Jeff Daniels on The Looming Tower: time to revisit 9/11

Jeff Daniels reflects on the political zeitgeist as he brings to life the events prior to 9/11.

Jeff Daniels: ‘I’m glad I’m around and still of value as a performer’

Jeff Daniels has a laconic, midwestern way of dismissing notions with which he disagrees. Speaking to Review from the Berlin film festival, ahead of the debut of his latest project, The Looming Tower, Daniels politely but firmly rejects the idea audiences may find the topic of September 11 too painful for a television drama.

“I don’t think that at all. What I thought was, ‘Here’s how 9/11 happened and here’s a story you don’t know’,” says the 63-year-old Michigan native.

“With the almost 20 years that have passed — except for those who personally suffered the loss of friends or family — I think audiences can look at it with more clarity.”

Based on the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name by Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower tells the story of the years leading up to the 2001 attacks by al-Qa’ida on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC.

It portrays the fierce, unco-operative rivalry between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, against a backdrop of a nation distracted and titillated by then president Bill Clinton’s sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Daniels plays John O’Neill, based on the then New York counter-terrorism chief for the FBI. He is professionally preoccupied with Osama bin Laden, but personally distracted by a messy private life including a taste for whiskey, fine food, and a series of extramarital relationships. “I researched the role with his former FBI partners, and they told me he ‘gulped’ life,” says Daniels. “He would fight to the death for the men and women who were his agents, but once he checked out of the office, he was living large.”

Best known for his TV role as Will McEvoy in Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom, for which he won an Emmy in 2013, and film roles ranging from 1985’s The Purple Rose of Cairo to The Martian and Dumb and Dumber (and its sequel), Daniels says he was attracted to the role of O’Neill because to begin with it wasn’t obvious how he would how to play him.

“John is — was — a bull in a china shop, passionate about his country and what he thought was going on. I read the first episode of the script and I thought I’d never done anybody like him before,” he says.

“I said ‘yes’ that same night. I love the challenge, and that keeps my interest versus just doing something I’d done before.”

Part of Daniels’s confidence came from the creative team involved, included showrunner Dan Futterman (“a really good writer”) and executive producer Alex Gibney (“a great documentarian”), plus a cast that includes Tahar Rahim, Michael Stuhlbarg and Peter Sarsgaard as his CIA nemesis Martin Schmidt.

“It has all the right elements to be willing to jump off the cliff with them, to flap our wings and see if we can make this thing fly.”

Jeff Daniels as FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neill in The Looming Tower.

But it is clearly the show’s resonance in terms of the American political zeitgeist that animates Daniels the most in relation to this project. The phrase “divided we fall” is one he emphasises.

“I think these are revolutionary times in the US,” he says. “I live out in the midwest, among all those white men and women who have lost their jobs in manufacturing to Mexico and China, and they’re angry, and feeling left out, and many felt their only option to support their families was to vote for Donald Trump, because he was the only one saying he’d bring their jobs back. Now, the fact that he is a con artist and the entire country got conned including those people, is what a lot of my friends are coming to grips with, and there’s a big deficit of trust in politics of either the left or right persuasion; we didn’t buy politicians before and now we really don’t.”

Daniels questions whether Americans learned the lessons of September 11, in particular whether palace intrigue and domestic political controversies may be obscuring potential security threats.

“I would venture to say that the FBI and CIA are sharing intelligence better than they were in the lead-up to 9/11, but I think we are more vulnerable than ever,” he says, “and the sooner we can throw the clown [Trump] out of office the better.”

The Looming Tower produced by Hulu, will be available locally on Amazon Prime Video from Thursday. Daniels is effusive about the changes streaming video on demand has wrought across the entertainment industry. “It’s all about the writing, and I know actors always say that, but it’s true,” he says.

“The cable and streaming side are where all the writers went, because they are given freedom, encouragement and artistic freedom, so actors like me are flocking to it.

“I wish it’d happened 20 years ago, but I’m glad I’m around and still of value as a performer, because the roles are so satisfying.”

Despite the positive notices The Looming Tower has received following previews in New York and Washington, Daniels doesn’t so much as feign interest in the critics’ verdict.

“You can’t do it for the critics: one will love you, another will hate you, so you have to delete them both, and I’ve been doing that for 30 years,” he says. “[Former FBI agent] Ali Soufan was very happy with what I did with John, and the FBI guys I talked to were happy, so I’m done, that’s it.

“This is something you learn. You do what you do, and once it goes on TV it’s no longer yours, it’s theirs, the audience’s. You say goodbye and they will do with it what they will.”

The Looming Tower streams on Amazon Prime Video from Thursday.