If you didn’t already know it, it should only take a few minutes of watching three-part documentary series The Zelensky Story to realise that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not your average politician. It’s a fact that series director Michael Waldman knows all too well — especially after spending 45 minutes interviewing Zelenskyy one-on-one in Kyiv’s presidential palace, alongside nearly four weeks spread across late 2023 and early 2024 filming in Ukraine.
That one-on-one time with Zelenskyy didn’t come easily, though. Ukrainian officials were quick to rebuff Waldman, believing his team was simply seeking a standard news interview, but they wanted something much more personal.
“What we wanted was a completely different style of interview, where he's talking about his past, his childhood, he's contemplative about philosophical things and his family,” said Waldman. “I wanted to sort of shake him out of the idea that he's going to another Western news media [source] to get more missiles and support from the west.”
Waldman undoubtedly succeeded on that front. While there’s naturally no shortage of geopolitics, The Zelensky Story is remarkably personal, not just asking who Zelenskyy is, but also why he is that way.
President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, being interviewed by series director Michael Waldman. Credit: Andrii Zabolotny / 72 Films
“This is a much bigger deal than just an actor who played the president and then became the president,” he says. Incidentally, he says, this misconception was also a mistake that Vladimir Putin made in assuming he could easily dominate Ukraine in war.
“What I found fascinating is the extent to which it seemed what an incredible error Putin made in underestimating Zelenskyy, thinking he was just a silly comedian,” said Waldman. “As he says in one clip [in the series], ‘it's one thing to act somebody. It's another thing to be someone’.”
As the series points out, that political skill was being honed well before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Arguably his first major moment as a politician (or politician-to-be) came in 2014, during Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution, against pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych. Zelenskyy went from watching violence in central Kyiv on TV at home to being pulled onto a TV current affairs show as a guest, giving a stirring address to both the Ukrainian people and Putin (then also Russia’s president), a possible moment of ignition for Zelenskyy’s future political career. “This is an extraordinary moment in his history, and indeed the history of his country,” said Waldman.
Waldman is no stranger to documentaries, with a CV that ranges from political (Water Wars, Inside the Foreign Office) to observational (Royal Opera House series The House), but filming in Ukraine was very different.
"Obviously it's the capital of a country at war, and you felt that. But one is always aware, not only very small potential personal danger, in the sense that there are missiles occasionally being shot over and night land, but all you would one would pass memorials to recently for bereaved families, and widows or parents tending those memorials," he says.
While Zelenskyy is undoubtedly a skilled actor, one surprise for Waldman was how unguarded he was in person, and that he didn’t assume the role of actor.
He didn't give us a packaged response. He gave us a human, heartfelt, doubting response.
“I saw a man of unbelievable energy, calm, humour, pensiveness, and occasional doubt about his own actions. He expressed that doubt, which was extraordinary when I asked him what it's like to make decisions that will send people to their likely deaths. He didn't give us a packaged response. He gave us a human, heartfelt, doubting response.”
Waldman was only able to get that kind of response from Zelenskyy with some help from someone very, very close to the president: his wife and Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska. His production team had initially only arranged interviews with her, and not the president — but these were successful enough that it opened the door to that important one-on-one time with Zelenskyy himself. But her large presence in this series is no sideshow: Zelenska’s perspective is essential to understanding her husband and the experience of war in Ukraine.
President Zelensky and the First Lady, Olena Zelenska, walking through the Office of the President, Kyiv, Ukraine, in 'The Zelensky Story'. Credit: Leo Fawkes / 72 Films
“She said on camera how furious and angry she was with her husband when he announced on television that he was going to run for president and hadn't told her…he then used our camera to apologise to her down the lens. He said, ‘I'm so sorry, my love, you know I meant to tell you’.”
While Zelenska may have never been a public figure before (she was previously a TV writer), her trial by fire, married to a man leading a country in war, has also resulted in her being an inspirational figure, suggests Waldman.
“You go from having a lovely professional existence, and suddenly [your husband] decides to run for office, not just any office, but head of state. And he gets it, and then his country's at war. This is a set of traumas that very few people would be able to cope with, but she copes magnificently.”
And this sums up much of what The Zelensky Story is about: not just a down-the-line biography of a national president, it’s a sublimely intimate portrait of a marriage, and a study of human strength.
Three-part series The Zelensky will air weekly on SBS, starting 8.30pm Tuesday 5 November. Each episode will be available to stream at SBS On Demand after it airs.
