{"id":277094,"date":"2025-11-07T10:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T10:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/277094\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T10:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T10:58:11","slug":"matthew-macfadyen-on-death-by-lightning-and-playing-john-lecarres-george-smiley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/277094\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Macfadyen on Death by Lightning and Playing John LeCarr\u00e9\u2019s George Smiley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every American knows the names of John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, the respective assassins of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. But Charles Guiteau, who shot President James Garfield in 1881, has largely been forgotten.<\/p>\n

Guiteau\u2019s attack occurred only four months into Garfield\u2019s presidency. Garfield clung to life for several months after, and his death was ultimately more the fault of incompetent medical treatment than it was Guiteau\u2019s bullet.<\/p>\n

But a historical footnote can be fodder for great television as much as a famous event. The Netflix limited series Death by Lightning \u2014 starring Matthew Macfadyen<\/a> as Guiteau, Michael Shannon<\/a> as Garfield, and Nick Offerman<\/a> as Chester A. Arthur, the underqualified vice-president thrust into the Oval Office due to Guiteau\u2019s actions \u2014 turns the story into something poignant, funny and enormously entertaining.<\/p>\n

The English-born Macfadyen spoke with the Television Academy about playing this strange and tragic figure. He also shared how his two-time Emmy-winning role as Tom Wambsgans on HBO\u2019s Succession <\/a>has changed his life and career, and why it took so long for the TV business to realize he can do comedy.<\/p>\n

Television Academy: Growing up in the UK, what did you know about Charles Guiteau and James Garfield before this?<\/p>\n

Matthew Macfayden: Nothing. Then my agents called me and said, \u201cThere’s this project that Netflix is doing and it’s about James Garfield.\u201d And I was like, \u201cWho’s that?\u201d It was delightfully new. I was unencumbered by any knowledge. It seems like if people know Guiteau, it\u2019s from Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Assassins. It was lovely to discover a little bit about that. It’s a fascinating bit of American history.<\/p>\n

What was your sense of what motivated Guiteau to shoot Garfield?<\/p>\n

In the script, our Guiteau is probably a little more sympathetic than [the real] Guiteau actually was. I found him fascinating because he really wanted to help, and to be a part of things. He wanted to be valued and be useful. But, he was sort of hopeless at anything he did. He tried to be a journalist, tried to be a lawyer, he tried to set up a newspaper, he joined a free love community \u2014\u00a0and that was sort of disastrous. He was pretty disturbed, and he became increasingly more disturbed and deluded as he went on. But a lot of what he said, a lot of what he thought and felt and believed at the beginning was kind of laudable. It was kind of quite reasonable, I suppose.<\/p>\n

With roles like this, actors say that they can\u2019t play them as villains. That they have to find a way to see their characters\u2019 point of view.<\/p>\n

Actors only say that because to do anything else is impossible. You can\u2019t play the whole thing; you have to go moment by moment. Guiteau doesn\u2019t think he\u2019s a villain. He thinks he\u2019s been spoken to by God. He feels very upset that he didn\u2019t get his consulship. It\u2019s wonderful as an actor \u2014\u00a0that journey and that storyline \u2014 to do it with wholehearted belief. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s a psychopath. He’s not without any feeling. I think he really believes he’s doing the right thing. He\u2019s sort of evangelical about it.<\/p>\n

Photo credit: Netflix<\/p>\n

At this point in your career, do you think you\u2019ve wrestled the American accent to the ground? <\/p>\n

[Laughs] No! It\u2019s always a bit like, \u201cOh, god!\u201d American accents are a little more forgiving than someone in America doing a British accent, because there are so many \u2014 so you can get away with a lot more. I\u2019m always thinking about it, but it\u2019s really liberating doing something in a different accent. Just because the vowel sounds and the rhythm of the voice make you feel a different way.<\/p>\n

Early in your TV career, you played many straight dramatic roles. Then you won two Emmys for playing maybe the most ridiculous character on Succession, which was a wickedly funny show. Do you feel like that\u2019s changed Hollywood\u2019s perception of the kinds of roles you can play?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always the way. On stage, it was slightly different. For many years in the UK [on TV], I would play a taciturn spy, a taciturn police officer or a taciturn man in britches striding across a field. As an actor, you know you can do all kinds of things. You’ve got all kinds of people jumping around inside you. The trick is just to keep working and keep going, and you catch a different sort of wave \u2014 as I did with Tom \u2014 and that was just good fortune. It allows you to do something else, flex another muscle. Now, the challenge is to find something different again. To not play another crazed, sort of slimy Midwesterner, like Tom. If I can get away with it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just a different kind of typecasting from you being the taciturn man.<\/p>\n

I know! \u201cLet\u2019s get the human grease stain out again!\u201d But next year, they\u2019re adapting the John LeCarr\u00e9 novels [for a new series, Legacy of Spies], and I\u2019m playing George Smiley. That\u2019s a million miles away from Tom.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re playing a role like Smiley \u2014 or Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice \u2014 ones that have been memorably portrayed on the screen before, do you try to avoid looking at the previous interpretations?<\/p>\n

I watched all those old [LeCarr\u00e9] adaptations on the BBC with Alec Guiness when I was a teenager, and I adored them. It\u2019s never like that, really. Otherwise, you wouldn\u2019t bother. And you wouldn\u2019t play King Lear, or any of those classic parts. It\u2019s you. Those parts are so rich and interesting, that you just jump in. You\u2019ll find something, inevitably.<\/p>\n

Photo credit: HBO<\/p>\n

Beyond the impact Succession has had on your career, how has it changed your life? Are you recognized more?<\/p>\n

Yes, I am. TV is everywhere. It\u2019s in people\u2019s hands, and their phones. It\u2019s different. I used to enjoy walking around and mooching and watching the world go by. And, sometimes, that\u2019s tricky. I\u2019m not that famous!<\/p>\n

With shows like that, there are viewers who see it as the cautionary tale that it is. But there are others who look at it almost aspirationally. Do you ever run into people who actually want to be one of \u201cthe Disgusting Brothers,\u201d like Tom and Cousin Greg? <\/p>\n

Yeah, and it’s confusing. You can’t cater for how people want to take it. But people come up to you, like, \u201cWell done! You won!\u201d And you\u2019re like, \u201cWon what? It\u2019s a corporate nightmare they\u2019re in, you know?\u201d But you do get high fives!<\/p>\n

This interview was edited for length and clarity. <\/p>\n

Death by Lightning is now streaming on Netflix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every American knows the names of John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, the respective assassins of Abraham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-277094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}