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When Brendan Gleeson makes his grand entrance as Donald Trump for about an hour in Sky Atlantic’s upcoming political thriller The Comey Rule, it’s like the scene at the end of Apocalypse Now where Colonel Kurtz finally enters the picture. Or when the shark reaches Jaws.
Everything up to this point has just been built. And now that he’s here, Gleeson-as-Trump is terrifying. The eyes are cold pricking. Orange hair sticks out aggressively. A strange and malevolent glow emanates from his skin. Regardless of what you think of Trump in real life, Gleeson’s version of the American president is a masterclass in the mysterious. It’s one of the actor’s most baffling twists.
“As much as we love Alec Baldwin [who impersonates Trump on Saturday Night Live] we don’t want to do the cartoon version of Trump, ”says Comey Rule director Billy Ray (writer of Richard Jewell, Terminator: Dark Fate and Gemini Man).
“I had a lot of conversations with Brendan Gleeson, who is, of course, a brilliant actor and who was taking a big risk playing this role.”
Gleeson, as Ray puts it, was determined not to deliver a Trump pastiche. Nor does it portray the Commander-in-Chief as the buffoon we see on left-wing American television shows like The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight.
The Dubliner’s great insight was that you don’t become the most powerful person in the world by being an idiot. And then his Trump is completely serious. Incredibly creepy too “We were [doing] less cartoonish makeup than him [Trump] it really uses, ”says Ray.
“We were going to do the least cartoonish version of her hair. That had to do with the way Brendan played his voice and gestures. Good luck doing it with someone who is not a great actor. We had a great actor, who allowed us [portray] Trump as a human being with needs, impulses and defects ”.
The Comey Rule, which premiered on Sky Atlantic on September 30, is essentially lengthy journalism dramatized for the screen. It is adapted from A Higher Loyalty, the 2018 memoir of former FBI Director James Comey, played by Jeff Daniels.
Comey is a figure of considerable controversy in the United States. As head of the FBI, he got caught up in the maelstrom of American politics in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. This happened when he publicly revealed that, having received new information, the FBI was reopening the investigation into the use of a web server. Private email from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton during her time as Barack Obama’s Secretary of State.
The FBI director believed he was doing the right thing. But by going public as he did, it was seen as a huge boost for Trump. This was one of those notorious “October surprises” that may well have influenced the outcome. As we all know, the former reality star duly won the White House. Soon after, in May 2017, he fired Comey. So much for following your conscience.
In Hillary’s investigation, the FBI ultimately concluded that there were no grounds for prosecution, and Comey’s relationship with Trump is comprehensively recounted in the Comey Rule. Like the FBI investigation into claims that Russia, using social media, interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump. The ominous conclusion is that democracy is vulnerable to manipulation and that we must all be on guard against attempts to hack and subvert our institutions.
Daniels plays Comey as a straight arrow: altruistic in that cocky American style but naive about the reality in Washington. The actor reveals that he was coming off a stint on stage and was looking to take time out for himself. But when he read the script for Comey Rule, he knew he had to say yes.
“I did To Kill a Mocking Bird on Broadway for a year,” he says. “I fulfilled that contract. My last show was Sunday afternoon, November 3. I did eight shows a week, 415 shows in a row. She needed to be in a horizontal position for two months. Going to Comey nine days after taking the last bow on Broadway: it was like running a marathon and someone hands you a glass of water and says ‘go run another one.’
Daniels says he would have given up almost any other production. But this was too significant.
“The Comey Rule was a project that mattered, that counted, but that was risky and where it could fail. You don’t walk away from things like that. ”
At first, Comey was reluctant to approve an adaptation of his book, reveals Ray. “I had many doubts,” says the director. “That came largely from his family. They all rightly felt that they were going to invite a whole new level of scrutiny. And who needs it? They have children. Why would they want this? ”
Ray spoke with him and explained that the message of Comey’s book, that institutions and the rule of law are important, would be amplified on television. “A book could reach so many people. A successful television show could achieve exponentially more. The objective was to show it to the largest possible number of eyeballs ”.
Comey, played by Daniels, is a bit of a stuffed shirt. However, the actor saw nobility in the FBI chief’s determination to do the right thing. Even when people around him told him bluntly that doing the right thing would hand the election over to Trump.
“He clung to what he believed in: he clung to the rule of law, justice, the truth, the institution of the FBI. And to defend the integrity of that institution. That was his only consolation. Your only safe place to go.
The Comey Rule airs as the 2020 U.S. election reaches its final crucial months. Daniels is proud to have participated in a drama that forensically exposes the extent of Russian interference in 2016.
“Not everything you can do as an actor counts or can have some kind of effect on the audience in a way that can change them,” he says. “This had all of that. It was relevant, not just then but today. It’s not often that you tell a story that we’re still living. ”
“The story is happening right now,” agrees Ray. “It couldn’t be more timely. We all saw what the Russians did to infiltrate the 2016 US elections. We all felt it was important to tell this story. For Americans to see before the 2020 election. ‘
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