‘Presumed Innocent’ Is A Tale Of Two Trials – In Court & At Home, Star Jake Gyllenhaal Says – Tribeca Festival
10.06.2024 - 06:25
/ deadline.com
Two trials play out in the new Apple TV+ adaptation of lawyer-novelist Scott Turow’s 1988 bestselling legal thriller, Presumed Innocent: the criminal case against a Chicago prosecutor charged with murdering a colleague, and the nightmare at home that the murder trial visits on the family of the accused.
Those parallel ordeals stood out for actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who stars in the eight-episode limited series that premieres on Wednesday and runs through July 24. At Sunday’s premiere of Presumed Innocent at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Gyllenhaal spoke in a panel discussion with showrunner and writer David E. Kelley and two directors, Anne Sewitsky and Gregg Yaitanes, about “the trial of the family and the actual trial” and “the juxtaposition between the two.”
“As brilliant as the writing and the acting is in the courtroom scenes, I really think it becomes like its own courtroom, too, in the house,” Gyllenhall said to a packed theater that saw the first two episodes.
Gyllenhaal plays Rusty Sabich, who becomes the prime suspect in the barbaric murder of fellow prosecutor Carolyn Polhemus, with whom he was having an intense affair. Sabich, who is married and has children, proclaims his innocence in the killing but has no alibi for the damage inflicted on his family.
It is film star Gyllenhaal’s first streaming project, and he spent 6 1/2 months in the role. He’s also one of the show’s executive producers, along with Kelley and J.J. Abrams.
As the investigation progresses and the depth of Sabich’s obsession with his murdered paramour becomes clear, the once-respected prosecutor finds colleagues turning against him along with the machinery of the judicial system to which he’s given his working life. At home, he