Jeff Daniels on playing James Comey and the need to take the 2020 election ‘seriously’
The actor talks about portraying the former FBI director in Showtime’s “The Comey Rule.”
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“It was another role that I didn’t know how to do.”
That’s one reason why Jeff Daniels decided to play former FBI director James Comey in Showtime’s two-part series The Comey Rule, which airs this coming Sunday and Monday.
“I’ve been doing that a lot since Newsroom. [The roles are] complicated; they’re complex,” Daniels tells Fortune, adding that Comey is “not a simple guy.”
“But his beliefs are simple, and they’re true, and he stuck to those in very complicated circumstances. And so, I don’t know how to do that, and so I said yes. And I say yes to things I don’t know how to do, because at this age, it’s the challenge of it, it’s the risk of failure. That’s what keeps me interested after 44 years,” he says.
The series, written and directed by Billy Ray, is adapted in part from Comey’s book A Higher Loyalty and explores the impact of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, as well as Comey’s eventual conflict with President Donald Trump. The Comey Rule also stars Brendan Gleeson as Trump, Holly Hunter as Sally Yates, and Jennifer Ehle as Comey’s wife, Patrice. Working with a strong accompanying cast was important to Daniels, who says he emphasized it as a priority when talking to Ray about participating in the project.
“Half my performance is in the other actor. I use them, I act, I react, we play tennis back and forth, but I can’t play tennis with somebody who’s not very good,” Daniels explains.
Daniels describes his fellow actors in the series as “people who show up ready.”
“Just scene after scene after scene, you were working with pros and in a project that mattered,” he says. “You get good actors with good writing, and the thing sails—whatever the project is, it sails.”
To research the role, Daniels read Comey’s book and listened to the audiobook narrated by the former FBI director himself. He also watched YouTube clips—“even The Colbert Show, you could see Jim’s sense of humor,” he says. Daniels was in the middle of his stint in Broadway’s To Kill a Mockingbird when he lined up The Comey Rule, which meant his schedule was pretty full, so he emailed the real-life Comey about a possible meeting in New York City. That never happened, but Daniels eventually felt prepared enough to play the role, thanks to his research.
“I had an insight into what he was thinking, which is the book—and more so, it was hearing him read it,” Daniels says. “I had enough to suggest what he was thinking as he went through this story, so I didn’t feel the need to meet with him. I also—part of me—I didn’t want to impose.
“I had enough, I knew I had enough—I didn’t want to suddenly drive down and watch him eat dinner,” he adds.
One element of the story that did surprise Daniels a little while making the series was Comey’s “isolation from his own family.”
“It’s a very loving supportive family, but there are things he can’t tell them as the FBI director. And then as this started to blow up, there was pressure inside the family, just like there was pressure from outside. And that can isolate you,” Daniels says, adding that when the real Comey watched the series, he did so with his family, which wound up being an “emotional” experience.
“He didn’t realize the impact on his family until he watched it and saw their reaction,” Daniels says. “It brought back a lot of pain for that whole family, and I never read about that on social media.”
The actor says that while Comey was vilified for his actions surrounding the investigation of Clinton’s emails, the series tries to show what “he was thinking” and puts the audience in the former FBI director’s shoes.
“He believes in things that are bigger than he is,” Daniels says of Comey. “And that is the institution of the FBI, the institution of the Department of Justice as independent institutions. He believes in truth and justice and the rule of law.”
With The Comey Rule premiering now, less than two months away from the presidential election, Daniels hopes the series can be informative while motivating people to stay further informed.
“I think if we aired after the election, it would be like a lot of the biopics you see. It would be like me playing Clinton—who cares at this point?” he says. “We wanted to be part of the national conversation and to be relevant.
“When I saw it and it finished, I said, ‘Oh, my God, it was just the beginning,’” he says, comparing what happens in the series to the first inning in a baseball game.
Daniels doubled down on the importance of voting.
“Get informed. Pay attention. You need to know more than you do. I do. I’m reading stuff every day to get smarter. But I wish everyone would take what’s going to happen on Nov. 3 far more seriously than they did in 2016. I hope Comey Rule at least makes people think about that in that way.”
The Comey Rule will air Sunday, Sept. 27, and Monday, Sept. 28, at 9 p.m. ET on Showtime.
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