Nick Offerman and Betty Gilpin Join Netflix's President Garfield Assassination Series DEATH BY LIGHTNING
Nick Offerman (Parks and Rec, The Last of Us) and Betty Gilpin (GLOW, Gaslit) have joined the cast of Netflix’s President Garfield assassination series, Death By Lightning. They join previously announced series leads Matthew Macfadyen and Michael Shannon in the show, which will tell the story of U.S. President James Garfield (Shannon) and his assassination by Charles Guiteau (Macfadyen). It is based on the novel Destiny Of The Republic by Candice Millard.
Gilpin will star as Crete Garfield, the First Lady and President Garfield’s wife. Offerman will play Chester A. Arthur, Garfield’s vice president and eventual successor.
The description of the book reads:
James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.
But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what happened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in turmoil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his condition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet.
The series was written by Bad Education screenwriter Mike Makowsky, who created the series, and it will be directed by Matt Ross (Captain Fantastic) with Game of Thrones duo David Benioff and D.B. Weiss executive producing.