Trying not to get too excited, but they’re making a Netflix limited series…
- About one of my favorite books (Destiny of the Republic)
- Written by one of my favorite writers (Candice Millard)
- Which is about an historical period in America that fascinates me (post-Civil War Reconstruction to the Gilded Age)
- Featuring one of my favorite historical figures from any place or time period (assassinated president James Garfield).
And it doesn’t hurt that it has names attached, and hoo-boy: it’s Beniof and Weiss – yeah, the Game of Thrones guys. And it’s going to star Matthew McFadyen and Michael Shannon (Shannon plays Garfield, McFadyen plays his assassin, Charles Guiteau).
Goes into production in the May-July window, probably not releasing until mid-to-late 2025.
Also, it sounds like they’re mostly focusing on the first part of the book here. A very interesting series could be made by the attempt to save Garfield from his gunshot wound.
Improbably, most medical historians today believe, despite being shot int he back, the bullet missed all of Garfield’s major organs. But the shot did not go through-and-through, and his attending chief physician Doctor Willard Bliss (that was his full name, btw – yeah, his first name was “Doctor”), like many of his American counterparts, thought Joseph Lister’s recently published studies on the importance of sterile surgery was ignorant nonsense and so Bliss and others repeatedly dug into Garfield’s increasingly disgustingly infected wound with unwashed fingers, probes and other instruments. But they couldn’t locate that pesky bullet. (Had they let him be, it’s extremely likely that his body would have formed a natural, protective cyst around it and he would have been fine.)
OK, so now we’ve got Mrs. Davis/GLOW actress Betty Gilpin in as Crete Garfield, the First Lady, and Nick Offerman as Vice President (and also doomed, though he didn’t know it just then) Chester Arthur.
Netflix is writing some checks for this thing!
(Also, a picture if you like, of young James Garfield and Lucretia, his betrothed. This is about as close as you get to a hot first couple in the 19th century…
