James Comey shuffles backwards and tries in vain to blend into a curtain. Donald Trump summons him across the room as photographers click furiously. The US president uses their handshake to aggressively yank Comey closer. “I look forward to working with you,” he mutters menacingly into the FBI director’s ear. “Let’s take a picture.”
This awkward real life incident from three years ago is now the stuff of a blockbuster TV drama. The Comey Rule, starring Jeff Daniels and Brendan Gleeson, offers a devastating portrayal of a president just five weeks before he seeks re-election. At nearly four hours, with a cast of Oscar and Emmy winners, it might be regarded as the longest and most star-studded attack ad in history.
“The Comey Rule is a horror film,” wrote Laura Miller on the Slate website, “and the monster is Donald Trump”.
The glossy miniseries looks set to be as divisive as Comey himself. TV critics have complained about its casting and audacious attempt to present contemporary events as history. Democrats are likely to quibble over its sympathetic portrayal of Comey, while Republicans may dismiss it as anti-Trump propaganda from the Hollywood elite.
Billy Ray, who wrote and directed the drama, said he is braced for the storm. “Donald Trump is not a person who in the past has taken criticism with a great deal of grace. I do think we’re going to be part of a broad national conversation about what happened in 2016 and the repercussions as they affect 2020.”
The drama is based on Comey’s 2018 memoir A Higher Loyalty and explores the former FBI director’s widely criticized oversight of dueling election year investigations: one into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of emails, the other into contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia. It then follows Comey’s excruciating interactions with President Trump, culminating in his firing – via cable news – in May 2017.
“What makes James Comey interesting as a character is that he is flawed,” Ray, 56, said by phone from Los Angeles. “I would never want to tell a story about somebody who was unflawed and he knows that I feel that way, and he knew that I felt that way from the jump.
“What I think about James Comey is he has never once said a word in public that has been proven to be untrue. It’s not like anything he has said has been close to untrue or shaky. You certainly cannot say that about Donald Trump or Michael Flynn or Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Mike Pence or anybody else in that administration. When it comes to truthfulness, I’ll stick with Comey.”
“But more importantly, I felt his story was very emotional and very compelling and just dramatic by its nature, and that if you captured it right, you’d wind up with a piece that was very harrowing and oddly hopeful by the end.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
