The US TV network HBO has been seen as a TV trailblazer, frequently bringing diverse, multidimensional characters to our screens in the likes of the sci-fi series Westworld, the brilliantly relevant Insecure and the female-led drama Big Little Lies. HBO’s latest hit is Chernobyl, a well-drawn depiction of one of the world’s most famous catastrophes. The show, which was co-created by Sky Atlantic, is the network at its finest: a harrowing, truthful portrayal of a story that should never be forgotten.

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Perhaps Chernobyl’s boldest choice was to let the actors use their native accents – Mancunian, cockney, Irish – rather than attempting to mimic Russians or Ukrainians. The show’s high production values make this barely noticeable, even natural, after a while. “Ultimately, a person’s accent is completely irrelevant, because things are happening that don’t need an accent to be communicated – panic, fear, excitement, worry, sadness,” said Craig Mazin, the show’s creator. “They’re just emotions.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Whitewashed ... a scene from Chernobyl. Photograph: HBO/Sky Atlantic

However, this raises the question of the casting more broadly – specifically, why all the actors are white. For the vast majority of the show’s run, there wasn’t a single person of colour on screen. (A Swedish-Lebanese actor, Fares Fares, was introduced late into the series.) While the Soviet Union in 1986 was a closed state dominated by white men, they certainly didn’t speak to one another in English, let alone in broad Mancunian accents. So, why not include some people of colour among the cast? Would it have affected the narrative so much if the screenwriters had featured characters played by actors of colour? These were questions I summarised in a few brief, non-inflammatory and genuinely curious posts to my modest Twitter following.

Countless white actors have been cast in roles that were written for people of colour

Two days later, I woke up to a Twitter storm of racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic remarks (plus, inexplicably, some hatred for Idris Elba). Some Twitter users sent me pictures of blackface and slaves being whipped. Before long, death threats started to pour in. Some were relatively gentle: “Please die thx.” Others were more instructive, detailing exactly how I should be killed. It was when I started receiving threatening tweets that targeted my family that I decided to lock my Twitter account.

Articles began appearing across Russian media platforms, most of which misquoted me or were laden with lazy errors (one referred to me throughout as “Karl Mary”). When the Kremlin-controlled RT published a piece about my comments, it ignored the death threats and racism and focused solely on how I had been “ridiculed”, featuring tweets that proclaimed I needed to “learn history”. One tweet it published read: “You didn’t see PoC because they [weren’t] there!”

There was yet more Idris Elba-hating, too. For some Twitter users, it seems Elba is little more than a symbol of all the black people cast in roles they feel should have gone to white actors. One tweet said he should never have been allowed to play a Norse god in Thor. Another declared that the fantasy film The Dark Tower had “failed” due to Elba being “unnaturally added”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Idris Elba as Heimdall in Thor. Photograph: Allstar/MARVEL STUDIOS/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Of course, countless white actors have been cast in roles that were written for people of colour – Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange, Emma Stone in Aloha, Natalie Portman in Annihilation – and not just in fictional stories. Among numerous examples of white actors playing characters who were people of colour in real life is Ridley Scott’s Exodus, which is full of white actors playing Egyptians (Christian Bale as Moses, for instance). Scott claimed his decisions were purely economic: “Say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed.” An interesting comment when you consider two of the biggest blockbusters of the past decade, Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians, have casts almost entirely made up of people of colour.

The Twitter backlash I experienced presented a worrying problem: if people of colour aren’t allowed to play roles that are not racially specific, or in which their race is not intrinsic to the narrative, and white actors are taking many of the roles written for them, where does that leave us?

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Three days after my first tweet, a Russia-based Twitter user pointed me in the direction of a website that had seen my comments and had dug up evidence of a black Chernobyl liquidator (the civil and military personnel who were called upon to deal with the consequences of the disaster) called Igor Hiryak, whose story was confirmed by a journalist in Moscow. Hiryak, it turned out, had laid down bridges to help people evacuate, as shown in photos of him in his army garb.

RT soon changed course: a follow-up piece, headlined There WAS a black soldier in Chernobyl, and he is Russian, showed Hiryak in recent years: by a lake; dressed up for a historical re-enactment; holding a chicken. Hiryak has since done several interviews about his experience at Chernobyl and even appeared on national television. The rapid discovery of this one man suggests there may have been more like him – perhaps undocumented, or who didn’t survive.

HC Severstal (@severstalclub) #KarlaWasRight

Especially for @HBO @karlamsweet and all fans of the #ChernobylHBO series Meet - a simple cherepovchanin, @Severstal_PAO employee is a good friend and fan @severstalclub - Igor Hiryak💪 Chernobyl accident liquidatorhttps://t.co/0EguVrwsoV pic.twitter.com/QhbkgzXEuS

Hiryak’s involvement in the rescue operation had been almost entirely written out of the Chernobyl story because his blackness, to many, made him seem implausible. It is a situation we have seen time and again, especially in “alt-right” spaces online: the people telling British Asians to “go home”, while conveniently forgetting the Punjabi soldiers that fought in the first world war; the UK government’s deportation of the Windrush generation, without a thought to the debt Britain owes the Caribbean soldiers who fought for us in the second world war.

As someone whose grandfather was one of the 240,000 seldom discussed African-American GIs who were stationed here during the second world war, I recognise the importance of making sure that no one’s history is erased. If nothing else has come from this, I am glad Hiryak’s story is now less likely to be forgotten. “[You] made our employee famous!” tweeted the steel factory at which he now works. Hiryak’s favourite Russian ice hockey team sent a photo of him grinning alongside their mascot, next to the hashtag “#KarlaWasRight”.

Ultimately, the discriminatory comments I received only served to prove a point: representation matters. While standing up to people who disagree so vehemently is challenging, their ideas are proof that we can’t afford not to do so. Not long after my tweets went viral, I exchanged some messages with Hiryak’s factory. They were only too happy to translate a message of support he sent me: “I convey my best wishes so that you never give up. I wish you great success in everything. Even if no one supports your opinion, still achieve your goal.”