Touted as “the first depiction ever of Donald Trump as a dramatic character,” The Comey Rule dares to ask “What if sitting US President is more than just the world’s most horrific joke?”
Based on James Comey’s bestselling A Higher Loyalty, the two-part film is the latest “holy shit that really happened” flick from Shattered Glass, Captain Phillips, and Richard Jewell writer Billy Ray. Jeff Daniels stars as Comey, with Brendan Gleeson lending the undue gravitas to Trump.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Ray explained that Trump is such a goddamn caricature that they had to portray him less true to life to make him at all a convincing human being. “Everywhere that we could, we dialed it down,” he explained. “We made the contrast between the bags under his eyes and the orange skin softer than it actually is. We made the hair a little less cartoonish than it actually is. We made the suits fit a little bit better. We went out of our way to play fair because we felt we owed that to the public.” Gleeson even gives him a deeper and more lucid tone. They had to make him more of a Ben Garrison cartoon to make him less of a real-life cartoon. What a normal world we live in!
Expect a barrage of belligerent tweets when this hits Showtime September 27.
