Michelle Trachtenberg called on mum to help her perfect her Russian for new film

Actress Michelle Trachtenberg had to call on her mother to help her nail her Russian for new movie Killing Kennedy after realising she didn’t know enough of the language to portray alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife Marina. The former Buffy the Vampire Slayer star is fluent in basic Russian thanks to her parents’ Soviet heritage – but she admits she couldn’t master some of the more difficult scenes as the wife of the man who allegedly shot President John F. Kennedy.
She explains, “(My mom) translated the entire script for me; we wrote it out phonetically, so that I knew the exact pronunciations.
“I’m fluent in Russian, but I didn’t grow up, luckily, with sentences like, ‘You can’t see your children. Hide the guns. Don’t shoot the president!’ That was not in my repertoire as a six year old.
“There were different conjugations… I had to change it to a housewife in the late 1950s.”
And her mother’s language skills were noted by producers, who listed Mrs. Trachtenberg as a consultant on the film in the credits.