Anthony Boyle Has a Face for Period Dramas

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Anthony Boyle is firmly at home in the world of period dramas.

"Someone said that I got a face that can't comprehend the internet," he jokes to Town & Country, "which I think is kind of true! I sometimes I look at my face and I go, 'That man doesn't understand WiFi.' I don't know! It's either a blessing or a curse. I just seem to be constantly doing period dramas."

Fresh off Masters of the Air, where he played a World War II navigator, Harry Crosby, he's gone further back in American history to take on the role of John Wilkes Booth in Manhunt. The trajectory made perfect sense to the Irish actor. He recalls, "I had just wrapped on the Masters of the Air; I was playing Harry Crosby who was such a beautiful soul and was driven by love and kindness. And then Booth came along, and he was driven by hate and bile and awfulness. And I thought: what an interesting thing to jump into. So, I just lept at the chance to be a part of the production."

Ahead of the premiere of Manhunt, Boyle chatted with T&C all about his "period drama face," how he understands Booth's narcissism, and why he prefers playing real people.

Do you find yourself drawn to period dramas, or do you want to play a character who uses the Internet one day?

Maybe I'm building up to play a character with a laptop, but I don't think I'm there yet. Maybe when I'm 50. Even when I'm 50, that could be a period drama! I'm always 20 years behind. I don't know why. I keep playing real people and I think there's something about that. When I'm sent other scripts, I like them, but somehow, when it's a real person, I feel immediately more engaged, I feel immediately more switched on. I think there's something to do with the fact that it happened, the fact that it's a real person that breathed life on this earth makes me want to get involved a little bit more.

What was your research process like for Manhunt?

I luckily had all the letters he had written; someone gave me all the letters that he had written when he was 15 to 26. I just devoured them. I tried to get a sense of what his childhood might have been like—get a sense of who he was. He's 15, he talks about mooning people at fairs. At 17, he talks about smacking people with sticks and watching them bleed. Then by the time he's in his 20s, he's talking all this racist, hate-filled ideology. You really, in these letters, get to see this slow descent into madness. So they were really useful in building Booth.

Booth is a figure that looms larger than life in American history. How did you dive beneath his mythos and make him feel real?

I probably had a bit more of a sense of freedom not being American. I didn't feel like I needed to live up to some version of him. I just wanted to play him how I wanted to play him, and I didn't feel restricted. I felt very free; the whole process felt very free. I would read his letters and send sections of them to Monica [Beletsky, the showrunner]. She would then incorporate that in the script and send things back to me. Then we would send them to Carl [Franklin], the director. It felt like we were building our Booth. There's so many different versions of him, so many books written about him, so much conjecture about why he did it, who he was, what he may have been like, that we can't play all of them. We had to go: Who is the Booth that we want?

What do you make of his actions over the 12 days that are depicted in Manhunt?

First off, he had some mental health issues: narcissism, maybe bipolar, maybe depression, maybe multiple personality disorder. If you read his letters, you read anything about him, he's changing one day to the next. In his writing, he thinks that he's almost appointed by God. He feels like he's a God-like figure, that he's put on this Earth to achieve something great, to be special.

I think that, mixed in with the racist ideology that was rotting his brain, mixed in with this fixation that Lincoln's actions were going to then have the Black people in America enslaving the white people—this thing that he was obsessed with. All of that mixed up in a pot I think is the impetus for him to kill Abraham Lincoln.

How did you figure out Booth's narcissism and delusion?

[Joking] Maybe the narcissism was always just there! Maybe I just came to the role with narcissism. [Seriously] I don't know, I'm never trying to draw on anything from my own life. I'm never thinking, oh, how do I feel? How does this relate to me? I always feel like it's a separate entity that I then step into. So I just looked at his life and thought, what got him from A to B? How does he feel like this?

What was it like for you, as an actor, playing an actor who is maybe not a very good actor, who is also a murderer?

Those elements are fun! Like him being prideful, talking about his performances as Richard III. I enjoyed that because, there's an element of that old actor at the Royal Shakespeare, talking 'My dear boy, when I was 25, I could have been the greatest Hamlet there ever.' There's a bit of that with Booth with David Herold. It was a lot of fun to lean into the narcissistic element of acting.

What do you hope viewers take away from Manhunt?

I hope it brings back the handlebar mustache! I hope. I hope people want to bring back mutton chops, top hats, and big facial stylings from 1865.

Manhunt is now streaming on Apple TV+. Shop Now

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