“I did it, and I want to be arrested! Arthur is president now!”

These were the last words shouted by Charles J. Guiteau before he was apprehended for the assassination of President James A. Garfield. The wild saga of Guiteau’s self-engineered boosterism of Garfield’s 1880 presidential campaign and eventual obsession with Garfield after he won – and didn’t reward Guiteau with his desired ambassadorship – is the subject of a new limited series coming to Netflix.

Death by Lightning casts Michael Shannon as the 20th President of the United States, who only six months into his first term was gunned down by Guiteau at a Washington, D.C. railroad station. Succession star Matthew Macfadyen will play Garfield’s unhinged pursuer, with Nick Offerman, Betty Gilpin, and Bradley Whitford appearing in supporting roles.

The series is based on former National Geographic editor Candice Millard’s 2011 book Destiny of the Republic, which traces Garfield’s rise from poverty in northeast Ohio to the highest office in the land, eventually exploring the dramatic details surrounding his assassination.

The limited series was written and created by Mike Makowsky, best known as the scribe behind the 2019 Hugh Jackman crime drama Bad Education. Matt Ross directs, following his time at the helm of the 2022 Julia Roberts limited series Gaslit and series-long turn as Gavin Belson on Silicon Valley.

Death by Lightning is the latest series executive produced by the team behind Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Benioff and Weiss followed up the HBO smash hit with The Chair, Metal Lords, and 3 Body Problem. This marks their first foray into historical drama.

Though his time in office was short, Garfield’s impact on American political history is significant, and his story is multifaceted. The first-look photos promise a revealing look at his memorable rise and brief time in power.

Gilpin can be seen as Lucretia Garfield, the president’s wife. Lucretia was a highly educated political savant, having met her future husband at the Geauga Seminary in Ohio and later attending the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute with him. Lucretia assisted Garfield in many of his “front porch” campaigns but privately bore the challenges of her husband’s many affairs, including with the editorial writer Lucia Runkle.

Offerman costars as Chester A. Arthur, Garfield’s vice president who succeeded him after he succumbed to his gunshot wounds. Like Garfield, Arthur was a stalwart supporter of civil rights, especially for Black Americans. One of Garfield’s early administrative appointments was the abolitionist, orator, and freed slave Frederick Douglass, who was tapped as the recorder of deeds in Washington.

Douglass will be played by Daredevil star Vondie Curtis-Hall, who starred in Werner Herzog‘s Bad Lieutenant sequel, Port of Call New Orleans in 2009 with Shea Whigham. Whigham also costars on Death by Lightning as Roscoe Conkling, one of Garfield’s primary adversaries in Washington and a prominent member of the “Stalwarts,” a faction of the Republican Party that opposed civil service reform.

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Rounding out the principal cast is Whitford, who will play Maine representative and former Speaker of the House James G. Blaine. Blaine and Garfield were both named in a shocking corruption scandal called the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal, which followed him to the White House.

Shannon looks nearly unrecognizable in the lead role with a full beard, barrel chest, and quizzical gaze. The actor appeared strikingly different just months ago in his most recent film role – Joshua Oppenheimer’s fiction feature debut, The End.

The actor is known for his shocking physical transformations and has been nominated for each one of the four awards that make an EGOT. Despite receiving winning notices since his film debut in 1993’s Groundhog Day, Shannon has yet to be awarded a major acting prize. Weiss and Benioff led Peter Dinklage to four Emmy wins for his work on Game of Thrones, so Death by Lightning may do the trick for Shannon.