Tobias Menzies on How ‘Manhunt’ Shows How ‘Fragile Democracies Can Be’

The Parting Shot with H. Alan Scott

How much do we really know about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln? That’s a question Tobias Menzies hopes to answer in Apple TV+’s ‘Manhunt’ (March 15). “The thing that really struck me was the newness of the nation, that it wasn’t really all knitted together properly, it was still so raw.” Menzies plays Edwin Stanton, the U.S. Secretary of War under Lincoln, as he leads the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth. As a Brit, Menzies says “it’s not without its trepidation to take on these important figures in your country’s history,” but that he hopes “to bring enough insight, and maybe some of that is about being an outsider.” The show, which leans “toward the conspiracy political, crime thriller sort of genre,” is also surprisingly timely. “The political and physical reality of the United States is a sort of a given now. It was interesting putting ourselves back into a world where that’s not a given ... and the danger is that the tide will significantly turn in a different direction if [Stanton] isn’t able to resist the forces that have committed that deed.”

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