The Swedish actor who played Soviet politician Boris Shcherbina, Stellan Skarsgard, was too fluent in English, says Mazin, with an English-speaking accent that veers towards American. Other cast-members spoke in a variety of regional UK and European accents, the idea being to represent the multiplicity of nationalities and voices in the Soviet Union at the time the nuclear catastrophe took place. Emily Watson and Jessie Buckley were among those who used soft versions of Eastern European accents for their characters, respectively Belarusian scientist Ulana Khomyuk and Ukrainian Lyudmilla Ignatenko.
The Salisbury Poisonings, Chernobyl and the Power of Truth-Telling in a Crisis By Louisa MellorĬhernobyl’s approach, Mazin explained, was to tell the cast to use their own accent but ‘take a bit of edge off it’. ‘The people that were the most pleased about our choice in the accents were the Russian speakers,’ Mazin continued, relaying feedback from members of the crew and viewers who were ‘tired of hearing their language butchered and mocked.’ The production took great pains to ensure that what appeared on screen didn’t look like ‘another dumb impression’ of people from Eastern Europe. ‘Fake accents, generally speaking, are bullshit.’
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‘That accent on film is tremendously stupid,’ was Renck’s explanation.Īgreeing that Soviet accents on Western screens have long been an unfunny punchline, series creator Craig Mazin agreed. Was it ever planned for Jared Harris, who played nuclear scientist Valery Legasov in the multiple Bafta-nominated drama, to speak his lines in English using a Russian accent? No. Speaking at ‘ The Making of Chernobyl’ as part of this year’s online Bafta Television: The Sessions series, Renck explained that there had been discussions about making the nuclear disaster drama in Russian and Ukrainian instead of English but ultimately, it proved unfeasible for the international co-production. In the best of all worlds, the cast of Sky-HBO’s Chernobyl would have been speaking in Russian and Ukrainian with English subtitles, says series director Johan Renck.
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