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(This story contains spoilers for the two-part season premiere of Hunt.)
In an era of police television and police series like CSI and The murder, It is common to use forensic crime scene investigation, including DNA and fingerprints, to help find a killer and solve a murder.
This is Monica Beletsky, the creator of Apple TV+ Hunt miniseries, had a challenge in adapting the manhunt for Abraham Lincoln’s assassin as a true-crime detective thriller, because Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, and the 12-day search for John Wilkes Booth that followed, took place long before real-life forensic science and crime scene evidence collection had been established.
“I love the idea of how to find this needle in a haystack, this man who could be anywhere in North America, when you have no phone, no cars, no video cameras. There is no news 24 hours a day,” explains Beletsky to the The Hollywood Reporter.
Leading the hunt for Lincoln’s assassin in the period drama is Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, played by Emmy Award winner Tobias Menzies. Lincoln hired Stanton to head the War Department during the Civil War. That changed when Stanton, immediately after the assassination, took charge of the country for about 12 hours until Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as Lincoln’s successor.
In Hunt, Stanton clearly has no crime scene investigation protocol, as at one point he grabs Wilkes Booth’s gun without a glove in his hand. That’s just the beginning. Beletsky’s limited series is based on the book. Manhunt: The 12-day manhunt for Lincoln’s assassin by writer James L. Swanson.
Known for her work in Leftovers, Friday night lights and fargoIn the third season, Beletsky spoke with THR about structuring a very public and political murder in 1865 as a detective procedural, and going far beyond having the bad guy portray an American tragedy about a nation divided in the wake of the American Civil War. The seven-part true crime drama, which launched with the first two episodes, also stars Anthony Boyle, Lovie Simone, Will Harrison, Brandon Flynn, Patton Oswalt, Matt Walsh and Hamish Linklater. Read on for the chat below.
Can you talk about framing a key American historical event as a true crime drama with neo noir touches?
Black and detective stories are my favorite genre. I love those movies from the 40s. I love the neo noir movies from the 70s. I love Tarantino’s neo noir from the 90s (Quentin). And I saw in this structure of this story the opportunity to make a cat-and-mouse thriller that also turned out to be a true story.
You also created a thriller about a politician as a detective chasing the bad guy long before today’s police procedurals feature forensic experts with a wealth of tools and knowledge to solve crimes.
Yes, I was excited by the fact that this is a crime show that takes place before the forensics. We’ve seen hundreds of procedural episodes involving clues and cat-verse-mouse, who’s going to outwit each other? This story has that and I really enjoy all of that. But I’m also very interested in the psychology and stories of the people surrounding an investigation, perhaps even more than the actual plot and clues. And the fascinating thing about this is that, because it’s pre-forensics, there are a lot of scenes that are tropes in these types of shows, like an interrogation or evidence. And right now, there are no fingerprints. Then Stanton simply takes the gun without a glove. It was fun to play with that in a way where I could reverse scenes that we know and have seen hundreds of times, but it’s going to have to be different.
This Stanton quest focuses squarely on Lincoln, shining a spotlight on a little-known politician willing to risk everything to find the killer and help heal America. Was that deliberate?
That was really my way into the story, because I learned that we didn’t really have a conscious president between the time Booth shot Lincoln and the next day when (Andrew) Johnson was sworn in. So the question is, who runs the country? And it was Stanton. And who is starting the investigation to look for Booth? I’m Stanton. And who is trying to keep alive the mandate that Lincoln had in winning the Civil War and the plans that he had? It was Stanton. I’d never heard of him before and thought it was a really compelling dramatic situation for a character to deal with, the guilt of not protecting the president, who also happens to be the man he’s been working with around the clock for the last two years and who has become his friend.
Stanton becomes the emotional axis of the series. He talked about casting Tobias Menzies to play this steadfast role as a divided and embattled nation endures the assassination of its leader.
Stanton experienced many traumas in his life. He lost his father when he was 12 years old. He lost his first wife and her daughter in quick succession. And he lost a little boy, a son shortly after Lincoln hired him. I know from my own life that when there is sudden loss and trauma, you can often be extremely calm during a chaotic event, because your nervous system is always ready for the next step, for something bad to happen. So when something bad happens, you’re actually more prepared than everyone else, because you’re already expecting something to go wrong. So that part of his psychology interested me. But I also show that Tobias is very moved and very, very disturbed when he realizes what happened to Lincoln. There is a scene in which he begins to understand that it is a multiple attack. So he’s not completely calm, but I think he was the right leader at the time, partly because of what he’d been through in his life. And that was part of what he wanted to show.
In 1865, Lincoln and then Stanton worked reunify a divided nation with Reconstruction. Many people see the United States today struggling with its greatest divisions and conflicts since the Civil War. What are you doing Hunt Do you have anything to say about today’s partisan times?
I think it is difficult to understand the present without knowing what happened in the past. And there have been threads of connection between the events of my show and what is happening now that have been left in the shadows of our understanding. So my interest in part was just to bring to light some of these unsung heroes and some events that weren’t really taught, so we could better understand our democracy and better understand how we got here and how our culture has certain relationships with violence and division. And I think a lot of that has seeds in this story.
What could those seeds be?
I’m drawn to the story because I think it’s a true crime story that’s very relevant. When we lost Reconstruction in the way it was planned, things that would have given our society more equality before were put on hold. For example, they were planning to integrate schools during Reconstruction. We didn’t see that happen. They wanted white and black children to go to school together. And after the murder, that didn’t happen for a hundred years. The show has a window into a period after the Civil War that we don’t see much of, where we see how things really could have changed with another Lincoln term, but we only had a few months of his second term. All of that interested me and I hope it will be part of the conversation.
It took 12 days to catch Booth. As Stanton’s game of cat and mouse evolves, his investigation reveals a web of intrigue involving traitors and traitors. Can you talk about this conspiracy element??
Many people do not think of Lincoln’s assassination as an unsolved crime. But in many ways it is, because we know there are other conspiracy circles around Booth. But we don’t know exactly what, who or how. So the show raises those questions. And we’ve seen a lot about, for example, a conspiracy around the JFK assassination. But I was surprised to learn how much conspiracy surrounded Lincoln’s assassination. So I think that’s one thing.
Hunt released on Apple TV+ with two episodes, followed by new episodes weekly on Fridays.