A deep dive into history
Manhunt Apple TV+
A new series transforms the assassination of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln into a true crime thriller that goes deeper into the story than most textbooks.
Most who studied Lincoln in school learn he was assassinated by a man named John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln was watching a play with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, at Ford's Theatre when Booth came from behind and shot him.
What isn't as widely remembered is that Booth killed the president just five days after the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee effectively ended the Civil War. It was a preplanned, co-ordinated attack on the president, vice-president Andrew Johnson and the secretary of state. Only Booth was successful.
A Confederate sympathizer, Booth relied on a network of supporters to help him hide. Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war, led the search by the army to track Lincoln's killer down. He was found 12 days later hiding in a barn where he was shot and killed.
Manhunt, now on Apple TV+, dramatizes the hunt for Booth and the trial that followed. It's based on the book Manhunt: The 12Day Chance for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson. Tobias Menzies stars as Stanton, who also helped convict Booth's conspirators.
“Most no one knows the details of this story unless they've done a PHD or it's a special interest of theirs,” said creator-showrunner Monica Beletsky in an interview.
Bringing Stanton to life is exciting, said Menzies, because he had a close relationship with Lincoln.
“A big part of Stanton's journey is both a political loss and also a personal loss. He loses a friend ... I studied very little American history, and I certainly didn't do this period of history,” said Menzies. “As an actor, I've done quite a lot of period stuff and I find it enjoyable to get the chance to find out about a new part of these stories and this is a really good example of that. “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Anthony Boyle plays Booth and his awareness of the man began with an episode of The Simpsons where Bart portrayed him in a school play. He knew his research needed to dig deeper to understand Booth's psyche and read letters he had written between the ages of 15 until his death at 26. Boyle describes them as a “descent into madness.”
Beletsky hopes Manhunt underscores how Lincoln's killing was especially shocking at the time.
“That kind of murder was so uncommon,” she said. “Lincoln famously left the White House door unlocked during the Civil War, even though he had piles of death threats. It wasn't even imagined that kind of crime could happen in our culture. My costume designer told me that Booth, wearing all black that night, is the origin of villains wearing all black in our storytelling.”
There was a boldness and conceit to the way Booth killed Lincoln so publicly in front of an audience that fit his desire for attention.
“The theatre was absolutely jammed,” said Menzies, a British actor who's starred in The Crown and Outlander. “And then to run out and disappear into the night and then take 12 days to find this man, you couldn't make it up.”
Besides telling Stanton's story, Beletsky introduces viewers to Mary Simms, a slave belonging to a physician named Dr. Samuel Mudd (played by Matt Walsh), who treated Booth while he was on the run. The series depicts Simms (played by Lovie Simone) as interacting with Booth when he shows up at Mudd's house to hide, but in reality, she never met him.
“It feels like a good time to be telling this story. You know, there is a big election coming up in November. Our story is partly a story about the fragility of democracy to some extent,” Menzies said. “I think that's as true now as it was then.”