Anthony Boyle is talking to me about The Simpsons. Specifically the episode in which Bart plays John Wilkes Booth in a school production while Milhouse takes on the role of Abraham Lincoln. Bart storms on stage, dressed as Arnie in The Terminator, cries “Hasta la vista Abey” and shoots Milhouse (with a toy gun, but knowing Milhouse’s luck, it could have been a loaded pistol). This is all the 29-year-old actor knew of Booth before he took on the role history’s most famous assassin in Apple TV’s new drama Manhunt. “I based it all,” Boyle says drily, “on Bart Simpson.”
I’d wager not many people this side of the Atlantic would be able to tell you much more – and really The Simpsons gets to the heart of the matter in its own ingenious way – but Boyle clearly relished the research. He learned that Booth, an actor, came from a theatrical family: his father was a British Shakespearean actor who later settled in Maryland. Booth quickly became involved in politics, vehemently opposing those who wanted to end slavery. That is where Manhunt, which debuts today, kicks off: with Booth’s assassination of president Abraham Lincoln. What follows is a handsome, well-paced period drama in which Lincoln’s war secretary Edwin Stantin (played by Tobias Menzies) pursues Booth and his co-conspirators over the course of twelve tense days. Even if you are not well-versed in Booth lore, you probably know how it ends.
Those two central performances elevate the show: Menzies portrays Stantin as both stately and increasingly desperate, while Boyle leans into the whackier side of things (and with his jet black wavy hair, he has a good likeness). But what sustains the performance over ten episodes is Boyle’s nuance: that yes, Booth was terrible and yes, he was a killer, but he was also a product of his time and a deeply unstable childhood. “You’re never trying to play the villain,” Boyle says, when I point this out. “They think they’re the saviour – Booth never, for one second, thinks that he’s a villain.”
We are talking at a London hotel, on the morning of a press junket for Manhunt. Boyle has recently flown in from his native Belfast. He is an engaging, lively presence, as interested in the workings of my job as he is in talking about his show. That curiosity has served him well throughout his career, which is punctuated by intriguing choices and memorable performances. Growing up, he knew he always wanted to be an actor. In a school drama class, he played Alex in A Clockwork Orange (“looking back, it was quite fucking violent and intense and bizarre to choose that for some 11-year-old boys from Belfast,” he notes). Later he attended the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Six months before the graduation date, he was picked for the role of Scorpius Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the stage sequel of J. K. Rowling’s wizarding series. He won an Olivier for that performance and later moved to New York when the play transferred to Broadway. “It was my first play,” Boyle says. “Before then my longest run was five days in a community centre in East Belfast, and suddenly I was signing a contract for West End and Broadway for three years and it was like, ‘Holy fuck, this is real.’”
TV roles came along – you can spot him as Erin’s crush in the first episodes of Derry Girls– but this year feels like a gear shift. As well as the premiere of Manhunt, today marks the final episode of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s epic war series Masters of the Air in which Boyle plays real-life pilot Harry Crosby alongside (deep breath): Austin Butler, Barry Keoghan, Ncuti Gatwa, Raff Law and Callum Turner. The series is based on Crosby’s memoir, A Wing and A Prayer and it is his character who narrates events. Was it daunting to take on such a key role? Boyle tells me that he met the family of the pilot, who died in 2010, at the show’s LA premiere. Afterwards, Crosby’s eldest son told Boyle: “I feel like we got dad back.” Boyle is chuffed recalling this story. “I didn’t care if my performances got panned, because I had the seal of approval from this guy.”
It is unlikely that there will be any such feedback for his performance as Booth, who died without children (that we know of). But still, filming out in Savannah, Georgia was rewarding in its own way. He is particularly rapturous about “cowboy camp”. Boyle met up with six cowboys, all decked out in hats, boots and plaid shirts, to learn how to ride for the show. There was a spare horse, but just one problem: Boyle had never ridden one before. How does he, you know, get onto the thing? “Figure it out,” said the cowboys. The actor clambered up. How does he make it go? “Kick the horse,” they said. Once the horse was galloping into the horizon, Boyle had another urgent question: how can he make it stop? “Figure it out,” shouted the cowboys. Boyle pulled the horse up by the reins and the bit, just like that, “it stopped on a dime” (that is American for stopping quickly). One of his new friends asked how Boyle did in fact figure it out, but one of them had an answer ready: “He’s Irish. It’s in his blood.” “From that point on, I was a member of the cowboy community,” Boyle says, with a note of pride.
Up next for Boyle is Shardlake, a Tudor murder mystery series starring Sean Bean as well as Say Nothing, a television adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s book of the same name about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It seems that Boyle is drawn to period dramas. “Someone said to me I’ve got a face that looks like it can’t comprehend the internet,” he says. Can he comprehend the internet? “Barely. I can use Deliveroo but I’m not sure about the whole operation.” How about a biopic? Esquire recently suggested that Boyle would be a good fit for Ringo Star in the upcoming quartet of films about The Beatles, directed by Sam Mendes. Boyle is game. More than game! He just watched Peter Jackson’s documentary series about the band. “Ringo came out of that as my favourite,” he says. “He was just so fucking chill, just a legend.”
Boyle seems pretty chill about everything too. He likes dipping into London life, but is happier back home in Belfast, where he wakes up and forces himself into the ocean for at least two minutes each morning. It sounds like a nice life. “I’m excited to go back to Ireland, ride some horses, drink 19 pints of Guinness a day, and chill out around family and friends,” he says, “before I have jump into another human being’s life.”
‘Manhunt’ is available on Apple TV+ now, as well as the final episode of ‘Masters of the Air’
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Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
