modern politics, and how, unbelievably, reality is becoming almost too silly to satirise.

Apart from the graphic novel The Death Of Stalin – what inspired the film?

I wanted to do a film about dictatorship and I was thinking along the lines of a fictional, maybe contemporary figure. Then the production company Quad came to me with the film rights to the novel and I thought “That’s the story! Why do something that’s made up when you can do something that’s true?” I could instantly see how I could make this into a funny film and yet one that had a traumatic element as well.

How true to history are the events in the film?

The film opens with a farcical concert scene in which a conductor faints and has to be replaced. In reality, they got through three conductors because the second one they got in was drunk. I thought if I put that in no one would believe it. Also, the first cut of the trailer showed a star falling from the top of a word. I asked for that to be cut out as it seemed too silly. Then we saw those letters falling down during Theresa May’s speech. So, nothing is beyond portrayal.

The falling letters was like something from The Thick Of It…

Indeed, it’s too unbelievable. In many ways that’s why I stopped doing The Thick Of It and Veep because I think reality is supplying the comedy now and the best comedians who are responding to it are the ones who are behaving like journalists – like John Oliver and Charlie Brooker, who have teams of researchers. They’re saying – we’re not going to make fiction, we’re going to present you with the truth, which happens to be funny.

What truths were you surprised you could use in The Death Of Stalin?

Stalin’s son Vasily was the patron of the ice hockey team – most of whom died in a plane crash in 1950. Scared of his father’s reaction, he hid this from Stalin and simply replaced the team. That had to go in. And there are some more sober details. We knew that if you were worried you were going to be taken away in the middle of the night you’d put lots of layers on. That way, if you were taken to Siberia, you’d be warm. I want the audience to enjoy the film but also to be taken out of their comfort zone. This is funny, but also respectful of what actually happened.

Was there any resistance from people in Russia about the film?

Over there, the view of Stalin is left open. They will be taught at school: some people say he murdered millions, others will say he industrialised the Soviet Union and won the war. You decide. There were a couple of people in the Communist party who said they hadn’t seen the film but didn’t like the sound of it. But that’s not the same as saying Russia is against the film. I’ve done interviews with the Russian press and they said how much they enjoyed it. And we’ve got a Russian distributor.

Wasn’t Stalin voted The Most Outstanding Person In Russia recently?

Yeah, he’s still around. The hotel we were staying at in Moscow had a portrait of him up there. As well as other famous people who’d stayed there. So it included Lenin, Brezhnev and also Richard Nixon and Chuck Norris...

Was it good to be writing with Mr David Schneider again?

We go way back. He’d written a play a few years back called Making Stalin Laugh, which was based on true events about a Yiddish theatre in Moscow. So I instantly turned to him because he’s looked at that world. I knew we’d have the same idea of what we want to do with the story. It was great fun.

How does it compare to the old days of On The Hour?

Very different. A lot of my early stuff is last minute and improvised. This has been the most ambitious thing I’ve done in terms of budget but also the scale of the story. The fact that it’s true and set in a different era. I had to do a lot of research. It’s been a different beast. It’s a tough old process making a film because there are so many elements that can go wrong. But I’m pleased because I’ve made the film that I wanted to make.

The Death Of Stalin is out on 20 October

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