History comes vividly alive in “Manhunt,” the AppleTV+ series adapted from James L. Swanson’s Edgar Award-winning nonfiction thriller about the 1865 pursuit of Abraham Lincoln’s killer John Wilkes Booth.
Tobias Menzies, an Emmy winner as Prince Philip in “The Crown,” stars as Edmund Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, who just weeks after the Civil War ended pursued Booth whose escape was aided by unbowed Southern white supremacists.
“I found that we just basically have an amazing story. Which I knew a bare minimum about. Then at the heart of the story is a really interesting man who, again, I didn’t know a lot about,” noted the British Menzies, 50, in a Zoom interview.
“The opportunity to dive into that world to tell this story and to explore this man,” he added, “was one that I couldn’t turn away from.”
Stanton, close to Lincoln personally and politically, became obsessed with bringing Booth to justice, ruining his health in the process.
“There’s obviously something quite heroic,” Menzies allowed, “about the sacrifice of what he put his body through.
“But one wonders — what other alternative there was. Given that he was the man in that position at that moment, when arguably the country needed to be brought back together and justice to be served.
“That’s one of the interesting things about him: There’s strength but also a physical frailty. That’s a big contradiction.”
What’s disturbing is how, nearly 160 years later, the issues of white supremacy and Black equality remain in sharp focus.
“There are modern echoes and references. It does feel like a relevant story for us to consider in that the story obviously is a moment in American history where the Union, and arguably democracy, was in a very fragile place, thrown into doubt in some way.
“And there are certainly people that feel the election coming up in November is similarly very consequential potentially. So yeah, that’s why it’s an interesting story to be revisiting.”
The most serious consequence of Lincoln’s death: It would be another 100 years before the end of racial segregation.
“The Great Man theory is hard to avoid with someone like Lincoln. Because yes, arguably with his death, African American rights were set back 100 years.
“That’s actually one of the things we’re looking to explore in this show is how much can turn on individuals? And on the moment?
“One of the shocks that stayed with me in the making of this was when Lincoln’s coffin comes out of the boarding house, it’s met by a sea of African American faces. It eloquently tells you what was at stake in his death.”
AppleTV+ streams 2 episodes of “Manhunt” March 15