Jared Harris: My wife can't believe how I keep getting bumped off!

From Mad Men to The Crown, the actor is used to big exits. As new disaster drama Chernobyl launches, he talks about cover-ups, climate change shame - and his hellraising dad Richard

Jared Harris says that if only he had played Lane Pryce as he was meant to, he would have probably lasted the duration of Mad Men. Pryce, the financial executive at the TV drama's advertising agency, was supposed to be a right bastard - and the show's creator Matthew Weiner famously said baddies don't get written out. But Harris doesn't do bastards. He will always find a way to humanise a character - a sprinkling of vulnerability here, a dash of tenderness there. And sure enough, three seasons down the line, Lane departed.

Harris is getting used to being bumped off. His quietly dignified George VI in The Crown was inevitably done for by a coronary thrombosis. In his latest TV drama, Chernobyl, Harris's investigative scientist has died before the opening sequence is done and dusted. (Don't worry, he's still the lead.)