Courtesy of Apple TV+David E. Kelley and J.J. Abrams join forces for this modern retelling of the 1990 film of the same name starring Harrison Ford, Presumed Innocent (premiering Wednesday, June 12).
While both are inspired by the 1987 Scott Turow novel, this dark drama — following the investigation of a horrific murder of an employee of Chicago’s district attorney’s office, after which one of their own is accused of the crime — takes a different approach that doesn’t necessarily follow its predecessor, with an assortment of new characters and storylines included and a real shroud of mystery surrounding who the murderer really is.
The cast is fantastic, and a real family affair, with Jake Gyllenhaal playing lead protagonist Rusty Sabich and his brother-in-law Pete Sarsgaard portraying lead antagonist/fellow prosecutor Tommy Molto, who are directly at odds with one another for the entire series. (Real-life husband and wife Bill Camp and Elizabeth Marvel also portray the district attorney and his wife.)
“For me, it makes everything more comfortable,” Sarsgaard told us about working with his wife Maggie’s brother. “I’m like most people in that it takes me a while to figure out how to say what I mean to people in a work environment, so if you already know how to speak to them about what you want, which may be different than what they want, then you’re already in an artistic relationship, and it’s way easier.”
Unlike Gyllenhaal’s complicated, emotionally aggrieved Sabich (who Gyllenhaal plays with impressive intensity and range), Molto is not someone you find yourself rooting for, with a black-and-white, dogged approach to trying this high-profile murder case that at times comes across as disturbingly suspicious and makes his character rather unlikable.
“I didn’t think of him that way at all,” Sarsgaard admitted. “I just thought of him as somebody that was very fixed in the way that he saw things, in terms of justice. And he is a very envious person. I always felt like [he] was on the side of truth. [He] wasn’t the one who was lying all the time. I don’t think [he] lied at all in the entire show.”
This is saying a lot for a series where everyone seems to be hiding something. Which is surely frustrating to deal with in a murder trial but makes for very compelling TV.
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