Jeff Daniels Answering 'A Higher Loyalty' To Play James Comey In Miniseries

From The Newsroom to the White House: Jeff Daniels will star as James Comey in an upcoming CBS miniseries adapted from the former FBI director’s bestselling memoir, A Higher Loyalty.

The two-time Emmy winner is currently wrapping up an acclaimed, Tony-nominated run on Broadway as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. His last performance will be Nov. 3, with Ed Harris then taking over the role.

Daniels will then move quickly to play Comey in the miniseries, going into production next month.

Brendan Gleeson (Mr. Mercedes) will play President Donald Trump in the project. A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership derives its title from Comey’s clashes with Trump, who fired him in May 2017 after demanding Comey’s personal “loyalty” during the criminal investigation into Michael Flynn, then national security adviser to the president.

Billy Ray, the Oscar-nominated scribe behind Shattered Glass, Captain Phillips, and Clint Eastwood’s upcoming Richard Jewell, will write and direct the series, being eyed for a buzzy debut next year either on CBS All Access, Showtime, or potentially both.

By the time of his dismissal, Comey had become something of a third rail in American electoral politics. In 2016, he was widely criticized for his handling of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state.

Months later, he again took center stage while investigating potential Russian interference in the election. Trump controversially fired the FBI director after Comey refused to confirm that the president was not himself under investigation. A Higher Loyalty navigates both of those fraught chapters in Comey’s 2013-2017 tenure as FBI director.

“Jeff is so perfect for this part: great actor, instant integrity, loads of warmth, intelligence, complexity and gravitas,” said Ray in an official statement. “We talked backstage after I saw him in To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway, and I knew I was looking at the only person who could play Jim Comey. Lucky for me, he said yes.”

Daniels has never been one to sugarcoat his political opinions. Earlier this year, the actor used an MSNBC appearance in support of To Kill a Mockingbird to tear through Republicans’ support of Trump during the election season.

“I think there are people in the Midwest, between the coasts, who don’t care about this, don’t have time for this, who have to make a decision now,” he said on the air in a lengthy soliloquy. “You have to decide whether, like Atticus, you believe that there is still compassion, decency, civility, respect for others. Do unto others, remember that?” Daniels added then that, should Democrats lose the election to Trump in November of 2020, “it’s the end of democracy.”

A Higher Loyalty is just one politically charged project headed toward the small screen ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Ryan Murphy, the provocateur behind American Crime Story, has geared that anthology series’s next chapter to focus on the impeachment proceedings against former president Bill Clinton.

Told from the perspective of the women caught up in the scandal and consequent political firestorm, it stars Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky, Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones, and Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp. Lewinsky herself is executive-producing.