Christina Hendricks, John Slattery, Isabelle Huppert join Matthew Weiner’s The Romanoffs

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner is currently working on a new series, The Romanoffs, for Amazon Studios. The show has a delightfully weird premise: Told in anthology format, each episode will focus on a person in the present day who believes that they are descended from doomed Russian imperial family The Romanoffs, who were executed by Bolshevik troops in July 1918. Aside from this thematic connection, the episodes will be otherwise unrelated, each a standalone story about, as Weiner puts it, “questioning who we are and who we say we are.”

This episodic format makes the choice of guest stars for each of The Romanoffs’ eight hour-long episodes especially important, and today Amazon released a list of six of them. Topping the list is the reunion of Christina Hendricks and John Slattery, who, of course, co-starred in Weiner’s previous prestige project Mad Men. Then there’s the incomparable Isabelle Huppert, about whom The New York Times’ A.O. Scott asked, “great actress or world’s greatest actress?,” in his review of last year’s Things To Come. (Huppert won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for her other big film project of 2016, Paul Verhoeven’s Elle.) Then we’ve got Boardwalk Empire’s Jack Huston, ‘90s indie queen-turned-TV star Amanda Peet, and Golden Globe-nominated European film star Marthe Keller. Classy picks, all of them.

Weiner is writing, directing, and executive producing all episodes of the series, which is set to debut next year.