Stephen King Says Donald Trump and HBO's 'Chernobyl' Have Something in Common
• Author Stephen King shared a comparison that he drew between HBO's Chernobyl and Donald Trump.
• King, who wrote classics like IT, The Shining, and Pet Sematary, is one of America's most celebrated living writers.
• The finale of HBO's Chernobyl airs next Monday.
HBO's five-part miniseries, Chernobyl, is based on a historical event: the disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, in 1986. A story detailing perhaps the most fatal man-made catastrophe in modern history could be told at any time, but there's a specific reason the show's creator decided to make Chernobyl in 2019.
Legendary author Stephen King apparently also sees a parallel between the Chernobyl disaster and today's news cycle.
"It's impossible to watch HBO's CHERNOBYL without thinking of Donald Trump; like those in charge of the doomed Russian reactor," he tweeted to his 5.25 million followers Thursday morning. "He's a man of mediocre intelligence in charge of great power--economic, global--that he does not understand."
King's take on the miniseries echoes that of creator/showrunner Craig Mazin, as well as lead actor Jared Harris.
"At the heart of this show, we are asking a question," Mazin recently told Men's Health. "What happens when we debase the truth and celebrate lies instead? Or when we play with the truth and make it our toy, or distort it? What happens when we deny that there's truth at all?"
Harris, who plays scientist Valery Legasov, the unsung hero who helped to eventually contain the mess in the town of Pirpyat, felt the same way. "If they were lying to you, you didn't have an ability to correct that narrative. You couldn't hold power to account," he said of the Soviet government back then."It was a state where lies were being passed as being truthful....and if you look at this whole story, once you get to the end of it, it comes down to, essentially, one lie that causes the accident."
Actor Jimmi Simpson, a star of some creepy, horror-adjacent fare of his own-Westworld, Black Mirror-responded to King's tweet in agreement. "Could not agree more, sir," he wrote. "The disinformation and lies to save face in the moment but ultimately destroying themselves and the nation. Clear as a radiation alarm."
For what it's worth, King has been consistently critical of Trump in the past, and it wouldn't be the author's first time comparing the president to pop culture (In 2019, it seems we can't make it through a historical horror film without bringing it back to Trump.).
"The takeaway from Chernobyl is that lies, and the contempt for even the idea that there's a truth, comes with a terrible cost," Mazin said in that same interview. "And sooner or later, we pay that cost."
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