Arroyo May 2019

DISASTER
LESSONS
Comedy writer/producer Craig
Mazin grapples with a devastating
catastrophe in his dark new HBO
series, Chernobyl.
BY KATHLEEN KELLEHER
PHOTO: Matt Sayles
Craig Mazin
Craig Mazin is a successful writer/producer best known for big
Hollywood comedies, including two Hangover sequels, two
Scary Movie sequels and Identity Thief. And he’ll soon add the
upcoming remake of Charlie’s Angels directed by Elizabeth Banks to the
list.
But there is nothing funny about his latest venture, a sharp departure
from his earlier work. The La Caňada Flintridge resident wrote and
executive produced Chernobyl, a chilling five-part miniseries that debuts
on HBO May 6. It dramatizes the horrific nuclear–reactor accident at
Chernobyl in 1986, one of the worst manmade disasters in history.
The HBO/Sky co-production is a stark cautionary tale that reexamines
what led to the devastating catastrophe 32 years ago. Mazin spent about
four years on the project between creating and writing the series and
co-executive producing with Jane Featherstone, whose producing credits
include the popular British crime series Broadchurch. The docudrama is
directed by Johan Renck (Breaking Bad) and stars Emily Watson (Breaking
the Waves), Jared Harris (Mad Men) and Stellan Skarsgard (Good Will
Hunting).
The miniseries sprang from Mazin’s fascination with Chernobyl.
“It had to be my idea, because nobody was going to ask me to do this,
because it was not what I had been doing,” Mazin said in a telephone
interview from his Pasadena office. “I have loved my time working in
movies and working in comedies, but after 20 years of the same thing
you start to change as person. There is only so much comedy you can do.
I have always had a scientific side and a historic side, and that is what I
would watch. So I started reading about Chernobyl in 2014 and became
kind of obsessed with it.”
When he pitched the show to HBO, the channel jumped at the opportunity.
Kary Antholis, president of HBO miniseries, told Deadline.com
that Chernobyl was one of the “most compelling” pitches he’d heard in
more than two decades working in television. “Every step of the way it
was, ‘Yeah, we really like this,’ and then [the British telecommunications
company] Sky was absurdly supportive,” said Mazin. “Then I wrote parts
for three actors in mind and all three agreed to do it. The rest was surprisingly
easy. I am in my 25th year as a writer and Chernobyl is the only
thing that is all me.”
The result? Jared Harris plays Valery Legazov, the Soviet scientist
pressed into service by the Kremlin to investigate the nuclear accident;
Skarsgard plays Boris Shcherbina, the deputy chairman of the Council
of Ministers and head of the USSR’s Bureau for Fuel and Energy; and
Watson plays Ulana Khomyuk, a Soviet nuclear physicist driven to find
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