Black Bird Trailer: Apple TV+ Drama Will Feature One Of Ray Liotta's Final Performances
Taron Egerton is taking a break from singing and *checks notes* inventing Tetris to spend some time behind bars. As the star of "Black Bird," Egerton is taking on the role of Jimmy Keene, a high school football hero turned criminal who is sentenced to 10 years in a maximum-security prison. The miniseries comes from acclaimed crime novelist Dennis Lehane, whose books have been adapted into films that include "Mystic River," "Gone Baby Gone" and "Shutter Island." Spanning six episodes, the series sees Keene accepting a deal to enter a prison for the criminally insane, in the hopes of weaseling a confession out of a suspected serial killer.
If Lehane and that nerve-wracking premise aren't enough to seal the deal, there's also this: "Black Bird" marks the last TV appearance of the late, great Ray Liotta, who passed away last month. Liotta stars as Keene's father, a decorated policeman known as "Big Jim." It's a role that Lehane penned especially for him, and as he revealed in a tribute to the "Goodfellas" star (via Variety): "It was, quite literally, the culmination of a lifelong dream to work with Ray Liotta." You can check out the trailer for "Black Bird" below.
Black Bird trailer
"Black Bird" is based on true events, taking its story from the James Keene and Hillel Levi penned autobiography, "In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption."
Joining Liotta and Egerton, the suspected serial killer Larry Hall is played by Paul Walter Hauser — though you may not have recognized him under the spine-tingling soft-spoken weirdness he embodies. He's seen in the trailer calmly cleaning with a bloody mop, detailing his disturbing "dreams" about killing women, and in what's sure to be a nerve-wracking moment for Keene asks, "Why are you looking at me like that? Like you know me?" But forced to choose between becoming a snitch or serving a full sentence with no possibility of parole, Keene takes his chances with the eerie killer.
As Keene fights to survive in the prison, his father grapples with reality on the outside. Lehane said this of Liotta's performance:
"I had no other actor in mind and was floored — humbled, honored, fist-pump elated — when he leapt at playing the part less than 24 hours after we sent him the scripts. And the performance he gave? It was a master class. He wholly embodied a man who realizes that his lifetime of cutting corners and flitting along the edges of corruption have hung an albatross of very bleak options around the neck of his own son. But as deeply flawed and compromised as the character is, Ray found the nobility in a man who would run into a burning building for that same son and never break his stride. It was that duality I counted on to carry the emotional heart of our show from beginning to end."
Apple TV+ premieres the first two episodes of "Black Bird" on July 8, 2022 with new episodes weekly on Friday through August 5.
Apple TV+