BRENDAN GLEESON HAS been cast to play US President Donald Trump in an adaptation of former FBI director James Comey’s memoir ‘A Higher Loyalty’.
The Dublin-born actor will star in a four-hour miniseries produced by US network CBS, which will be based on the tense relationship between Trump and Comey which ultimately led to the latter’s sacking in 2017.
Dumb and Dumber star Jeff Daniels will star opposite Gleeson as Comey, according to Hollywood news website Deadline.
Oscar-nominated scriptwriter Billy Ray, who has adapted Comey’s book for the series, announced Gleeson’s casting by saying it was “hard to imagine a bigger acting challenge” than playing Donald Trump.
“You have to have presence, and a singular kind of dynamism. You also have to have the courage and the will to play Trump’s psychology from the inside out,” he said.
“Oh, and you have to be spectacularly talented and watchable. Not many actors check all those boxes. Brendan does. I’m ecstatic about this.”
Comey was fired as director of the FBI in May 2017, in what was seen as his unwillingness to stop Robert Mueller’s inquiry into potential Russian interference in the 2016 US election, when Trump was elected to the White House.
Deadline also reported that filming on the miniseries will begin in November, and follows a bidding war for the rights to Comey’s book last year.
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