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.
00:31You have a good ending.
00:33A good death scene means that the audience will remember your character's story.
00:40Yes.
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?
00:54I mean, I suppose, I think all of them, all of the characters are, I mean, it's just sort of
01:02how you're dealing with it.
01:03I mean, you know, good comedy, you can have, 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.
01:13But 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
01:36understand 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
01:48office.
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.
01:54But in this one, you know, Valerie's dying.
01:59And in fact, I saw something that his daughter wrote that said that he was actually much sicker at the
02:05end 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.
02:23What is your impression of Lugasov?
02:26You 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, and 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
02:47narrative.
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.
02:56And that was starting to bump against what Craig wanted from that relationship,
03:04which was a contrast between the two.
03:07And I needed to occupy a different space to the space that Stellan was going to occupy.
03:13So my impression of the real Lugasov was that he was actually in that sort of traditional Russian alpha personality.
03:26You know, he came across as actually very confident, and 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
03:38characters 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 him.
04:01He'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.
04:12So 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
04:28story.
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
04:38this whole experience.
04:39And that they're sharing the same fate, which is that their lives are going to be drastically cut short because
04:44of it.
04:44And they can't leave.
04:46So they know that 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 metal of the Ukrainian people.
05:02Because I didn't know before that it took 600,000 people to clean up the Chernobyl site, get it to
05:09the 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.
05:23And that site itself is going to be problematic for, I mean, depending on who you talk to, 25,000
05:31to 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.
05:42Some might say this was the cause of the fall of the Soviet Union.
05:45Well, Gorbachev said that.
05:46Yeah.
05:47Yeah.
05:48Some, like Gorbachev.
05:51Well, I think that's one of the things that I appreciated about Craig's intent was, it was to shine a
06:00light on the self-sacrifice and heroism of these people who did all this without any expectation of a reward
06:09or of being lionized in any way.
06:12And then, of course, there's the expression that Boris's character, Stalin's character says, which is that this is being traditionally
06:25their 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 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
06:51in the arm, everyone between the ages of 16, men or women, and 49 are all in, they, they rotate
06:59in and out of active service, active duty, because they are, I mean, I think when we were there, um,
07:06Russia was shelling the eastern part of the country.
07:08Um, so, you know, it's, it's sort of a slight, that mindset of being under siege, you know, um, and
07:18they, uh, I suppose they're expecting trouble to start and not to get much help.
07:26What do you think about the tourism, uh, the exclusion zone?
07:30This is a new thing.
07:31It's not, you know, it's been going on for a while.
07:33It was a sort of adrenaline tourism, isn't it?
07:37Right.
07:37It's been going on for a while, Anthony Bourdain goes in there, one of his Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown.
07:42But I think this idea that this, sort of the new thing is, is that the Instagram people going in
07:47there and taking these, like, you know, practically naked shots of them in front of, uh, whatever, leaning on whatever
07:55structures that are still, I would just say that, you know, there are parts of that whole place that are
08:00still probably not safe and, um.
08:03Yeah.
08:04Would you go?
08:05No, I was, I, we were asked if you wanted to go.
08:07My wife said, absolutely not.
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.
08:17The Ukraine is saying they want to turn their brand around and make it a positive tourist attraction for them.
08:24Chernobyl?
08:25Mm-hmm.
08:27Yeah.
08:27That's going to be an interesting meeting, 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.
08:35I don't know.
08:35But I do know that there's, that one of the things that, positively, that came out of this show was,
08:42they, that story of 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
09:01and 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
09:10all of the, all the politics.
09:12Yeah, I think, and that was definitely part of the DNA of, of the scripts that Craig was writing, you
09:18know.
09:18I mean, the, the, the, the most, uh, sort of affecting human story in the whole series is the relationship
09:26between Jesse's character and Adam's character.
09:29He's the firefighter, the first responder and the, 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
09:41with it, you know.
09:42Yeah, and Americans can identify with the idea that the first responders are usually the casual, casualty, casualty, yes.
09:48And they don't get looked after.
09:49Yeah.
09:49Yeah, absolutely.
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.
10:04So what do you think about Chernobyl is, is, uh, so popular among audiences?
10:08I don't know.
10:08I mean, it's, it, I think.
10:13Like, I, I, everybody knew that the material was really good and, and that it was a good show in
10:19that sense.
10:20It was a powerful show.
10:21But the way that it took off, took off, I think, I took everyone by surprise.
10:26And you, 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, touched a nerve in what
10:37people were thinking about.
10:39And it, and so it had a parallel to a lot of the conversations and things that are going on
10:44either politically or environmentally that are 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
11:00know if people are going to be able, they're going to take that up or not.
11:04So, um, uh, it had, 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.
11:19The limited series is Chernobyl on HBO.
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