Bonus Episode with Jared Harris

title: Bonus Episode with Jared Harris
author: The Chernobyl Podcast
contenttype: podcast
publication: The Chernobyl Podcast
published: 2019-08-15T08:00:00
sourceurl: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/PSM2531693953.mp3?updated=1701796106

word_count: 8933

This podcast is sponsored by Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business. When you own your own business, you own every decision. I'm Angus, founder of Elastic. We're the design studio that created the Game of Thrones main title. When you start a business, you're creating a world. I love that thing of like, I don't know how to do this, but I'm going to figure it out. You have to innovate and you have to travel into the unknown. Our small world can change the big world. For business world builders everywhere, the business card that rewards every decision you make. Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank, and a member FDIC, subject credit approval, terms apply. Hi, I'm Craig Mason, creator of the HBO and SkyMini series, Chernobyl. 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 Segal. And we're going to also be joined by Jared Harris, who portrayed Valeri Lagassev on the series. 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. 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. They were killed in an explosion at a military test site in Northern Russia, the Nanoscut 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. 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. Now, Rosatom did not confirm that anyone died until Saturday, August 10th. So, two days go by before they say anything about anyone dying. And it's not until August 11th, three days after the explosion that they come out and admit that it was nuclear in nature. 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? 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 Severovinsk, which is about 20 miles away from the missile test site, 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. Now, to put that in context, that's not like Chernobyl, where you're getting up words of 7,000 times background levels, but it's still not good. And then the reports sort of began to disappear. 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. 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. 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 that we were told about days later. And there's a town called Nyonoksa, which was told to evacuate, and then we're told they're not evacuating, so we're not quite sure. And there are doctors whose medical scrubs apparently have been setting dosimeters clicking because they're contaminated. That's what we know. That's all they've told us. Hopefully, this doesn't lead to more deaths. It's terribly sad that scientists are still dying. It's terribly sad that first responders are still dying. 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. 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. It's stated somehow responsible for what happened that I must warn you you were trading on dangerous ground. I've already tried 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. It is even there, but it is still there. Hi, this is Peter Segal, sometimes known as the host of Weight Weight 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 Mason, to accompany each episode of the HBO mini-series. Well, some months after the extraordinary success of that mini-series, we have gotten the band together for a special after-effects episode of this podcast, Craig Mason, how are you? I'm good, Mr. Peter Segal. How are you? I'm well, thank you. 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 mini-series who played LaGasov to such extraordinary effect. Jared Harris is joining us. Jared, hello. Hi. As anybody who has seen the mini-series or even has just been watching the press, the mini-series 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, 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. Jared, were you surprised? I was surprised. No, not at all. I knew it was amazing. In my dreams, it went exactly that the way I dreamt it. No, you can't know what people are going to be thinking about 18 months in the future. 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 into the real world. 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? I had a guy come up to the airport recently whose father was a liquidator and he was a Ukrainian and he was saying that thank you, thanking us for making the show and for bringing the world's attention to that story. 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 and they're grateful for the story having been told and for the focus that Craig brought to the the heroism and the sacrifice that had gone unrecorded, you know, they hadn't been recognized in their own country at the time. 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. 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 wall. And I recommend the Twitter feed for those who are interested. Yeah. 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 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. Or look, the 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 the region code right. Well, I didn't know that. So I just started thinking, wow, you know what? Our guys did a great job. I mean, they really did. There's a 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. You know, so cranberries are if if you make a movie about Soviets and they're all, I don't know, wearing those hats even when it's not cold out. You know, it's like it's that that silly stuff. And we were we were rather cranberry free according to most people that spoke with us. 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. They've seen a lot of people get it wrong. And I think they were surprised that someone kind of got it right. One of my favorite things that he went on about was one of the characters in episode four and with the liquidators who are taking care of the dogs. He talked about the 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. And I was like so amazed by how impressed he was by that accuracy. Well, we got a little some of that's luck, but some of it is tailoring apart to an actor. So the actor, their playing bacho as far as far as who was born and grew up in Lebanon and then moved to Sweden. 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. And because of Farsi'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. 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. But you have all this Asia minor area and you have all these interesting other republics that aren't so, you know, blonde hair, blue-eyed white people. There's a certain ethnicity that's going on that's fascinating. 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 Yohan worked really hard with with everyone. I mean, I'm sure Jared, you know, right off the bat when you were talking to Yohan, he probably immediately started in with what he would call the Soviet weight. Yeah, my recollection of those conversations was, well, there was a movement person that we we skiped with, but also a certain thing of 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 and from a performance point of view. Yeah. Yeah. Jared, so tell me exactly what a movement person is. 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, that when we nod, in agreement, it's from our, it's a downward motion, but when they nod as agreement, it's upward like that. That's the one, the big one I remember, but also the certain kind of like a bust of keeping quality in your face where you don't give anything away, you're, you're concealing your emotions and your reactions. And which is always, it's interesting because what it, 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 Yohan was completely the opposite. He was always, he was about the stakes are high enough and we, you know, you can hold it as much in as you can and make us look to see what's going on. One of my favorite moments is I believe it's the, it's in the beginning of episode four. Ludmila has arrived in this new apartment that they've given her in Kiev and there's a land lady that's essentially your building manager that's showing her the room. And she is a, she's an Eastern European actor and she's holding her cigarette and just standing there. And then Ludmila looks back at her, Jessie Buckley turns back and the woman just goes, like moves her cigarette, I'm tired of standing here and just walks away. It's, 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. Jared, we haven't had the pleasure of having you on this particular podcast before. So let me ask you if, if you can to talk about how you approached the role, every actor prepares in a different way. How did you start with Legasov? Start with the script. Read, 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 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 weren't made as opposed to the ones that were made because obviously he went through that whole process himself. So when you're, 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? It's interesting that you mentioned like there are things that didn't happen or things that weren't there and one of the things that occurred to me is this is not always a very heroic character for example. I love that about him, yes. I mean there are places where he could have done something brave or said something more truthful but didn't. So one of the things that appealed to me as we started to do it about this, 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, so 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 going to have to be 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 of the fact that what staying means constantly. So his journey towards being a hero is a slow journey if you like and I like the idea of he was afraid 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. There are moments in the miniseries where Lugasov 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 and the scene begins and this is a brave choice I think by Craig to have the hero Lugasov stand up and basically lie to these guys. And of course any volunteers will be rewarded, a yearly stipend of 400 rubles and for those of you working in reactors one and two promotions. Why are reactors one and two still operating at all? 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. You even know how contaminated it is. I don't have an exact number. You don't need an exact number to know if it will kill us but you can't even tell us that. Stellan should have been making that while 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 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. You have to tell them the truth so he tells them the truth. Probably not something that he's familiar with doing either but as a as a party official he would be all along the lines of those the party official in the first episode which is you know cut the phone lines and contain the spread of information so 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. Well why should we do this for what for a hundred ripples? You'll do it because it must be done. You'll do it because nobody else can and if you don't maybe this will die. If you tell me that's not enough I won't believe you. Well this is 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 isn't interrogating and understanding the characters that are in the scene with him because that 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 what's 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 and Jared would do these things just beautifully all the time you could see him looking at Stellan and going thank 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 because it was I'm going to 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 that moment right there is the beginning of their friendship. Jared I will I have two more questions for you and obviously want to hear whatever else you have to say the first is rather specific the second is larger in in the final episode you deliver the most extraordinarily lengthy and detailed technological come on. Hey give me a second here I'm trying to praise the man. It was like a few it was a few lines. It was a lot of exposition about very complicated technical aspects and used to be. Craig already knows that I think it's remarkably successful but I wanted to ask how much of a challenge you found that scene that the courtroom scene. It was in which you Craig did you set him up for this? I did not Jared came to me and he said why so short yeah more words. There were I see that there was more but it got some of it got cut out because it was a it was I'd say it was probably about two and a half pages longer wasn't it? 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 but also you know just Jared kind of undersold a little bit earlier his process with a script because you know he and I had a series of conversations before we started shooting that were really influential particularly on the 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 going to function and 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 I mean we had to figure and unfortunately because of the way our schedule worked in terms of both availability and budget that week that so the one thing that Jared was like please put the trial at the end of the schedule 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 and so you know I'm the weeks before it well all the giant cremden 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 and spend that time figuring out what's going to happen yeah no that didn't so so being able to talk for 10 minutes about xenon is an actor's dream or an actor's nightmare 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 and the largest example of it was episode five and what amounted to a 24 page monologue cool water takes heat out of the system as it does it turns the steam or what we call avoid in an rbnk reactor of the type used at Chernobyl there's something called a positive void coefficient what does that mean it means that the more steam present within the system the higher the reactivity which means more heat which means more steam which means we'll appear we we have a vicious cycle on our hands how do you make that interesting I mean how 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 a finding a sort of a subtextual journey or narrative so I was playing something else other than here's this information and you know some of it was planned but a lot of it we discovered in the room and there were and some of it comes from it was in Craig's script 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 it is and Craig had written that he describes the protons as being bullets every atom of U235 is like a bullet traveling at nearly the speed of light kind of trading everything in its path woods metal concrete flesh every gram of U235 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 why does he use that word and then you I understand that where Craig's mind was and that was okay he's in a room full of people that if I start describing in scientific terms I'm going to lose them and they won't understand 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 and but he only discovers that at that moment you know so that's useful because you can plan that there's other stuff that you can't plan that there was versions of it that we did that were really passionate 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 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 and then specifically in that last courtroom scene Craig and set the whole thing up so we're watching it going is he gonna do it is he gonna tell the truth and then also that that Johan and Craig's approach to that scene and the way it was structured was they didn't want it to end up with a a giant sort of injustice for all Al Pacino you're out of order you're out of order like a big thing like that that it kind of it kind of it's like a balloon losing its air it's a kind of fart at the end that they he he lays out this thing before them and there's just no response at all and it was a futile gesture that at the end of the day you can look out and say well why would you ever think this could work yeah yeah that that's exactly right I mean the every chance we could we tried to avoid doing what it seemed 70 years of television had taught us to do 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 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 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 and going through everything that we did with 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 it was through the lens of his contempt and outrage for dear love and what in the decisions he had made it is also sometimes powered by his love of the science itself 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 well when it works it's remarkable 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 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 yeah what is he trying to do in terms of his desire as motivation so what did you bring to that final courtroom scene in that sense 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 okay well he makes a decision here but okay what if we push it off and push it off and so it was almost it came down to the moment when he's looking at the judge and he's he's there was it was sort of in the script that there's a sort of pause and he's he's 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 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 because again is part of Craze 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 the aftermath of it but always constantly talking about it and then the narrative question is posed why did it happen how did it happen which Emily's character starts to go off on on this a detective trail if you like which is the sort of political thriller aspect of the of episodes two and three and then by the time you get to five yeah you want to know well what happened why didn't blow up so that's interesting and so you know that at that point you're you're answering questions that the audience will have in their mind so that relieves some of the pressure off of you as a performer in some things you you night you need to juice up and other stuff you like no this is where I'm holding these threads at the moment and that's where the tension is 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 were faking a bunch of storytelling to eventually reveal effect but what's what's so bizarre about the the procedure of that night is that this thing that blew up kept getting colder and colder and kept dropping in power it was so counterintuitive and that in and of itself is a kind of gift because it allows Lagosov 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 right so now he has that going for him in a sense that he he has to start to explain to them listen one about to say makes no sense but trust me when I tell you this will make sense so acknowledging those things as he went along I think helped a lot and also the fact that and I completely grew scared that I don't think when he showed up he thought he was going to tell the truth 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 you don't have that much exposition you don't make the exposition technical you don't make that the climax of your story and dogs exactly yeah those things but that scene in particular and do you think Jared that in that moment after Sherbena stands up and says let him finish that when he chooses to finish the explanation to talk about the the graphite tips and the flaw and the reactor the stuff he wasn't supposed to talk about do you think that Lagosov knew exactly what what happened him what then does happen to him in that conversation with the KGB guy yes I mean there's a there's a couple of answers to that I mean I'm just winding back to slightly one of the other things that was keeping me going was the was understanding his sense of culpability which I initially found quite confusing but 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 I think that he thought he was going to be shot 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 within 60 seconds of this happening 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 there was well it's that there was a paradox that I enjoyed that you and I discussed Craig and that was that early scene in episode five where Homuk is is trying to persuade him to do this yeah that this is the right thing to do and on the one hand he's dying it's the same thing that gives him the power to 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 you've three years you've got left that's eternity for you and they're precious so you still have a life left to live so in that moment you're you're 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 it's the most that it's becomes even more precious and I knew it was sort of balancing those two feelings as you were approaching that that choke point if you like a right am I going to do this or not yeah I thought that that when you got to that moment you I think the best thing you could have imagined would happen is that 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 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 and I think there's also something because this is why this was 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 deatloff character right and and deatloff was firmly in the crosshairs as being responsible for the whole event but there was a there was a bit in the script I don't think it in it didn't make it in which is where the the prosecutor starts to dig into him about his history behind the motivation why he he did what he did and at that moment he he I felt some compassion for deatloff well deatloff when deatloff even in the version that we have in in the show which is it is a shorter version I think at least my what I get away from it and and what I what the intention was was that you're on the edge of what you should do or say you're probably not going to do it and then deatloff interrupts your moment of hesitation and essentially says this is a bunch of crap and you legasov know it and you're a liar and and that it's a 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 deatloff had no concept that what he was doing could lead to an explosion none zero and to to that extent he is innocent he's he's guilty of a lot of things but but and calling out legasov in that moment I think is what inspires legasov to say okay you know what actually that's that's true because he knows it's true about himself yeah although as it as a so as an act to 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 because 10 years ago when you were aware of this information right you're still in the Soviet Union it's still top down control then that they decide what the story that's going out there they decide the narrative that's put out there so how could he practically have done something about it at that time all the way back then and yet he still feels responsible because that's the story yeah I mean he couldn't have done anything I think basically he has arrived at a moment where he can this is it 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 and and that's ultimately what I think changes legasov's mind and the idea that it that again you taking something out of that scene with Stalin that it's going to all be worth it's going to it's going to mean something it had to be about something yes it has to be worth something that scene also is a moment I mean you know when I so I have this you know we have our different theories about this works Jane Featherstone one of our executive producers her theory is that it's it's in the moment following that discussion with Shurbina on the little park bench there that legasov decides I think I'm probably going to do the right thing here until the truth so everybody has a different kind of interpretation of it yeah 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 it was a fluid thing but there was no rehearsal so you have to treat 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 it's not you know in a play you get together you pull the scenes apart you're doing this way and you know it's 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 going to do the play for the audience when they come in well you don't I can't do that in cinema nobody they don't pay for a rehearsal any longer back in the old days used to have three weeks of rehearsal that's gone so I feel as though you have to treat 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 that's something that I think most people don't know that that that what we the audience see from an actor is is one of many things if if they're good and if the production allows it many different choices they tried in the day and and that and that what we are seeing is the one that was selected usually by the editor and director as best representing what happens that's a fascinating aspect of your craft that I don't think most people know I I wanted to I said I had two questions the first one took a long time here's the second one and it and it reflects something that I talked about with Craig which is that is 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 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 I mean there's a there's a couple of things that spring to mind one is that I encountered people here in nostalgic for that system really tend to be older yeah and they feel that life was simpler back then and you do you see what they mean do you can you understand their perspective 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 you know phone whereas now you now you have to worry whether your cars as good as your neighbor's car and and that was causes dissatisfaction huh and which they didn't have before and yes there was 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 to them or not was I didn't experience it what else there was something else that sprung to mind is just popped out of it I can let you cogitate on that as I move over to correct 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 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 I think that a lot of people miss the point not all of them but a bunch of them anybody who looks at the show and says you know this teaches us something about blank generally they're correct the show is about people and I wish I could explain that to to those who think it's about politics it's not it's about people and it's about our our weaknesses as humans in the way we think and process the world around us 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 your noble Jared do you any thoughts about that have you been like I'm used to see it as as as it's unfolded well I think that that question is in the DNA of the show is in the DNA of what Craig was interested I mean it's from the very opening line to the last line I think that when when people sort of say well of course our 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 incorporate culture and the way that corporations are structured and 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 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 as 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 and in in that in this story nobody believes any longer that they are going to be able to impact what their government does and it takes something this huge for for them to wake up and realize that they aren't in control and that their narrative is being blown wide open and that knows I mean that's the purpose of that joke isn't it about the Apple machine the Soviet machine that cuts an apple into three pieces they are all perfectly aware of the the system that they live under and they've become cynical as to as to their role in it and their ability in it and that's the biggest danger I think is if you no longer believe that you can do anything and then you just you give up 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 a significant awards or one sum I think so already 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 I do I do I do have things that are coming next and they I can't talk about them per se I will say that at the very least the first one is also about our world and things that happened but they they happen much more recently and they happen much more close to home I was going to ask you Craig I was going to wonder whether or not people are basically throwing comedies your way or that 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 they sure do so so a a remarkable stream of oh god look at this depressing chapter in history has made its way so I mean I look through all of it I consider all of it because what you are looking for from and I'm fascinated by history obviously what you're looking for chapters in history where there are people in relationships embedded into it that you think are going to 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're they don't have quite that 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 that's what you're hoping for when you're thinking about these moments in in history but yeah no they they've definitely I've stopped getting the the silly comedy offers or you know the raunchy comedy offers and now it's it's a lot of that stuff which is gratifying um do you regret they're not giving me more jokes then great I don't regret anything Jared are you sure I regret nothing because I think that was our first my first meeting we went and had drinks at the chateau mom and I said you know can I have I mean a few jokes a few a little bit of a sense if you but no but the Soviets do have a they have a really good like dark sense of no no no no jokes for you other characters did yes but no jokes for you well like I saw just wasn't funny this is 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 I mean I remember the first time yet so you know I think it was week two is the first day of the second week and I'm sitting with uh Johan in an open field watching the scene where Jared and Stellan have arrived and are meeting um brucanavan femine to discuss you know why did I see graphite and the roof and all that and and initially Jared's character legato has to hang back by the the helicopter because he's he's been he's been naughty you know he got into an argument with Sherbin in the helicopter and then Sherina will wait like all right come on over 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 it just awkwardly steps backward 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 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 so um you I mean you you made us laugh anyway so that's hats off to you and and yes once I when I'm gonna go back to comedy and it'll you'll be um justly rewarded so yeah and you'll bring me and you like yeah but you still don't have any jokes yeah yeah no 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 him like hang over four what do we have comedy's hard tell me about comedy's really hard 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 uh I don't even know if it's true about Edmund Keane as he's dying on his deathbed are you heard that thing I have but I want to hear you tell it well uh say 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 and I always wondered whether or not he probably had thought those was gonna be his last words and then he survived for three more days and he couldn't say anything I'm still alive three days later but I can't say anything because those have to be my last one 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 of we'll never do this again podcast I am Peter Segal have been here with Craig Mason and of course Jared Harris this podcast was made possible by HBO Sky and Pineapple Street media it was co-hosted by myself Peter Segal with Craig Mason 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 from Craig Mason's team we have producer Jack Lesco and music by Con Urbay 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 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 thank you for having me this podcast is sponsored by Chase Sapphire Reserve for business when you own your own business you own every decision I'm Angus the founder of Elastic we're the design studio that created the Game of Thrones main title when you start a business you're creating a world I love that thing of like I don't know how to do this but I'm gonna figure it out you have to innovate and you have to travel into the unknown our small world can change the big world for business world builders everywhere the business card that rewards every decision you make Chase Sapphire Reserve for business cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC subject credit approval term