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"Every lie we tell engages the debt of the truth. Sooner or later, the debt is paid. This line from the latest episode of HBO's miniseries HBO Chernobyl – was uttered by candid research scholar Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) – speaks to the heart of the series, which is both a fascinating chronicle of one of the worst nuclear disasters in history and a moral game about the cost of a camouflage operation.
As creator Craig Mazin explains throughout the five-part series, the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl power plant is the result of a series of lies told by bureaucrats selfish in the service of a corrupt government and incompetent its public image above the security of its own citizens.
But if this story is deeply specific to the Soviet regime, it also resonates in a powerful and uncomfortable way in modern America. Legasov and his colleagues – the politician Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) and the nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), the only fictional character in the series – are forced to constantly defend the truth against powerful people who deliberately deny scientific facts, even if they observe them directly the face. For Mazin, the relevance of this infuriating dynamic was one of the main reasons why the story deserved to be told.
"This is in us a certain sense of denial, a certain sense of the group," says Mazin in the Hollywood Reporter . "It's not something that sits on a party line or on the other. We have seen it through all the permutations of history, and in the center of it there is some insistence that what we want to be true is now true and what we do not like is now wrong.
Below, Mazin talks with The Hollywood Reporter about Chernobyl and its long-term success. unexpected memes, the scenario he left out because he felt "too Hollywood", and his plans for a follow-up.
You end the show on Legasov by acknowledging, in voiceover, that the scientific search for the truth is often undermined by the fact that people just do not want to hear it. This seems pretty timely. Why did you finish on this note?
My personal belief is that it is not very useful to show things from the past that have no relevance to today, or to not connect a sort of dotted line to where we are today, but otherwise it just becomes a duty. The history of Chernobyl has more than anything prompted me unanimously. Yes, Chernobyl happened because the Soviet system was deeply corrupt and perverse in many respects, but the Soviet system did not reach us from another planet. It was designed by humans. It's in us. A certain sense of denial, a certain sense of group thinking, is not something that sits on a party line or the other. We have seen it through all the permutations of history, and in the center of it there is some insistence that what we want to be true is now true and what we do not like is now wrong. It does not serve us well, it has never served us well. We must ask ourselves why we feel entitled to say to scientists "We really think the climate is not changing". Or "I think vaccines could cause autism." We can say that everything we want, but it is not true, and it costs us. I want everyone watching this show to realize that they are themselves complicit in some sort of conspiracy against uncomfortable truths.
The series has really gained momentum – it has been very well received from the beginning, but gradually built a dedicated audience. Why do you think that sounded so much?
I am a strong supporter of the traditional way of broadcasting television to school. That's not to say that the other platforms do not make great shows, but there's something about throwing everything away when I think, honestly, it costs a little more expensive . This also avoids any possibility of person-to-person propagation and encouragement, where observation becomes a common thing. Chernobyl started well, but each week it increased, which is a little different from what it is normally, and we reached a critical mbad as we entered our fourth and fifth episode.
Were there any reactions to the show that surprised you?
Yes. I was very worried about the reception of the show in Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Belarus, Russia or in one of the former Soviet republics. It's fascinating. Basically, the overwhelming response of people has been incredibly rewarding. They recognize that we did this with love and respect for them, and that we did our best to get the details, which, from their point of view, Western productions often fail or do not look at at all. I expected – and my expectations were rewarded – at a certain level of propaganda from the Russian government and, after all, the man who runs this government is the former KGB. They publish their own Chernobyl story, which is based on a KGB officer trying to prevent a CIA officer from doing something, and okay. Sure. I thought it was going to happen, I understood it.
I have also just been surprised by the strength of reactions from citizens of all political horizons. Some people have misunderstood because they want to see a condemnation of the right people who can not deal with science. Some of them think that it is a total condemnation of Soviet communism and socialism. We are at something a little more universal and human than "Your side is bad, my side is good".
What was your biggest challenge in writing?
Oh, that's for sure that it was the fifth episode's test sequence. I had plenty of plates to rotate at the same time, but the biggest challenge was to explain something complicated: nuclear physics and power plant engineering. And I had to find a way to explain that to people because I'm not going to explain, it's not me! I need people to know. So I really worked very hard, and Jared too, we both went through this thing, line by line, to make sure everything was clear and that there was nothing more useless, but that we leave nothing important.
The red and blue cards were a visual way out of this riddle.
Yes, because if you really like science, you can follow it on a level and if it's not your jam, you can at least look at the colors and you understand! This is redder and more blue, and you can see what's going on in the reactor. I'm coming out of comedy, where the idea of boring people is just horrible, and losing your audience is your nightmare, so I just wanted it to be fascinating for everyone, the best I could.
The show is unshakeable in its description of the physical effects of radiation intoxication.
We had to be very careful in the third episode when we showed the last phase of Vasily Ignatenko's body. This is the most extreme thing we have shown. Our makeup and prosthetic designer, Daniel Parker, has done a remarkable job. So brilliant, in fact, we had the anxiety to linger a little on it. HBO was so enthusiastic and terrific, and Kary Antholis, who ran the HBO miniseries during the production of the series, said, "You know, can you just shorten that photo? feeling compelled to look at you as if you were almost proud of it. "I did not intend to do it, and that's not what we want at all. Sometimes you lose sight of these things because you have looked at the prostheses being built, but you do not quite understand how powerful it is. So we shortened this plan a bit, because the last thing we wanted was to feel that we were talking about the sad destiny of this man for sensationalist points on a television show. What we wanted was for people to know the truth about what was going on, but we did not want to have the impression of exploiting it. These are the things we have to deal with all the time, because this man was a real person, and his wife is still alive, and the last thing we want to do is show something other than total respect.
Is there anything else that you have filmed and omitted?
We shot a sub-story about Dyatlov, the character of Paul Ritter, who evoked his story. Chernobyl was not the first nuclear disaster of Dyatlov, he had actually been involved in another year before, while he was a nuclear engineer in an underwater base. He received a dose of radiation strong enough, a dose that theoretically could have killed him. The guy was tough, but his son died about a year later from a leukemia, which implied that, no matter how much contamination Dyatlov suffered, he might have brought it home and would have affected the health of his son. From the point of view of writing, if you have a story that helps to explain the motive of a character or that arouses sympathy for an unattractive character, it is generally considered a useful thing. But finally, I did not feel that it was justified. I had the impression of stretching me. I could argue the case [for keeping it] but it looked a bit like Hollywood. In the end, when we looked at the cut, we did not need it.
The popularity of the show online is really striking – there are many more memes of Chernobyl than I thought! What do you think about this?
[Laughs] I think it's just so that people show their love for something. When I was younger, I remember that I was just obsessed with The Godfather, and there were like 1,000 parodies and parodies of the godfather: "We will make him an offer that He can not refuse "became what people would like to say, but no one called them memes at the time. When I was a child Welcome Back, Kotter was very popular, so we were saying all those stupid things that they say in the series, or Happy Days "Sit- you on it! " These were memes! I think that's how we show that we fell in love with something and I take it with joy. I do not think people make fun of everything that is serious, I think that they just say: we are connected to that and we love it.
Dyatlov's phrase, "Not awesome, not terrible," which is this moment of completely absurd denial, seems to be strongly memorized.
Yes, I must pay tribute to Carolyn Strauss, who produced with Chernobyl with me and Jane Featherstone. Somewhere early enough in post-production, she said, "Do you know what I like the most? When Dytatlov said, "Not great, not terrible." "She just said that it was as if she knew, she was the original memer of that one, I do not know why she saw anything in this line for me
In the Chernobyl podcast, you briefly touch on the question of how a similar scenario would unfold in the West, especially when workers are actually sacrificed for the benefit of the people.
The good news is that we do not really have to worry about it, because it would not have happened in the West.Reactors do not explode, because they are built intelligently and cautiously, and they are surrounded by containment buildings designed so that an airplane can fly over them without them breaking – appalling design, too bulky, too big, too unstable, uncovered, for us to do not have to n We can look at Japan – the way they treated Fukushima is impressive, and from there we can see that, anyway, there will be people who will perform heroically and somewhat so when you see these guys on the roof of Chernobyl, they carry the remains of lead hammered by hand that they themselves stuck and tied to laces, which we do not do. We have resources and we would not, and they did it there. That alone, I find breathtaking. The Soviet system was so bad and the Soviet citizens so brave. They are remarkable people. What they suffered and went through in the 20th century and today is simply amazing and inspiring to me.
Have you thought about a follow-up to the series? Is there another historical event that you want to approach in the same way?
This interview has been edited and summarized for the sake of clarity.
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