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    No one is more surprised by 'Chernobyl's' success than creator Craig Mazin

    by Matt Brennan, Los Angeles Times Jun 21, 2019 5 minutes

    With "Chernobyl," his first TV series, screenwriter Craig Mazin - perhaps best known for his two sequels to "The Hangover" - made the leap from popcorn entertainment to serious historical drama.

    The gamble paid off: The HBO/Sky Atlantic miniseries, which dramatizes the 1986 nuclear accident and its aftermath, emerged as an unlikely hit, with more than 9 million viewers, plus 6.5 million downloads or views of its companion podcast.

    We asked Mazin, 48, why he thinks audiences are responding to "Chernobyl" and what prompted him to interrogate his own work on "The Chernobyl Podcast."

    Q: Are you surprised by the way "Chernobyl" has taken off?

    A: I think if you predict something like this, you're probably a sociopath. I always presume the worst. That's just the way I'm built. We thought that we were really proud of the

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