‘Manhunt’ trailer: Tobias Menzies is tasked with chasing down John Wilkes Booth in Apple TV+ conspiracy thriller

Joyce Eng
·3 min read
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“How does a well-known actor commit in front of an audience of 1,500 and escape?” That is what Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies) wants to know in Apple TV+ new limited series “Manhunt,” which dropped its first trailer on Monday at the Television Critics Association winter press tour.

Based on James L. Swanson’s New York Times bestseller “Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer,” the seven-part series, which premieres Friday, March 15, follows Secretary of War Stanton’s pursuit of John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle) after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln (Hamish Linklater). Created by Monica Beletsky (“Friday Night Lights,” “Fargo”), the conspiracy thriller also stars Lovie Simone, Matt Walsh, Brandon Flynn, Will Harrison, Damian O’Hare and Patton Oswalt.

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“I’m gonna be the most famous man in the world,” Booth utters in the opening moments of the trailer before shooting the president at Ford’s Theatre, with which the actor was very familiar, having frequently performed there. Aided by fellow Confederate sympathizers, Booth goes on the lam with his accomplice, David Herold (Harrison) — and shaves his distinct mustache to boot — while Stanton organizes the chase.

“I think what we were all trying to do with this show was to bring this story, which is obviously a huge part of this country’s history, and bring it as intimately alive as we could,” Menzies said Monday during the show’s TCA panel. “Trying to make them as human, as real. It’s a very complicated, political story we’re telling but hopefully also a very human one and one of the ways of doing that is to really bring these fascinating people as richly as sort of as accurately to life. These people knew each other very well and they’re thrown into a situation in which they could not imagine.”

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“Manhunt” marks the first major TV role for Menzies since his Emmy-winning performance as Prince Philip on the third and fourth seasons of “The Crown.” Boyle, an Olivier winner and Tony nominee for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” is pulling double duty for Apple TV+ this season as he can currently be seen on the World War II limited series “Masters of the Air.” An Irish native, the 29-year-old Boyle first learned of Booth through, well, TV.

“I grew up in Ireland and my introduction to John Wilkes Booth was through an episode of ‘The Simpsons,'” he revealed. “And then obviously when the audition came through, I started looking at all these documentaries, read up on all these books, but I didn’t think too much of them helpful because they were written for a casual reader. And what I really wanted was to get into the bare bones of him, so I got his letters and I had all these letters that he had sent from when he was 15 to 26. … You got through these letters just this descent into this madness… so I really went back to these letters as opposed to going to books written about him or episodes of ‘The Simpsons.'”

“Manhunt” premieres with two episodes on Friday, March 15. Subsequent episodes will drop weekly through the finale on April 19.

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