Why Tom Franklin From The Defeated Looks So Familiar
Netflix's "The Defeated" is set in immediate post-World War 2 Germany, but its themes of trying to find order amid chaos are timeless. America continues to attempt nation building, and "The Defeated" provides a glimpse at one of its first attempts. And as America continues to unpack its relationship to "copaganda," as noted by Vulture, it's interesting to look at the formation of a police force.
"Friday Night Lights" and "John Carter" star Taylor Kitsch stars as Max McLaughlin, an American cop who travels to Berlin in the summer of 1946. He's there to form a police force in the war-torn city. The recruits are armed with only sticks and pipes, and the shadow of Nazi Germany's crimes looms over the city.
McLaughlin is joined in his efforts by another officer, Tom Franklin. Franklin's role is small, compared to the stature of his actor. Tom Franklin is played by Michael C. Hall, one of the granddaddies of prestige television. Here's why he looks so familiar.
Hall started his career Six Feet Under
Michael C. Hall's breakout role was as David Fisher in "Six Feet Under," one of the first shows to earn the prestige TV moniker. Hall was recommended for the role after working with Sam Mendes on Broadway, according to The Guardian. Created by Alan Ball, "Six Feet Under" was a dramedy centering on the Fisher family and its funeral home. Fisher patriarch Nathaniel (Richard Jenkins) dies in the first episode and bequeaths the funeral home to his sons Nate (Peter Krause) and David.
David Fisher is deeply closeted at the start of the series but comes into his own as the show goes on. He struggles with his homosexuality and his relationship with Keith, played by Matthew St. Patrick. Critics praised Hall and the show for providing one of the first well-rounded queer leading characters on television, with Entertainment Tonight writing, "the couple broke down barriers and became one of the first gay families represented on TV." The cast was rounded out by "American Horror Story” mainstay Frances Conroy, Lauren Ambrose, and Freddy Rodriguez.
He was the darkly dreaming Dexter
Michael C. Hall starred as Dexter Morgan, the serial killer who only kills those he deems evil, in the Showtime series "Dexter." Some have argued that Dexter's debut in 2006 marked the beginning of the prestige TV era. The year after "Dexter" premiered, "Mad Men" came along and solidified cable as the place for exciting and complicated antiheroes.
Dexter Morgan was a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department, who moonlighted as the Bay Harbor Butcher. He was taught by his foster father, Harry Morgan, to work with a code instead of slaughtering indiscriminately. Hall almost didn't take the part, saying, "I didn't want to make another open-ended commitment to a character surrounded by dead bodies." But the material was too good to pass up.
"Dexter" ran for eight seasons on Showtime. Fans were disappointed by the series finale, which saw Dexter get off scot-free and adjourn to the wilderness — getting his aggression out as a lumberjack instead of as a killer. Luckily, some of the tidiness of that ending will be undone by the show's revival in 2021.
Hall played a minor beat figure in Kill Your Darlings
After "Dexter" wrapped, Hall moved on to films. One of his most prominent film roles was in the beat poetry drama "Kill Your Darlings." "Darlings" starred Daniel Radcliffe as a young Allen Ginsberg in his first year at Columbia University. There, he meets fellow maladroit Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan). Carr introduces Ginsberg to William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) and Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston). Together they form The New Vision, a literary movement that rejects the rule of law and traditional institutions.
Hall played David Kammerer, a former teacher turned janitor. Kammerer writes Carr's papers because he is in love with the younger man. We learn that Kammerer knew Carr in St. Louis, and had been trying to groom him sexually since Carr was 12.
The real-life Carr murdered Kammerer in 1944. "Kill Your Darlings" puts forward Carr and Ginsberg's version of events — that Kammerer was a predator who followed Carr from St. Louis to New York, and that Carr killed him in self-defense after yet another sexual pass. Others have claimed that Kammerer was straight and that Carr was the one who pursued him. "Much of the story, however, is doubtful," wrote Eric Homberger in his Guardian obituary of Carr, "perhaps now, with Carr's death, it may be possible to disentangle some of the strands of insinuation, legal spin and lies."
Playing a president on The Crown
Hall played John F. Kennedy in the Season 2 episode 'of "The Crown," "Dear Mrs. Kennedy." The episode focuses on the fictional frenemy relationship between Queen Elizabeth (Claire Foy) and Jackie Kennedy (Jodi Balfour). Hall told Entertainment Weekly that portraying a president so often represented in media was "tough," saying "You can't ignore the ubiquity of his image and his voice. You have to in some way honor that without mimicking him."
The Queen hosts a dinner for the Kennedys at Buckingham Palace, and she and Jackie seem to bond. Then, Princess Margaret (Vanessa Kirby) says Jackie was talking smack about the Palace and Elizabeth, saying "a middle-aged woman, so incurious, unintelligent, and remarkable that Britain's new reduced place in the world was not a surprise but an inevitability." Jackie later stops by to apologize and blame the shade thrown on all the speed she and JFK were doing at the time. "His initial drug use was steroids to treat his autoimmune deficiency which resulted in a lot of bone deterioration, and then they put him on painkillers to manage that," Hall told EW. "But because of the sluggishness that [the painkillers] inevitably created, he turned to amphetamines to function." Hall never reprised the role on the show, as JFK is dead by the end of "Dear Mrs. Kennedy."