In “Manhunt,” the Apple TV+ miniseries about the search for John Wilkes Booth after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Tobias Menzies plays Secretary of War Edwin Stanton as an immovable but vulnerable force, moving forward with sadness, anger, but above all. all. of everything constantly. It was Stanton, one of Lincoln's former rivals, who led the charge to track down Booth (played in the series by Anthony Boyle), as he fought to keep Lincoln's Reconstruction plans in place. Moving inexorably through Confederate sympathies and the asthma that would ultimately take his life, Menzies' Stanton rarely allows himself a smile; he is tense, often moving his jaw in a slight grimace. He is serious.
The real Menzies also comes across as quite serious, but also friendly and thoughtful, especially when talking about his craft. Known to American audiences for series like “The Crown,” “Game of Thrones” and “Rome,” Menzies is also a creature of the stage; When we spoke, he had just finished starring in “The Hunt,” adapted from Thomas Vinterberg's film of the same name, at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. “The good thing about theater is that it keeps you very honest,” he said from his London home, a nondescript baseball cap atop his head. “It's very clear when something is working and when the atmosphere in the room starts to get really electric, and it's very clear when it's not that.”
Menzies gives the impression of someone who is always thinking, on and off screen; One of the emotions of “Manhunt” is watching the wheels turn inside Stanton's head, and how those wheels determine what appears on his face: dismay, resignation, indignation and, sometimes, even satisfaction. This is not an accident. In preparing to play Stanton, Menzies took his own crash course in American screen Stoics, including Gregory Peck in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Henry Fonda in “12 Angry Men.”
“What I love about Fonda is that she is an incredible exponent of thinking on camera,” Menzies said. “You can really watch her face and her eyes and feel like you know what's going on and what she's thinking, which is magical. I certainly tried to use that as a model, or take advantage of it as best I could.”
Born in London and raised in rural southeast England, Menzies never really studied the Civil War era in school, nor American history in general. “I learned about Henry VIII more than once,” he said. But he was always drawn to the photography of Matthew Brady, whom he mentions in “Manhunt” and whose images of war brought the conflict to people around the world. “He gave us this incredible set of images, which made them so vivid and so close to us,” Menzies said. “Men look like us in different clothes.”
English actor Tobias Menzies never really studied the Civil War era in school or American history in general. Although “I learned about Henry VIII more than once,” the “Manhunt” star says.
(Apple TV+)
Before starting “Manhunt,” he read Doris Kearns Goodwin's “Team of Rivals,” the story of how Lincoln built his cabinet from men he didn't always agree with (including some he had defeated for the presidential nomination Republican), and I watched “The Civil War,” Ken Burns' epic documentary series. He wanted to get a sense not only of what motivated Stanton, but also of the political climate of the time, what was at stake in the war and how easily he could have gone the other way. He was surprised to learn that Lincoln's assassination was part of a broader coup attempt, dramatized in the series, which also included assassination plots against other cabinet members.
In the process, he began to think about the weakness of the political system that many take for granted.
“Democracies are not bulletproof,” he said. “We have to defend them. I guess it seems like an interesting story to tell at a time when democracy is under attack in many parts of the world, including the United States. That's why the series feels alive. We still have to work on democracy.”
But Menzies is passionate, above all, about acting. He talks about the “flow state” of theater: “If the play is good and you're in the right place, you can really get emotionally and physically to where you need to be, so you don't feel like that.” of fragmentary filming quality.” Near the end of the interview, she reflects on the interview process itself and how it relates to performance.
“Talking about yourself is kind of like from the inside out, from the third eye,” he said. “In that sense, it's quite similar to acting. There is the internal monitor: How does it feel here? But you can't completely ignore what it looks like on the outside, so you're constantly switching between those two and you have to strike the right balance.
“It's a very interesting art form in that sense, because you depend on feedback loops, whether it's a director giving you notes or an audience giving you feedback. You are constantly flying blind, but you have an antenna inside you, which I think becomes more sophisticated as you gain more experience.”
