[KTrain]

Offerman wasn't their first choice.

The production team originally approached Con O’Neill, who played engineer Viktor Bryukhanov in Mazin’s previous series, Chernobyl, for the role. “I was pretty invested in the notion that if we’re gonna be telling the story of two middle-aged gay men, then it would probably be good to have two middle-aged gay actors doing it,” says Mazin, who notes many creatives involved in the adaptation were middle-aged, married gay men. “I was maybe slightly more insistent about that than a lot of the people around me.”

But O’Neill’s gig as Izzy Hands on Our Flag Means Death rendered him unavailable. That’s when producer Carolyn Strauss suggested Offerman, whom Mazin knew casually. “I figured, Well, if we’re gonna open this up, that’s where you go. I sent him the script and said, ‘Nick, if you don’t like it, I’ll never send you anything else ever again, because it won’t be better than this,’” he recalls. But Offerman also had a scheduling conflict. “I read the script, and I was like, ‘Oh no, what a dilemma,’” Offerman remembers. “Thankfully I have a perspicacious wife named Megan who I asked to read it, and she said, ‘Buddy, you’re going to Calgary.’”

https://www.vulture.com/article/the-...explained.html