we're now talking to um actor paul ritter
who i've been uh boring you all morning
because i've become a little bit
obsessed with your new project
which is sky atlantic drama chernobyl um
it's uh it's really really stuck in my
mind it really has for anyone who
doesn't know about chernobyl and what
the series is about and could you tell
us please
well i think uh in essence very very few
of us do
uh do know the extent extensive story of
it all
um i think uh
you know some of those details were sort
of kept pretty strong
weren't they and um and i think there's
an extent to which we
uh suppress something that happens 1980
a nuclear reactor had an explosion and
um
your character is so uh i'm playing a
man called anatoly diatlov
who was the assistant chief engineer
in uh in the chernobyl nuclear facility
and he was in charge of the control room
uh in reactor four on that night
and uh to a considerable extent it was
his actions that actually uh
drove the reactor to malfunction in that
catastrophic way
um he was uh he was a pretty
uncompromising
individual um he was pretty
tough to work for he was a bit of a
loner he was actually
far more better qualified than his
immediate superior in the management
triumvirate which was a fairly sort of
toxic mix of personalities uh so there
was a lot of um
tension there and uh yeah he's
he he wasn't a politician at all that's
uh he
he was a he was an engineer he was a
gifted one but uh he he
was a sort of tough difficult person
because it's it's a very intense watch
isn't it i i was saying before the show
paul
i sort of started watching it and i
thought you know i'm not contrary to
this because you do need to concentrate
because there's a
there's a lot of information it's
absolutely packed with detail
i mean the the research that went into
this extraordinary script by craig mazin
who's uh absolutely extraordinary writer
uh was so exhaustive
and uh i mean he has read absolutely
every line that's ever been
you know committed to paper about this
whole event um
and uh you know and it was he felt it
was his duty to
rend rip with as much integrity as
possible because
so many people suffered um in this uh
in this catastrophe you know you you
have to do them justice
and and that's what the detail is there
for to begin with you think you're
watching anything that's a bit sick
watching this back because all these
people obviously
there's some people who die in it and
everything else but then you start
realizing
how important it is to re revisit this
history
there's these power plants all over the
world still and if they go wrong
i mean i think the heart of this peter
piece of writing
is um sure it starts with a man-made
catastrophe
uh at the heart of this series
is really uh it's it's uh a tribute to
them
to the magnificence of the response of
countless people
whose names we will never know who
uh knowing how perilous the situation
was did
everything they could unquestionably uh
without hesitation
they put their lives their health on the
line
to try and make the situation better try
and make the situation
safer uh for all of us essentially
for the good of northern europe the
fallout of it is phenomenal i mean
i just sort of ignored it i was younger
yeah me too yeah yeah but the fallout
all went to sweden and all around the
you know eastern block and stuff there
was this they were still feeling the
ramifications years later and
absolutely i think the swedes were the
first to spot it i believe the french
actually denied that they
detected any radiation forces wow
political reasons so uh there we see how
it was sort of
uh you know danced around very carefully
at the time
um but it still has an implication on
the environment now that that whole
thing if you fly over that zone now it's
one of the
most terrifying places to fly over in
terms of like radiation levels
yeah i mean the the half-life of this
radioactive material
is you know thousands of years um it
will
this situation will persist and pervade
for
for a very very very long time um
they've uh they built this new sort of
uh the original
uh safety sarcophagus is is uh still
there which
you know was an extremely sort of
hurried but but major piece of
engineering
they've now built this sort of movable
shield
um that can uh provides extra cover
and there's a whole team of people uh
out there servicing it but essentially
pripyat
uh and the surrounding areas pripyat was
the town that was built to
serve the the facility there um
you know is uh is a jungle
you know the the photographs of it the
contemporary photographs of it
are extraordinary it's like uh you know
it is
you know truly dystopian vision paul
it's such a such a as i say
it's stayed with me it's such an
interesting watch i can't get it out of
my head what we've created here and
what happens if it goes wrong i really
recommend watching it
you
