New Delhi, April 11: Writer-director Craig Mazin says he still sneakily loves comedy, a genre that helped him hone his skills and eventually explore darker stories like the critically-acclaimed “Chernobyl” and “The Last of Us”.
Mazin started his career in the entertainment business by writing comedies like “RocketMan”, “Scary Movie 3”, “Senseless” and “Identity Thief” and the last two movies in the “Hangover” franchise
The writer said it was not easy to take risks in the initial years of his career.
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“I always wanted to tell stories like this (‘Chernobyl’ and ‘The Last of Us’). The thing about the entertainment business is, it’s very hard to get into, and when you do get into it, someone says, ‘Hey, you seem like a funny guy, you can write this funny thing’. And you do, and they pay you for it, and you have a wife and a baby and you need to keep working, (then) you just kind of keep going down that road,” Mazin told PTI in a roundtable interview.
“I think what happens is you get to a place where you’re comfortable enough in your career and you feel like, okay, I’ve got enough security and I’ve taken care of my family. Let me try to take some risks and show people this other side of what I’ve always wanted to do.”
After years writing comedies, Mazin said he amassed enough security to break the mould and tell stories that were tonally different to his earlier work.
In 2019, Mazin came out with “Chernobyl” (2019), the critically-acclaimed HBO miniseries that revolved around the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the cleanup efforts that followed. He was praised for turning a historical tragedy into a gripping human drama, which ultimately earned him a Primetime Emmy award.
“I was very fortunate to have HBO show me enough faith to say, ‘Yeah, go ahead. Let’s, let’s show us what you got on ‘Chernobyl’. I’ll also say as we get older, we kind of change a bit as time goes on.”
Mazin credits his time working as a comedy writer for shaping his storytelling instincts.
“I still sneakily love all the funny parts… And they’re very hard. Comedy is technically far more demanding than drama. I think comedy requires more intelligence. The smartest writers I know write things that are funny. Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re only comic writers, but they understand what funny is.
“Vince Gilligan, who made ‘Breaking Bad’, famously said he loved hiring comic actors for dramatic parts because they just had a depth of soul to them. And I think you see this more and more. I mean, look what Ben Stiller’s doing with ‘Severance’.”
With “The Last of Us”, Mazin, in his role as a writer and co-creator, brought the beloved PlayStation video game to life with emotional depth and character-driven storytelling. (PTI)
