The creators of HBO drama Chernobyl have explained why some of the characters don’t have Russian accents.
The decision to ban the imitation of the Pripyat and wider Ukranian dialects was actually made very ‘early on,’ show’s creator Craig Mazin says, in order to focus on telling the story.
Mazin was concerned about the accents taking on a ‘comic’ nature so he let some the actors be Scottish or Irish because their character was good enough.
He explains: ‘At first, we thought that maybe we would have people do these sort of vaguely Eastern European accents – not really strong but noticeable.
‘What we found very quickly is that actors will act accents. They will not act, they will act accents, and we were losing everything about these people that we loved.
‘Honestly, I think after maybe one or two auditions we said, “OK, new rule. We’re not doing that anymore.”‘
He added: ‘We didn’t want to fall into the “Boris and Natasha” cliched accent [from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show] because the Russian accent can turn comic very easily.’
Chernobyl stars English actors Jared Harris, Paul Ritter and Emily Watson, as well as Swedish star Stellan Skarsgård and Irish actress Jessie Buckley in leading roles.
Mazin was speaking about the HBO show on the official podcast, following the fifth and final part earlier this week.
He went on: ‘My hope is that the accent thing just fades away in seconds and you stop caring about it.
‘Ultimately, a person’s accent is completely irrelevant to what’s going on, because there are things happening that don’t even need an accent to be communicated – panic, fear, excitement, worry, sadness. They’re just emotions.’
The five-part drama, which will not return for a second series, tells the story of the real-life Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster in Ukraine in 1986 and lifts the lid on the characters involved.
Chernobyl is available to stream on Now TV.
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