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Episode: Bonus Episode with Jared Harris

Author: HBO
Duration: 00:52:51

Episode Shownotes

Peter Sagal and Craig Mazin are back for a special bonus episode. They’re joined by actor Jared Harris (Valery Legasov) to discuss filming Chernobyl, Harris’s experience portraying Legasov and the global reaction to the miniseries. The Chernobyl Podcast is produced by HBO in conjunction with Pineapple Street Media. Original music

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Summary

In this bonus episode of 'The Chernobyl Podcast,' Jared Harris discusses his role as Valery Legasov and the global reception of the miniseries 'Chernobyl.' Highlighting personal stories from viewers, including Ukrainian expatriates, Harris reflects on the importance of historical accuracy and how the series resonates with current issues of governmental transparency. He delves into the complexities of portraying Legasov, capturing his internal struggles and ethical dilemmas, while emphasizing that the narrative focuses on human weaknesses rather than solely political systems.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Bonus Episode with Jared Harris) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_06
Hi, I'm Craig Mazin, creator of the HBO and Sky miniseries Chernobyl.

00:00:05 Speaker_06
This is a follow-up podcast to the podcast that we did for the series, and it is going to be a terrific discussion between myself and, again, Peter Sagal, and we're going to also be joined by Jared Harris, who portrayed Valery Legasov on the series.

00:00:19 Speaker_06
But before we begin that conversation, I have a little prologue to add, because current events have taken a strange turn and a reminiscent turn lately. I'm talking about a nuclear explosion that happened in Russia.

00:00:32 Speaker_06
And just a few days before I'm recording this now, on August 8th, five nuclear specialists deployed by Rosatom, which is Russia's state atomic energy company, as well as two military personnel were killed.

00:00:45 Speaker_06
They were killed in an explosion at a military test site in Northern Russia, the Nenoska missile test site. We believe here in the United States that this explosion involved a new kind of cruise missile that Putin is particularly proud of.

00:01:02 Speaker_06
This cruise missile apparently can reach any corner of the earth because it is not a typical missile that's powered by liquid fuel like a normal rocket. It's a cruise missile that is powered by a small nuclear reactor. Well, it exploded.

00:01:19 Speaker_06
Now, Rosatom did not confirm that anyone died until Saturday, August 10th. So two days go by before they say anything about anyone dying.

00:01:28 Speaker_06
And it's not until August 11th, three days after the explosion, that they come out and admit that it was nuclear in nature.

00:01:38 Speaker_06
The words they used, and these are fascinating, is that the failure occurred in, quote, an isotope power source for liquid-fueled rocket engine. Well, isotope power source means nuclear reactor. So what happens next?

00:01:54 Speaker_06
Well, we're trying to cobble it all together because the Russian government has not been particularly forthcoming. We do know that in the city of Severodvinsk, which is about 20 miles away from the missile test site,

00:02:08 Speaker_06
that someone detected a rise in background radiation. Even Russian news media recorded that that radiation level had gone up briefly to at least 200 times normal background levels.

00:02:19 Speaker_06
Now, to put that in context, that's not like Chernobyl, where you're getting upwards of 7,000 times background levels, but it's still not good. And then the reports sort of began to disappear.

00:02:32 Speaker_06
There was a regional news site that states that victims of the accidents were not told that they may have suffered from radiation injuries, nor were the doctors and nurses told who were treating those people.

00:02:45 Speaker_06
After treating them, apparently the rooms that they were treated in were sealed, and doctors were sent to the Capitol for medical evaluations. Does any of this sound sickly familiar? The point isn't that accidents should never happen again.

00:03:01 Speaker_06
The point is that when they do, it is incumbent upon governments and people to be as open and transparent about them as possible. Chernobyl happened 33 years ago. And here we are just a week later, and there has been a nuclear explosion in Russia.

00:03:19 Speaker_06
that we were told about days later. And there was a town called Nyonoksa, which was told to evacuate, and then we're told they're not evacuating, so we're not quite sure.

00:03:27 Speaker_06
And there are doctors whose medical scrubs apparently have been setting dosimeters clicking because they are contaminated. That's what we know. That's all they've told us. Hopefully, this doesn't lead to more deaths.

00:03:44 Speaker_06
It's terribly sad that scientists are still dying. It's terribly sad that first responders are still dying.

00:03:51 Speaker_06
And it is my great hope that after this incident, and maybe in a little way because of our show, people finally demand that their governments tell them the truth.

00:04:03 Speaker_06
And I have high hopes that people in Russia, who are currently protesting Mr. Putin's government, demand answers. This can't keep going on. 33 years ago, and today, seems like not much has changed. Now, on with the show.

00:04:29 Speaker_05
Professor Legasov, if you mean to suggest the Soviet state is somehow responsible for what happened, then I must warn you, you are treading on dangerous ground.

00:04:39 Speaker_02
I've already trod on dangerous ground. We're on dangerous ground right now because of our secrets and our lies. They're practically what define us. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it.

00:04:53 Speaker_02
It is even there, but it is still there.

00:05:03 Speaker_03
Hi, this is Peter Sagal, sometimes known as the host of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPR, but more recently and gratifyingly known as the host of the Chernobyl podcast, originally produced with myself and the show's creator, Craig Mazin, to accompany each episode of the HBO miniseries.

00:05:19 Speaker_03
Well, some months after the extraordinary success of that miniseries. We have gotten the band together for a special After Effects episode of this podcast. Craig Mazin, how are you? I'm good, Mr. Peter Segal. How are you? I'm well, thank you.

00:05:36 Speaker_03
I've been enjoying all the undue attention I've been getting for being on this podcast. We are also joined, and I am extraordinarily excited by this, by the leading actor of the miniseries, who played Legasov to such extraordinary effect.

00:05:50 Speaker_03
Jared Harris is joining us. Jared, hello. Hi.

00:05:53 Speaker_03
As anybody who has seen the miniseries or even has just been watching the press, the miniseries kind of took over the national and international conversation in a way that, even though I was a tremendous admirer of the show, was frankly surprised by.

00:06:10 Speaker_03
I mean, it's not, shall we say, what you'd expect for popular entertainment. So, I wanted to start by asking you, Craig, and you, Jared, if you were at all surprised by the extraordinary response to this television show you guys made.

00:06:24 Speaker_03
Jared, were you surprised? I was surprised. No, not at all.

00:06:28 Speaker_02
I knew it was amazing. In my dreams, it went exactly like the way I dreamt it. No, you never... You can't know what people are going to be thinking about 18 months in the future.

00:06:43 Speaker_02
And it felt to me as though it arrived at a perfect moment and it entered part of a conversation, part of the zeitgeist, and it sort of started to articulate what was on people's minds if they just shifted their gaze just two inches off the screen.

00:07:01 Speaker_02
into the real world.

00:07:02 Speaker_03
Yeah. Can you guys talk about any of the specific interactions or reactions you've heard from viewers of the show that stood out for you?

00:07:11 Speaker_02
I had a guy come up to you at the airport recently whose father was a liquidator and he was a Ukrainian and he was saying thank yous, thanking us for making the show and for bringing the world's attention to that story.

00:07:24 Speaker_02
I met someone at the TCA's who fled the Ukraine and fled the fallout. So yeah, there's a lot of personal stories that people come up to you and they're grateful for

00:07:40 Speaker_02
for the story having been told and for the focus that Craig brought to the heroism and the sacrifice that had gone unrecorded. They hadn't been recognized in their own country at the time.

00:07:55 Speaker_03
Yeah. There was a guy on Twitter named Slava Malamud who says that he grew up in the Ukraine. He now lives in America. And he posted extraordinary reviews of each episode just talking about the extraordinary accuracy of everything depicted.

00:08:14 Speaker_03
He talked about the clothing, he talked about down to the pins worn in the party officials' suits. to the wall decorations. Yes, we all had that in our office walls. And I recommend the Twitter feed for those who are interested. CRAIG Yeah.

00:08:26 Speaker_06
Slava's threads were fascinating. And by the way, I learned things that I didn't know because, you know, I'm not aware of every single tiny choice that the production department makes. So when...

00:08:38 Speaker_06
when he says, oh my gosh, they actually knew to put the wedding ring for Emily Watson's character on her right hand because that's how it was worn as opposed to the left hand.

00:08:45 Speaker_06
Or, look, not only is the license plate on this car accurate to being part of Soviet, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, but they even got the region code right. Well, I didn't know that. So I just started thinking, wow, you know what?

00:09:03 Speaker_06
Our guys did a great job. I mean, they really did. There's a word that I guess in Russian translates to cranberries. But what it means essentially is it's like a fake romanticization of Russian stuff.

00:09:18 Speaker_06
You know, so cranberries are if you make a movie about Soviets and they're all, I don't know, wearing those hats even when it's not cold. You know, it's like, it's that silly stuff.

00:09:31 Speaker_06
And we were rather cranberry free, according to most people that spoke with us.

00:09:36 Speaker_06
And there's a lot of surprise that we got it right because they have seen the West, and by the way, they've also seen their own media in Russia, for instance, which is state, generally state run and state funded.

00:09:49 Speaker_06
They've seen a lot of people get it wrong. And I think they were surprised that someone kind of got it right.

00:09:55 Speaker_03
One of my favorite things that he went on about was one of the characters in episode four with the liquidators who are taking care of the dogs, he talked about the Georgian character and how that actor actually managed to actually get across not just the physicality, but like the actual nature, like the soul of a Georgian.

00:10:19 Speaker_03
And I was like so amazed by how impressed he was by that accuracy.

00:10:23 Speaker_06
Mm-hmm. Well, we got a little, some of that's luck, but some of it is tailoring a part to an actor. So the actor there, playing Bacho as Farris Farris, who was born and grew up in Lebanon and then moved to Sweden.

00:10:40 Speaker_06
So he is Swedish-Lebanese or Lebanese-Swedish, however you you want to mix it up. And so, when we cast him, I changed that part. That part was originally written to be a Ukrainian, actually.

00:10:51 Speaker_06
And because of Forrest's physicality and his appearance, it was also a great opportunity for us to represent the different parts of the Soviet Union. We think of the Soviet Union as Russia.

00:11:03 Speaker_06
And, you know, certainly by land and population, it was majority Russian. And then you have Ukraine and Belarus, which are even closer to Europe than Russia.

00:11:12 Speaker_06
But you have all this Asia Minor area and you have all these interesting other republics that aren't so, you know, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white people. There's a certain ethnicity that's going on there that's fascinating.

00:11:25 Speaker_06
And so, we kind of just tailored it to him. We tailored his name and his... But the Sovietness of him... That's something that Johan worked really hard with with everyone.

00:11:34 Speaker_06
I mean, I'm sure Jared, you know, right off the bat when you were talking with Johan, he probably immediately started in with what he would call the Soviet weight.

00:11:44 Speaker_02
Yeah, my recollection of those conversations was, well, there was a movement person that we Skyped with, but also a certain thing of a underplaying and a kind of a deadpan quality rather than that sort of, you didn't wear your heart on your sleeve and you weren't describing situations that you were in from a performance point of view, yeah.

00:12:11 Speaker_03
Jared, so tell me exactly what a movement person is.

00:12:14 Speaker_02
We had a coach who was going to teach us certain sort of physical behaviors that were emblematic of people from that society. And it was a certain way that they carried themselves. The thing that I remember mostly was the way they nod.

00:12:37 Speaker_02
that when we nod in agreement, it's a downward motion, but when they nod as agreement, it's upward like that.

00:12:47 Speaker_02
That's the big one I remember, but also the certain kind of like a Buster Keaton quality in your face where you don't give anything away, you're concealing your emotions and your reactions, which is always, it's interesting.

00:13:02 Speaker_02
Because one expects that when you start to play a scene that way, you're going to get the direction. What are you doing? I need to see what's going on inside your character. But Johan was completely the opposite.

00:13:13 Speaker_02
He was about the stakes are high enough and you can hold it as much in as you can and make us look to see what's going on.

00:13:24 Speaker_06
One of my favorite moments is, I believe it's the... It's in the beginning of episode four, Ludmilla has arrived in this new apartment that they've given her in Kiev, and there's a landlady that's essentially your building manager that's showing her the...

00:13:39 Speaker_06
and she is a, she's an Eastern European actor, and she's holding her cigarette and just standing there, and then Ludmilla looks back at her, Jesse Buckley turns back, and the woman just goes, eh, like moves her cigarette like, ugh, I'm tired of standing here, and just walks away.

00:13:55 Speaker_06
It's perfect, and I don't think any British or American person would have ever done that naturally. It's just this kind of, I'm done here, and walk away, loved it.

00:14:06 Speaker_03
Jared, we haven't had the pleasure of having you on this particular podcast before, so let me ask you, if you can, to talk about how you approached the role. Every actor prepares in a different way. How did you start with Legasov?

00:14:21 Speaker_03
Start with the script.

00:14:26 Speaker_02
Read that, and then go off on a journey of research, and then eventually surface from that, come back to the script. pull the script apart, which is probably really annoying, because then you start asking questions.

00:14:41 Speaker_02
And then you sort of figure out why it's been put together the way it's been put together. And of course, Craig has done that journey himself years ago, and he's understands why this thing part about that is the things, the choices that

00:14:55 Speaker_02
weren't made as opposed to the ones that were made because obviously he went through that whole process himself.

00:15:01 Speaker_02
So when you understand why things aren't the way they are and why they are a specific way, then you understand, you're basically just trying to understand the story you're supposed to tell because you're a one strand of the whole canvas and you need to understand what's your responsibility, what story are you telling.

00:15:19 Speaker_03
Well, it's interesting that you mentioned like there are things that didn't happen or things that weren't there. One of the things that occurred to me is this is not always a very heroic character, for example.

00:15:30 Speaker_02
I love that about him, yes.

00:15:32 Speaker_03
I mean, like there are places where he could have done something brave or said something more truthful, but didn't.

00:15:38 Speaker_02
So one of the things that appealed to me as we started to do it about the role was that he was a reluctant hero. He was not somebody who... Well, for example, the heroes in the first episode are the sort of traditional heroes.

00:15:56 Speaker_02
They're the first responders who go towards danger. And he's not one of those people. and he never, he didn't make that choice in his life and he never thought he was gonna have to be.

00:16:07 Speaker_02
Plus, when he gets dropped into that situation, he's still, it's not a choice, he can't leave. But he's aware of the fact that what staying means constantly.

00:16:21 Speaker_02
So his journey towards being a hero is a slow journey, if you like, and I like the idea of he was afraid.

00:16:30 Speaker_02
And he was afraid because he understood at every turn what the consequences were of just remaining there and also at a certain point trying to subvert the narrative.

00:16:41 Speaker_03
There are moments in the miniseries where Legasov, as you say, acts out of fear or even acts dishonestly. For example, the scene where they're asking for the volunteers who become the divers to go in there and go down there.

00:16:55 Speaker_03
And the scene begins, and this is a brave choice, I think, by Craig, to have the hero, Legasov, stand up and basically lie to these guys. Lying to them, yeah.

00:17:02 Speaker_02
And of course, any volunteers will be rewarded. A yearly stipend of 400 rubles. And for those of you working in Reactors 1 and 2 promotions, why are Reactors 1 and 2 still operating at all?

00:17:22 Speaker_04
My friend was a security guard that night, and she's now dying. And we've all heard about the fireman. And now you want us to swim underneath a burning reactor. Do you even know how contaminated it is? I don't have an exact number.

00:17:39 Speaker_04
You don't need an exact number to know if it will kill us. But you can't even tell us that.

00:17:46 Speaker_02
Stellan should have been making that, well, his character should have been making that speech. But he's had the wind knocked out of him by me telling him that we're going to be dead in five years. He's been sidelined at that point.

00:18:02 Speaker_02
And I'm doing a really bad job. of lying to these people and of talking to them. And he steps up, and of course he understands who these people are, and you have to tell them the truth, so he tells them the truth.

00:18:15 Speaker_02
Probably not something that he's familiar with doing either, but as a party official, he would be all along the lines of that party official in the first episode, which is, you know, cut the phone lines and contain the spread of information, so...

00:18:30 Speaker_02
But he suddenly, he steps forward into that situation and he tells them what they need to hear so that they can make a dignified choice at that point.

00:18:41 Speaker_04
Why should we do this? For what, 400 rubles?

00:18:45 Speaker_05
You'll do it because it must be done. You'll do it because nobody else can. And if you don't, millions will die. If you tell me that's not enough, I won't believe you.

00:19:03 Speaker_06
Well, this is one of the reasons why Jared is so good at what he does. He doesn't just interrogate and understand his own character, he also is interrogating and understanding the characters that are in the scene with him.

00:19:16 Speaker_06
Because that informs what you're doing and how you're supposed to do it. You see, to me, character is not in isolation. Character only exists in relationship. And...

00:19:27 Speaker_06
What I love when we're cutting these scenes together is finding those moments, and this is where Johan and I, I think, we just had a lovely philosophical convergence. We feel the same way. That these moments are best delivered in reactions.

00:19:43 Speaker_06
And Jared would do these things just beautifully all the time. You could see him looking at...

00:19:51 Speaker_06
Stellan going, thank God he's doing this, but also, oh, oh, I'm starting to understand something about him as a human being, and my relationship to him has now changed.

00:20:02 Speaker_06
Because it was, I'm gonna throw you out of this helicopter, and now it's something else. I'm seeing a human in there that actually is quite noble, and there's a beauty to this man. He is not what I thought he was. And that is the beginning.

00:20:16 Speaker_06
That moment right there is the beginning of their friendship.

00:20:19 Speaker_03
Jared, I have two more questions for you, and obviously I want to hear whatever else you have to say. The first is rather specific, the second is larger.

00:20:26 Speaker_03
In the final episode, you deliver the most extraordinarily lengthy and detailed technological... It wasn't that long, come on. Hey, give me a second here, I'm trying to praise the man. It was a few lines.

00:20:39 Speaker_03
It was a lot of exposition about very complicated technical aspects. Craig already knows that I think it's remarkably successful, but I wanted to ask how much of a challenge you found that scene, the courtroom scene.

00:20:55 Speaker_06
Craig, did you set him up for this? I did not. Jared came to me and he said, Why so short?

00:21:00 Speaker_02
There was more, but some of it got cut out because it was probably about two and a half pages longer, wasn't it?

00:21:14 Speaker_06
Yeah, I think so. I mean, we – I had been kind of beating it up from the point of view of just being terrified at the amount we were showing the audience and demanding their attention for.

00:21:25 Speaker_06
But also, you know, just – Jared kind of undersold a little bit earlier.

00:21:30 Speaker_06
his process with the script, because, you know, he and I had a series of conversations before we started shooting that were really influential, particularly on the way that episode four turned into five, and how episode five worked dramatically, in terms of what the stakes were, and what his goals were, and how that was gonna function.

00:21:49 Speaker_06
And some really significant changes came out of that. And then, just going through, there was a very careful examination of... Look, it's an enormous amount.

00:22:01 Speaker_06
I mean, we had to figure... And unfortunately, because of the way our schedule worked, in terms of both availability and budget, So the one thing that Jared was like, please put the trial at the end of the schedule.

00:22:14 Speaker_06
And our scheduling people came back and said, the only way we are going to be able to make this show for this amount of money is if that trial is on week three.

00:22:23 Speaker_02
You know. And the weeks before it were all the giant Kremlin scenes with all that exposition as well. So it wasn't like, well, I can sort of... I can coast through the first two weeks and spend that time figuring out what's gonna happen.

00:22:37 Speaker_02
No, that didn't happen.

00:22:38 Speaker_03
So being able to talk for ten minutes about Xenon is an actor's dream or an actor's nightmare?

00:22:43 Speaker_02
Well, I mean, to answer your question, the challenge, the specific challenge of this part was... a tremendous amount of explaining that he had to do in many, many scenes.

00:22:59 Speaker_02
And the largest example of it was episode five and what amounted to a 24-page monologue. Cool water takes heat out of a system. As it does, it turns to steam or what we call a void.

00:23:11 Speaker_02
In an RBMK reactor of the type used at Chernobyl, there's something called a positive void coefficient. What does that mean?

00:23:21 Speaker_02
It means that the more steam present within the system, the higher the reactivity, which means more heat, which means more steam, which means... It would appear we have a vicious cycle on our hands. How do you make that interesting?

00:23:39 Speaker_02
I mean, how is that more than just I'm conveying information? Because that's boring to watch. So the biggest challenge of playing the part was finding a sort of a subtextual journey or narrative.

00:23:57 Speaker_02
So I was playing something else other than, here's this information. And some of it was planned, but a lot of it we discovered in the room. And some of it comes from, it was in Craig's script.

00:24:13 Speaker_02
So for example, in that first, well, it was all in Craig's script, but for example, all of the, the scene in the first Kremlin, where he's having to explain why he feels that the situation's worse than it is.

00:24:28 Speaker_02
And Craig had written that he describes the protons as being bullets. Every atom of U-235 is like a bullet, traveling at nearly the speed of light, penetrating everything in its path, woods, metal, concrete, flesh.

00:24:46 Speaker_02
Every gram of U-235 holds over a billion trillion of these bullets. That's in one gram. Now, Chernobyl holds over three million grams, and right now it is on fire. So then you look at that and you think, well, why does he use that word?

00:25:06 Speaker_02
And then I understand where Craig's mind was, and that was, okay, he's in a room full of people that if I start describing it in scientific terms, I'm gonna lose them and they won't understand.

00:25:17 Speaker_02
I need to explain this in a language that they do understand, and the language that they understand is bullets to the back of the head. But he only discovers that at that moment. You know, so that's useful because you can plan that.

00:25:32 Speaker_02
There's other stuff that you can't plan that there was versions of it that we did that were really passionate.

00:25:39 Speaker_02
And I think the one that they use that I like was where he gets carried away and then he suddenly realizes the room that he's in and he gets scared and he dials himself back. because he understands who he's talking to.

00:25:52 Speaker_02
And he pulls himself and gets himself under control. So, you know, you look for little things like that within with a big narrative where you're having to explain stuff.

00:26:01 Speaker_02
And then specifically in that last courtroom scene, Craig had set the whole thing up. So we're watching it going. Is he going to do it? Is he going to tell the truth?

00:26:12 Speaker_02
And then also that that yohan and craig's approach to that scene in the way it was structured was they didn't want it to end up with a a giant sort of. I'm justice for all al pacino you're out of order like a big thing like that that it kind of.

00:26:32 Speaker_02
It's like a balloon losing its air. It's a kind of fart at the end. He lays out this thing before them and there's just no response at all.

00:26:43 Speaker_02
And it was a futile gesture that at the end of the day, you can look at and say, well, why would you ever think this could work?

00:26:51 Speaker_06
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, every chance we could, we tried to avoid doing what it seemed 70 years of television had taught us to do.

00:27:02 Speaker_06
and ending a trial with an utter failure, I mean, just an utter failure, is interesting in and of itself, and also, I think, very Soviet.

00:27:13 Speaker_06
The history of people making brave stances and ending up with ice picks to the back of their head is pretty long and glorious. And he tries something there out of just a sheer devotion to principle, and it fails.

00:27:28 Speaker_06
And only then through that failure, I think, do we imply that Legasov gets the idea of what he's going to eventually need to do, that there's only really one way to win.

00:27:38 Speaker_06
And going through everything that we did inside the Kremlin and certainly at the trial, it was always about trying to figure out what this explanation meant to Legasov as he was telling it.

00:27:50 Speaker_06
It was through the lens of his contempt and outrage for Dyatlov and the decisions he had made. It is also sometimes powered by his love of the science itself.

00:28:04 Speaker_06
I mean, when he starts talking about the nuclear reactor, you see him getting lost in the thing that got him excited as a young man about all of it, which is that it is beautiful. When it works, it's remarkable.

00:28:15 Speaker_06
It's an incredible achievement, and there you see reflected back a little bit of what the Soviets had for their scientific and industrial complex, this reverence, which, as it turned out, was somewhat misplaced.

00:28:30 Speaker_03
Jared, you said earlier that when thinking about, say, the Kremlin scene, it's important to think of, like, what is the character doing other than simply imparting information? What is he trying to do in terms of his desires, motivation?

00:28:43 Speaker_03
So what did you bring to that final courtroom scene in that sense?

00:28:47 Speaker_02
I think that the idea that he didn't know if he was going to do it or not, because there was a sort of several choices where you could go, OK, well, he makes the decision here, but OK, what if we push it off and push it off?

00:29:01 Speaker_02
And so it was almost it came down to the moment when he's looking at the judge

00:29:07 Speaker_02
And it was sort of in the script that there's a sort of pause and it's right at the edge of the cliff and he pauses right before the edge of the cliff and there's a moment where he's staring at him and the realization of what he's about to do hits him and then he goes over the edge.

00:29:23 Speaker_02
And I think from an acting point of view, that you know that by the time you get to this part of the story, the audience wants to know what happened.

00:29:35 Speaker_02
Because again, as part of Cray's construction of how he put this thing together, he starts with the explosion and you see the immediate after effects and then you're dealing with the aftermath of it, but always constantly talking about it.

00:29:51 Speaker_02
And then the narrative question is posed, well, why did it happen? How did it happen? Which Emily's character starts to go off on, on this detective trail, if you like, which is the sort of political thriller aspect of the episodes two and three.

00:30:08 Speaker_02
And then, By the time you get to five, yeah, you want to know, well, what happened? Why did it blow up? So that's interesting. And so you know that at that point, you're answering questions that the audience will have in their mind.

00:30:23 Speaker_02
So that relieves some of the pressure off of you as a performer. And some things you need to juice up, and other stuff, you're like, no, this is where I'm holding these threads at the moment, and that's where the tension is.

00:30:37 Speaker_06
We had also the benefit of some circumstances that helped that mystery along, because if there was simply one thing that happened that night, then you might run into a situation where you're faking a bunch of storytelling to eventually reveal a fact.

00:30:53 Speaker_06
But what's so bizarre about the procedure of that night is that this thing that blew up kept getting colder and colder and kept dropping in power.

00:31:04 Speaker_06
It was so counterintuitive, and that in and of itself is a kind of gift, because it allows Legasov to tell a story knowing fully well that as he tells it, it shouldn't be making sense for the people listening to it, which is interesting.

00:31:20 Speaker_06
So now he has that going for him in a sense, that he has to start to explain to them, listen, what I'm about to say makes no sense, but trust me when I tell you, this will make sense.

00:31:30 Speaker_06
So acknowledging those things as he went along, I think helped a lot. And also the fact that, and I completely agree with Jared, that I don't think when he showed up, he thought he was going to tell the truth.

00:31:40 Speaker_03
I think he was quite sure he wasn't. One of the reasons I'm so fixated on that scene is because it succeeds against, you know, all the traditional odds.

00:31:48 Speaker_03
You don't have that much exposition, you don't make the exposition technical, you don't make that the climax of your story. You don't shoot dogs. Exactly. Yeah, those things. But that scene in particular, and...

00:31:58 Speaker_03
Do you think, Jared, that in that moment after Shcherbina stands up and says, let him finish, that when he chooses to finish the explanation, to talk about the graphite tips and the flaw in the reactor, the stuff he wasn't supposed to talk about, do you think that Legasov knew exactly what would happen to him, what then does happen to him in that conversation with the KGB guy?

00:32:19 Speaker_02
Yes, I mean, there's a couple of answers to that. I mean, just winding back just slightly, one of the other things that was keeping me going was understanding his sense of culpability, which I initially found quite confusing.

00:32:36 Speaker_02
But as you play out those scenes prior to that, you started to understand where that feeling of culpability was coming from. So that was a big part of what was happening. I think that he thought he was going to be shot.

00:32:50 Speaker_02
I mean, the image that I had in my mind was that I was going to be up against a wall at the back of the courthouse and shot within 60 seconds of this happening.

00:33:04 Speaker_03
And yet he does it anyway, and that probably... just trying to understand it is what gives that supposedly dry technical scene such extraordinary power.

00:33:13 Speaker_02
There was a paradox that I enjoyed, that you and I discussed, Craig, and that was that early scene in episode five where Hom Yuk is trying to persuade him to do this, that this is the right thing to do. And on the one hand, he's dying.

00:33:34 Speaker_02
It's the same thing that gives him the power to make the sacrifice that he makes at the end of his life for it to be an instigating event. But on the other hand, if three years you've got left, that's eternity for you, and they're precious.

00:33:51 Speaker_02
So you still have a life left to live. So in that moment, you're dealing with this idea of, well, I'm going to die anyway. But on the other hand, this is all the life I have left. And even if it's 60 seconds, that becomes even more precious.

00:34:11 Speaker_02
And it was sort of balancing those two feelings as you were approaching that choke point, if you like, of, right, am I going to do this or not?

00:34:19 Speaker_06
Yeah, I thought that when you got to that moment, I think the best thing you could have imagined would happen is that

00:34:26 Speaker_06
you'd look in the eyes of those scientists and you would see their acknowledgement that yes, what you had said made an impact and they were going to carry this message forth and these reactors would be fixed.

00:34:35 Speaker_06
You would then get shot, but, but that something would be carried on. And yet all you see in their eyes is, yeah, no, no, no, no, no.

00:34:44 Speaker_02
And I think there was also something, because this is why, this is something that, again, that Craig and I talked about, which was, it was the idea of the culpability. And the culpability also ties into the Dyatlov character.

00:34:56 Speaker_02
And Dyatlov was firmly in the crosshairs as being responsible for the whole event. But there was a bit in the script, I don't think it didn't make it, which is where the prosecutor starts to dig into him about his, um...

00:35:14 Speaker_02
history behind the motivations why he did what he did. And at that moment, he... I felt some compassion for Dyatlov.

00:35:25 Speaker_06
Well, Dyatlov, when Dyatlov, even in the version that we have in the show, which is, it is a shorter version, I think at least my, what I get away from it and what the intention was, was that you're on the edge of what you should do or say.

00:35:42 Speaker_06
You're probably not going to do it. And then Dyatlov, interrupts your moment of hesitation, and essentially says, this is a bunch of crap, and you, Legasov, know it, and you're a liar.

00:35:56 Speaker_06
And that... It's a strange thing to have a villain be the person that inspires the hero to do the right thing, but that's kind of what happens there, because the truth of the matter is Dyatlov had no concept that what he was doing could lead to an explosion.

00:36:10 Speaker_06
None. Zero. And to that extent, he is innocent. He's guilty of a lot of things, but... And calling out Legasov in that moment, I think, is what inspires Legasov to say, okay, you know what, actually? That's true. He knows it's true about himself.

00:36:30 Speaker_02
Although, as an actor, though, I had confusion about it, because then I would sit there and go, well, practically speaking, what could he have done 10 years ago?

00:36:39 Speaker_02
Because 10 years ago, when you were aware of this information, you're still in the Soviet Union. It's still top-down control. They decide what the story that's going out there. They decide the narrative that's put out there.

00:36:52 Speaker_02
So how could he practically have done something about it at that time, all the way back then, and yet he still feels because that's the story.

00:37:00 Speaker_06
Yeah, I mean, he couldn't have done anything. I think, basically, he has arrived at a moment where he can. This is it.

00:37:06 Speaker_06
This is the one moment where, theoretically, he could do something, and this man has cut to the heart of him and essentially said, you are a liar. That's why you're not doing anything right now when you could.

00:37:18 Speaker_06
And that's ultimately what I think changes Legasov's mind.

00:37:23 Speaker_02
And the idea that, again, you're taking something out of that scene with Stellan, that it's gotta all be worth it. It's gotta mean something. It had to be about something.

00:37:34 Speaker_06
It has to be worth something. That scene also is a moment, I mean, you know, so I have this, you know, we have our different theories about how this works.

00:37:41 Speaker_06
Jane Featherstone, one of our executive producers, her theory is that it's in the moment following that discussion with Shurbina on the little park bench there.

00:37:50 Speaker_06
that Legasov decides, I think I'm probably going to do the right thing here and tell the truth. So everybody has a different kind of interpretation of it. Yeah.

00:37:57 Speaker_02
Everyone. And we had, even on the day or the leading up to the day, it was all swirling around. And I'm sure there's versions of it where you could have, because it was, um, it was a fluid thing, but there was no rehearsal. So you have to treat,

00:38:15 Speaker_02
every single take as though you're in a rehearsal you know and you don't know what's going to work and allow the editors to finally put the performance together because you you it's not you know in a play you get together you rip they pull the scenes apart you do them this way and

00:38:31 Speaker_02
you know as many different ways as you can through the rehearsal and you finally with the director arrive upon a Narrative structure and that's how you're gonna do the play for the audience when they come in.

00:38:40 Speaker_02
Well, you don't I can't do that in cinema Nobody they don't pay for rehearsal any longer back in the old days used to have three weeks of rehearsal that's gone so you I feel is that you have to treat and

00:38:53 Speaker_02
The takes, that's why you keep begging for takes, so that you can try and put the story together a different way each time, and then let them decide when they rewrite the script for the last time in the editing room, which way works best.

00:39:07 Speaker_03
That's something that I think most people don't know, that what we, the audience, see from an actor is one of many things, if they're good and if the production allows it.

00:39:19 Speaker_03
many different choices they tried in the day, and that what we are seeing is the one that was selected, usually by the editor and director, as best representing what happens.

00:39:28 Speaker_03
That's a fascinating aspect of your craft that I don't think most people know. I said I had two questions. The first one took a long time. Here's the second one.

00:39:36 Speaker_03
And it reflects something that I talked about with Craig, which is, that as a writer-producer, what had he learned, not so much about his craft, but about people, and about the world having done this project, and I wanted to ask you the same thing.

00:39:48 Speaker_03
If you, after playing this character, and maybe even after watching the reaction to it, if you had learned anything about people, or the world, or how the world works.

00:39:58 Speaker_02
I mean, there's a couple of things that spring to mind. One is that I encountered people who are nostalgic for that system. Really? They tend to be older, yeah. And they feel that life was simpler back then. Do you see what they mean?

00:40:13 Speaker_02
Can you understand that perspective?

00:40:15 Speaker_02
Well, it was partly to do with the thing that struck a chord was everyone had the same car, everyone had the same clothes, everyone had the same phone, whereas now you have to worry whether your car is as good as your neighbor's car and that causes dissatisfaction.

00:40:34 Speaker_02
And which they didn't have before. Yes, there was no choice, but then there was a feeling of that it caused, there was some harmony that came about from that. I don't know whether I agree with them or not, because I didn't experience it. What else?

00:40:52 Speaker_02
There was something else that sprung to mind that just popped out of it.

00:40:56 Speaker_03
I can let you cogitate on that as I move over to Craig. I feel I would be remiss if I did not ask both of you what you thought about how much this show has become an object of political argument.

00:41:09 Speaker_03
Do you guys have any feelings about that conversation, whether you've enjoyed it, whether you think it's a worthwhile thing, whether it bothers you, anything at all?

00:41:19 Speaker_06
Uh... I think that a lot of people miss the point. Not all of them, but a bunch of them. Anybody who looks at this show and says, you know, this teaches us something about blank, generally, they're correct. The show is about people.

00:41:35 Speaker_06
And I wish I could explain that to those who think it's about politics. It's not. It's about people. And it's about our weaknesses as humans and the way we think and process the world around us.

00:41:47 Speaker_06
And so, of course, it can be kind of kaleidoscopic in that regard. You can look at any human failure and go, this is quite reminiscent of the human failure at Chernobyl.

00:41:57 Speaker_03
Jared, do you have any thoughts about that? Have you been amazed to see it as it's unfolded?

00:42:02 Speaker_02
Well, I think that that question is in the DNA of the show, is in the DNA of what Craig was interested in. I mean, it's from the very opening line to the last line. I think that when people sort of say, well, of course,

00:42:22 Speaker_02
cultures or our system isn't like that system. The closest analogy to me to the way that the Soviet system was set up really is in corporate culture and the way that corporations are structured.

00:42:36 Speaker_02
And of course what's happened in the West is so much of the way that our lives are run, our governments are run, are influenced and mandated by what is good for the corporations rather than what's good for the individual citizens.

00:42:51 Speaker_02
And then I remembered the second part of that question you asked me before, and it does relate to this, because the thing that I walked away with as being sort of the biggest lesson about this was, the biggest danger happens when you become cynical towards your ability to have a dialogue or to affect your government.

00:43:15 Speaker_02
And in this story, nobody believes any longer. that they are going to be able to impact what their government does.

00:43:23 Speaker_02
And it takes something this huge for them to wake up and realize that they aren't in control and that their narrative is being blown wide open. I mean, that's the purpose of that joke, isn't it?

00:43:38 Speaker_02
About the apple machine, the Soviet machine that cuts an apple into three pieces. They are all perfectly aware of the system that they live under, and they've become cynical as to their role in it and their ability in it.

00:43:52 Speaker_02
And that's the biggest danger, I think, is if you no longer believe that you can do anything, and then you just give up.

00:44:00 Speaker_03
The show, of course, came out to extraordinary acclaim that seemed to increase as more and more people found out about it. Both of you have been nominated for significant awards or won some, I think, already.

00:44:11 Speaker_03
I'm assuming, I'm not in the industry, but I assume this means that more opportunities will open to both of you in your field. So I'll ask both of you, do you know what's next?

00:44:23 Speaker_06
I do have things that are coming next, and I can't talk about them per se.

00:44:27 Speaker_06
I will say that at the very least, the first one is also about our world and things that happened, but they happened much more recently, and they happened much more close to home.

00:44:39 Speaker_02
I was going to ask you, Craig, I was going to wonder whether or not people are basically throwing comedies your way or are they now that that's completely off the table and now they're throwing sort of dramas and historical dramas because it seems like people sort of tend to follow the pattern of the last thing they saw.

00:44:57 Speaker_06
They sure do. So a remarkable stream of, oh, God, look at this depressing chapter in history has made its way to my inbox. And listen, I entertain them all. I mean, I look through all of it. I consider all of it.

00:45:12 Speaker_06
Because what you are looking for from, and I'm fascinated by history, obviously, what you're looking for are chapters in history where there are people and relationships embedded into it that you think are going to,

00:45:24 Speaker_06
translate to now and offer some kind of universal perspective and enlightenment to an audience. And, you know, a lot of these events are just their events. And so, they don't have quite that.

00:45:39 Speaker_06
You know, I think about, like, for instance, Gallipoli, which is one of my favorite movies, and how you can take something like that and really make it about human beings. That's what you're hoping for when you're thinking about these moments in...

00:45:53 Speaker_06
But yeah, no, they've definitely, I've stopped getting the silly comedy offers or the raunchy comedy offers, and now it's a lot of that stuff, which is gratifying. Do you regret then not giving me more jokes then, Craig?

00:46:05 Speaker_06
I don't regret anything, Jared.

00:46:07 Speaker_02
Are you sure? I regret nothing. Because I think that was our first meeting. We went and had drinks at the Chateau Marmont, and I said, you know, can I have a few jokes, a little bit of a sense of humor? No!

00:46:22 Speaker_02
But the Soviets do have, they have a really good, like, dark sense of, no, no jokes for you.

00:46:28 Speaker_06
Other characters did have that. Other characters, but no jokes for you. Well, Legasov just wasn't funny. He's just not a funny guy. But he did, but see, you're a funny person, so there were moments where you created laughs. out of your awkwardness.

00:46:40 Speaker_06
I mean, I remember the first time... So, I think it was week two.

00:46:45 Speaker_06
It was the first day of the second week, and I'm sitting with Johan in an open field, watching the scene where Jared and Stellan have arrived and are meeting, um, Burkhanov and Fomin to discuss, you know, why did I see graphite on the roof and all that.

00:46:59 Speaker_06
And initially, Jared's character, Legasov, has to hang back by the helicopter because he's been naughty, you know. He got into an argument with Shcherbina in the helicopter. And then Sharina, wait, like, all right, come on over.

00:47:11 Speaker_06
And Jared just has this thing where he's walking, and then he gets close, and then the guards that are walking with him stop. He, like, moves a half a step in front of them, and then just awkwardly steps backward.

00:47:23 Speaker_06
And the two of us were just, we honestly thought that was the funniest thing we'd ever seen, because it encapsulated a certain kind of, like, Legosovian nature to us, this...

00:47:34 Speaker_06
awkward scientist who never really had to deal with these things before, didn't want to get something wrong like how you walk and stop, but had no problem yelling at people and telling them that they weren't doing their jobs right because he just didn't have much of a filter in that regard.

00:47:49 Speaker_06
So, um, you, I mean, you, you made us laugh anyway. So that's, hats off to you. And, and yes, once I, well, I'm going to go back to comedy and it'll, you'll be, um, justly rewarded.

00:48:03 Speaker_03
And you bring me and you're like, yeah, but you still don't have any jokes Yeah, I know you don't have any jokes, but but you're gonna stand here while they have jokes and you know, yeah Yeah, so anybody listening out there Jared Harris wants to do a comedy send it like hangover for what do we have?

00:48:17 Speaker_02
He's hard Tell me about all these really hard about I mean, you know, that is not something that you should say, you know You take on I mean there's that sort of famous I don't even know if it's true about Edmund Keene as he's dying on his deathbed.

00:48:32 Speaker_02
You heard that thing I have but I want to hear you tell it Well, uh, so he's dying on his deathbed and then someone asks him if he's, is he all right? And he looks up at the person and he says, dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

00:48:45 Speaker_02
And I always wondered whether or not he probably had thought those was going to be his last words. And then he survived for three more days and he couldn't say anything. He's like, fuck it.

00:48:54 Speaker_03
God damn it. Perfect. He knows a button. He's an actor.

00:48:59 Speaker_02
He's like, I'm still alive three days later, but I can't say anything because those have to be my last words.

00:49:04 Speaker_03
Speaking of last words, I think we have arrived there at the end of this, probably, I think we can say, final episode. Bonus, yes, Craig's like, yes, absolutely. We'll never do this again. I am Peter Sagal.

00:49:19 Speaker_03
I've been here with Craig Mazin and, of course, Jared Harris. This podcast was made possible by HBO, Sky, and Pineapple Street Media. It was co-hosted by myself, Peter Sagal, with Craig Mazin.

00:49:29 Speaker_03
Our team at Pineapple Street Media includes executive producers Max Linsky, Jenna Weiss-Berman, and Barry Finkel. This episode was produced by Christine Driscoll and Barry Finkel. Our associate producer is Melissa Slaughter.

00:49:42 Speaker_03
From Craig Mazin's team, we have producer Jack Lesko, and music by Khan Khan. Craig, it was an absolute pleasure to talk to you again and a genuine pleasure to see you acclaim for this great work. And Jared Harris, absolutely a joy to talk to you.

00:49:59 Speaker_03
And just speaking on behalf of, shall we say, a few million viewers, thank you for your extraordinary work in this series as well. Thank you. Bless you. Thank you for having me.

00:50:22 Speaker_00
I run a school for young women.

00:50:24 Speaker_01
We're not a threat to anyone. In the new HBO original series, Dune Prophecy, it is sisterhood above all. I'm Greta Johnson.

00:50:32 Speaker_00
And I'm Ahmed Ali Akbar. Join us on the official Dune Prophecy podcast, where we unpack each episode with the show's creators, cast, and crew.

00:50:40 Speaker_01
Stream Dune Prophecy Sundays starting November 17th exclusively on Max, and you can listen to new episodes of the podcast every Sunday night.