Given that he’s an actor who improves every film he appears in – he’s one of the charter members of Empire’s 27 Percenters Club – it’s always good to report when Richard Jenkins has a new job. In this case, he’s playing a powerful real-life politician in Rob Reiner’s **LBJ.
Woody Harrelson is playing Lyndon Baines Johnson in the film, which follows the man's rise from the South to the White House, and the political turmoil he faced when the assassination of John F. Kennedy suddenly catapulted then Vice President Johnson in to the Oval Office’s big chair. Facing battles on either side of the spectrum, he attempted to heal the nation and secure his legacy by finally passing his predecessor’s Civil Rights Act.
Jenkins’ Senator Richard Russell was a connected Georgia politician who initially took Johnson under his wing when the future president was first elected to the senate, but never saw eye to eye with him on the issue of civil rights.
Joey Hartstone wrote the script for this one, which represents a subject Reiner has been trying to get on screen for several years now. It’ll start shooting in September in New Orleans, Dallas and then Washington, D.C. Jenkins, last seen in God’s Pocket, has worked on John Krasinski’s directorial debut, The Hollars, and is part of the cast for S. Craig Zahler’s horror Western Bone Tomahawk.