How Anthony Boyle Became ‘Maniacal Racist’ Assassin John Wilkes Booth

Unlike John Wilkes Booth, who spent his life comfortably in the saddle, Northern Irish actor Anthony Boyle had never ridden a horse until he was cast as Abraham Lincoln’s infamous assassin in the new AppleTV+ limited series Manhunt.

Before Booth became 1865’s most wanted man in America, he was known as an actor specializing in stunts and supporting roles. But when Booth made an audacious leap to the Ford Theatre stage after he had shot the president, his boot spur got caught in a flag hanging from the president’s box, and his quick getaway hit a snag. You can’t let a little thing like a broken ankle get in the way when transportation is limited.

“I had to learn how to ride the horse with one leg. Horse riding is always two legs engaging the horse. To try to have the ankle out and still ride, try and act, and do the accent… I was juggling,” Boyle tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed.

Manhunt creator Monica Beletsky recalls that even a few weeks before they started shooting, Boyle was still timid around horses, but that quickly changed: “In three weeks, he had to not only look like he could kind of ride a horse, he had to look like someone who had a lot of experience on a horse. So that ability of his to dive into that and get to the point where he was doing hairpin turns around a bend—it was unbelievable to me.”

Predominantly set in the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination—which itself occurred five days after the Civil War ended—Beletsky’s seven-episode conspiracy thriller, adapted from James L. Swanson’s book of the same name, tells parallel stories of Booth and the man charged with his capture. Emmy Award-winner Tobias Menzies plays the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s right-hand man heading the charge to find Booth and his co-conspirators.

Booth still evades the Cavalry by the third episode, but his injury means this escape is more challenging than anticipated. Accompanying him to Richmond, Virginia—where Booth expects a hero’s welcome—is David Herold (Will Harrison), who acts as a guide through the unfamiliar Maryland terrain. Booth is a city dweller, and while he is experienced on horseback, rural living is less his speed.

To prepare for the outdoor elements, Boyle undertook a “cowboy camp” in Savannah, Georgia (where most of the series was shot), and relished the preparation. “I was riding horses with these lads for four to five hours a day in the sun, cowboy boots, mustache, chewing tobacco, drinking whiskey. It was trying to get as close to where Booth was—what his day would have been like,” says Boyle.

Boyle’s face lights up while talking about cowboy camp, and it is the second time in as many months that he has enthusiastically recalled to Obsessed about additional training required for a part. It has been a busy start to 2024 for the Tony-nominated actor, one of the breakout stars of Masters of the Air. The Apple TV+ WWII epic concluded the same day Manhunt premiered, and there is no risk of mistaking Boyle’s quintessential American hero Major Harry Crosby for the ultimate American villain, John Wilkes Booth. Next, he will get to use his native Belfast accent in FX’s Say Nothing and play an Englishman in the Disney+ Tudor murder mystery Shardlake.

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Since I last spoke to Boyle, he has been to the White House and Paris Fashion Week and has made the award season party rounds with the likes of Masters of the Air co-star Barry Keoghan. He takes it all in his stride, appearing as friendly and relaxed as ever as he discusses working on Manhunt. From Booth’s narcissism to his stage presence, Boyle and Beletsky talk about how they crafted one of the most famous figures in American history.

Becoming John Wilkes Booth

The gap between finishing Masters of the Air and starting Manhunt was only three months, which Boyle describes as “just about time to squeeze out a passable mustache.” It was also long enough to “shake off the goodness that is Harry Crosby and lean into the maniacal racist sort of arsehole that is John Wilkes Booth.” Boyle mentions his theater background as helping with this process because “you’re constantly jumping about doing different things in different scenes.”

Before working together, Beletsky says she didn’t know much about Boyle as an actor, crediting Apple TV+’s head of casting, Tamara Hunter, for suggesting she look at him. “He was instantly so charming, charismatic, and already engaged in the material,” says Beletsky. At the recent Television Critics Association press conference, Boyle admitted the first time he heard of Booth was thanks to an episode of The Simpsons. Thankfully, Boyle had done more research by the time he met Beletsky, and an early draft of a monologue in the penultimate episode made him want to land this role. “He was already so invested and passionate,” says Beletsky.

Booth’s father, Junius Brutus Booth, and his older brother Edwin were known as the Hamlets of their era, but Booth Sr. also had significant mental health issues. Boyle says they were known as “The Mad Booths of Maryland” and says that after one tour, Junius returned home and “dug up his [John’s] little sister’s corpse and paraded around town saying ‘She’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine.’”

Booth’s acting dynasty lineage is fascinating in and of itself, so it isn’t hard to see why Boyle fell down a research hole when preparing for this part. “I read all of his letters that he had written and received since he was 15 to 26. You see this descent into madness,” says Boyle. “He was fine when he was 15, but as he gets older and older, he starts to slip into this crazy sort of manic thinking and way of writing.”

Fame and narcissism

Episode 3, “Let the Sheep Flee,” opens with Booth dreaming of a future in which he becomes president of the Confederate States, before reality rudely awakens him. Despite present circumstances that see Booth hiding in a thicket awaiting a safe time to row to Virginia, he remains confident of his legend status. “He never thinks for one second that he’s not going to become a hero. He thinks he’s the hero of this piece; he doesn’t think he's a villain,” says Boyle. “He’s gonna be swearing on the Bible, and people are gonna be writing songs about him.”

Given that Booth was the savior of his own story, Beletsky was keenly aware that while magnetism and charm are known Booth attributes, they shouldn’t soften or glorify his racist and fantasist actions. “We talked about how anyone on screen, to some extent, is being glamorized and so that on top of his charisma, it’s a very fine line that we didn’t want to cross in terms of rooting for Booth or having compassion for Booth,” Beletsky says. The showrunner and Boyle knew that Booth should not be too enthralling; there were moments when I physically recoiled at the vile epithets Booth used.

“I would say what our approach was is that we didn’t want to do the version of understanding the mind of a serial killer. We wanted to do the version that was this is a portrait of a certain type of man, and this is how certain people respond to things,” she says. The key driver here is that Booth couldn’t accept the outcome of the Civil War and that killing Lincoln was him trying to “change the outcome of the war.”

While Boyle is not a navigator like Crosby in Masters of the Air, he does share a profession with Booth. The similarity ends there, even if when I mention Booth was a narcissist, he jokingly responds, “I am.” It is this “complete narcissism” that ripples through all of Booth’s choices. “All his writing is ‘Me, me, me, me. I’ll become this…’ This self-delusion, self-grandeur, all of these things. He was really, really into himself. He was Booth’s number-one fan,” says Boyle.

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Booth knows how to work his good looks and is furious when David says he needs to get rid of his mustache to keep his identity secret. “You out of your goddamn mind?! It’s my signature look,” he scoffs. This level of self-obsession could lean a little Carey Dubek (Drew Tarver) from The Other Two if Booth wasn’t so terrifying regarding his behavior during the shaving scene at Dr. Mudd’s (Matt Walsh) home.

“I think it’s always trying to play the truth of the situation, and if it comes out funny, it comes out funny, and if it comes out shocking, it comes out shocking. You know, not to try and be aware of how an audience is going to perceive it,” says Boyle.

Theatrics at the theater

Perception is an underlying theme in Manhunt, as Booth can’t help but view everything through the prism of fame. News reports describing the assassination are just another review to him, lapping up every word like he just performed Richard III. Rather than escape unseen, Booth wanted the world to know it was him.

The Ford Theatre scenes were directed by Carl Franklin at the period-correct Miller Theatre in Philadelphia, Boyle speaks of how this setting aided the mood: “It was an old theater, so it felt as close as you could be to what Booth had felt like sneaking up behind the curtain.”

While Boyle did ride his horse, the actor was not allowed to do Booth’s ankle-breaking fall. (He did the leap off the balcony on wires.) When discussing the experience of the assassination aftermath, the visceral nature of this sequence is apparent in how he holds up an imaginary knife. “Once we’d done the gunshot, the jump-off, and you’re on stage, and you take out the knife, and you’re shouting ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’—and there are 2,000 people screaming in horror—the adrenaline was there, your heart rate’s up, and it felt pretty real,” he says.

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