The makeup artist behind Sky Atlantic and HBO's drama 'Chernobyl' has revealed how he recreated the horrific effects of radiation sickness on the human body, including one worker whose skin turned brown after a single shift.
Daniel Parker, head of makeup and prosthetics, said he studied medical textbooks rather than photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims, which he believed were influenced by wartime propaganda. He developed a technique of 'layering' the skin: painting wounds onto actors' bodies and then covering them with a semi-translucent layer to suggest sores forcing their way to the surface as the body degrades from within.
Parker described the reality of radiation exposure bluntly: 'You melt. The only way you can really describe it is putting salt on a slug. Tissue is breaking down. Skin just slips off. It'll just go. One day you move your arm and the skin will just fall off.' He was strict that the victims should not be reduced to Hollywood stereotypes.
The series, which unfolds over five episodes, begins with the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Soviet Ukraine. Production designer Luke Hull was determined to avoid a 'Die Hard' style disaster movie, instead focusing on 'little decorative bits' to evoke the clunky Soviet era. He scoured flea markets in Kyiv for old clocks, telephones and ashtrays.
Costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux sourced Soviet-era clothing from a Lithuanian tailor who worked during the Soviet period, as well as from Ukrainian eBay. She said the director, Swedish film-maker Johan Renck, 'really wanted this look – wanted an ugly, gritty look. He didn't want it to be glamourised in any way.'
