'Chernobyl' star Jared Harris spoke to The Hollywood Reporter In Studio about the hit HBO limited series, learning the story of his character and reacts to the increased tourism at the Chernobyl sight.
00:00Hi, I'm Jared Harris, and I'm in studio with The Hollywood Reporter.
00:07So congratulations on your Emmy nomination.
00:10Lead actor in a limited series for Chernobyl.
00:14So let's first talk about the role itself.
00:17In the past, you've been blessed and cursed with characters that are complex, depressed, defeated, and even suicidal.
00:27I think that's blessed as well.
00:29Yeah.
00:30As an actor.
00:30You have a good ending.
00:32A good death scene means that the audience will remember your character's story.
00:40Yeah.
00:41It just means you're out of a job afterwards.
00:43Right.
00:43It sucks on that side.
00:46What is it like to play the role of a character who is so connected to their own mortality?
00:52I mean, I suppose, I think all of them, all of the characters are, I mean, it's just sort of how you're dealing with it.
01:03I mean, you know, good comedy, you can be asking yourself those questions.
01:07It's just how you, you know, how you're dealing with it, how you're responding to it.
01:10But I suppose, I mean, this question comes up because of the way that this character's life ends.
01:24And it's obviously very similar to what happened with Lane Price.
01:26But, you know, there were different statements, if you like, you know, and which, of course, then you have to understand that's the point of it.
01:37And that's what the writer's getting across.
01:39And it's a nuance of your character.
01:42But Lane was, he was really trying to make life as difficult as he could for the people in that office.
01:49And it was a sort of, you know, sticking a finger.
01:51It was cutting off your nose to spite your face, in a way.
01:55But in this one, you know, Valerie's dying.
01:58And in fact, I saw something that his daughter wrote that said that he was actually much sicker at the end of his life than we portrayed him to be.
02:09And so he did not have much time left.
02:12And he used it as a way of an instigating event to make a statement and try and spur action.
02:18So it was not, it wasn't a futile gesture in that sense.
02:23Well, what is your impression of Legasov?
02:25You spent a lot of time in his shoes.
02:29Yeah, it was interesting because there's, like, you always do, I always do a lot of research.
02:35And even if the character's not a biographical character, but, of course, this one was.
02:39But there actually wasn't a lot of information on him because the Soviets actually succeeded in scrubbing him from the narrative.
02:49What I did see about him, I could see that sort of as an archetype,
02:54he was quite similar to Stellan's character.
02:57And that was starting to bump against what Craig wanted from that relationship,
03:04which was a contrast between the two.
03:07And that I needed to occupy a different space to the space that Stellan was going to occupy.
03:13So my impression of the real Legasov was that he was actually in that sort of traditional Russian alpha personality.
03:26You know, he came across as actually very confident.
03:28And he occupied his space.
03:32But that didn't work, really, for what Craig needed to happen in our story, in the journey that our two characters were going to take.
03:39You feel something for these two characters.
03:41You feel that in the way that they came together, it gives you a little bit of hope in humanity.
03:49Yeah, I mean, you know, again, Craig is a very, very smart writer.
03:55And he has a podcast about screenwriting where he talks about and he's been going for a long time.
04:02So one of the things that he was able to deploy was certain structures from different types of movies.
04:10So I use them to sort of to keep each episode fresh.
04:16And that particular thing that he employs is the bromance genre, if you like.
04:22And it's these two people who are completely opposed, at odds, antagonistic to one another at the beginning of the story.
04:29And they start to realize that if they're going to succeed, they're going to need to rely on one another.
04:33And then they become bonded by the fact that they are the only two people who have consistently gone through this whole experience.
04:39And that they're sharing the same fate, which is that their lives are going to be drastically cut short because of it.
04:44And they have no, they can't leave.
04:46So they know that that is, that's a shared fate that they're going to have.
04:50I'd like to talk a little bit about the theme of just kind of the, the metal of the Ukrainian people.
05:01Because I didn't know before that it took 600,000 people to clean up their Chernobyl site, get it to the point where it is today, where it's under control, question mark.
05:15Yeah, they've built a containment structure that's going to be good for 100 years.
05:19And then they'll have to rebuild it, fix it, you know, and that site itself is going to be problematic for, I mean, depending on who you talk to, 25 to 40,000 years.
05:33What did you learn about the culture of the Ukrainian culture?
05:37It's such an interesting time because it's right before the fall of the Soviet Union.
05:41Yeah.
05:42Some might say this was the cause of the Soviet Union.
05:45Gorbachev said that.
05:46Yeah.
05:47Yeah.
05:48Some, like Gorbachev.
05:49Yeah.
05:51Well, I think that's one of the things that I, I appreciated about Craig's intent was, it was to shine a light on the, the, the self-sacrifice and heroism of these people.
06:04Um, who did all this without any expectation of, of a reward or of, of being, uh, lionized in any way.
06:13And, um, and then of course there's the, the expression that, um, Boris's character, Stalin's character, uh, says, which is that this is being traditionally their fate, you know, that this has happened constantly throughout their lives.
06:29So, um, we, we were, we were in the Ukraine for a week.
06:35We shot in Kiev, uh, and Kiev doubled for exterior Moscow, uh, scenes, streets and stuff.
06:43And, um, I, one of the things that I remember about shooting there was that you would see, apparently everyone in the arm, everyone between the ages of 16, men or women, and 49 are all in, they, they rotate in and out.
06:59And, um, they, they rotate in and out of active service, active duty, because they are, I mean, I think when we were there, um, Russia was shelling the eastern part of the country.
07:08Um, so, you know, it's, it's sort of, it's like that mindset of being under siege, you know, and, um, and they, uh, I suppose they're expecting trouble to start and not to get much help.
07:26What do you think about the tourism, uh, yeah.
07:29The exclusion zone, this is a new thing.
07:31I, it's not, you know, it's been a going on for a while.
07:33It was a sort of adrenaline tourism, internal tourism, isn't it?
07:37Right.
07:37It's been going on for a while.
07:38Anthony Bourdain goes in there.
07:39One of his Anthony Bourdain parts unknown.
07:42But I think this idea that the sort of the new thing is, is that the Instagram people going in there and taking these, like, you know, practically naked shots of them.
07:51Um, in front of, uh, whatever, leaning on whatever structures that are still, I would just say that, you know, there are parts of that whole place that are still probably not safe and, um.
08:03Yeah.
08:03Would you go?
08:05No, I was, I, we were asked if you wanted to go.
08:07No, my wife said, absolutely not.
08:09Yeah.
08:10Smart.
08:10I didn't want to go, actually.
08:12I didn't, I didn't, I feel slightly gowlish to go there and do that.
08:15Um, um, no.
08:18The Ukraine is saying they want to turn their brand around and make it a positive tourist attraction for them.
08:24That's going to be an interesting thing, isn't it?
08:27They said it's going to be good for the brand.
08:29You sit down and spitball how you can do that.
08:32I mean, I don't know how you would do that.
08:34Uh.
08:35I don't know.
08:35But I do know that, that, that there's, that one of the things that positively that came out of this show was they, that story of the, the, the, the sacrifice and what they did to secure Europe's future was not known.
08:53And that there are, um, there are, you know, flowers and stuff like that being left at, um, commemoration markers and that they're being appreciated for that.
09:03So that's a positive thing.
09:04Yeah, that's beautiful.
09:05And that brings, kind of brings in the humanity once again, you know, there's, the, the humanity is there underneath all of the, all the politics.
09:12Yeah, I think I, and that was definitely part of the DNA of, of the scripts that Craig was writing, you know.
09:18And, I mean, the, the, the, the most, uh, sort of affecting human story in the whole series is the relationship between Jesse's character and Adam's character.
09:29He's the firefighter, the first responder and the pregnant wife.
09:33And you follow their journey through the story.
09:35And, I mean, they're essentially, they represent the innocent, uh, victims of this because they had absolutely nothing to do with it, you know.
09:42Yeah, and Americans can identify with the idea that the first responders are usually the casual, casualties in those accidents.
09:48Casualties, yeah, and they don't get looked after.
09:49Yeah.
09:49Yeah.
09:50Absolutely.
09:51Uh, what do you think, um, you know, the Academy and the audiences responded really well to Chernobyl.
09:59Yeah.
09:59They're usually, um, you know, more into dragons.
10:03So what do you think about Chernobyl is, is, uh, so popular among audiences?
10:08I don't know, I mean, it's, it, I think, I, everybody knew that the material was really good and, and that it was a good show in that sense.
10:20It was a powerful show, but the way that it took off, took off, I think, I took everyone by surprise and you, you can never know what people are going to be thinking about 18 months from now.
10:31And it, that show came out at this point where it touched a, you know, it touched a nerve in what people were thinking about and it, and so it had a parallel to a lot of the conversations and things that are going on either politically or environmentally and they're on people's minds right now.
10:49So, um, and it was, it's that sort of magical thing where you can't, you can't plan that.
10:55And although a lot of those questions are, again, in the DNA of the show that Craig wrote, you don't know if people are going to be able to, they're going to take that up or not.
11:04So, um, uh, it has, it's got to do something with that.
11:08And it's, you know, it's a fucking good show.
11:11It is.
11:12Yeah.
11:13It doesn't hurt.
11:16Jared Harris, thank you so much for being here.
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