Jeff Daniels is getting ready to add another “cranky but righteous” notch to his record of acting performances, with Hulu releasing the first trailer for its Daniels-starring 9/11 drama The Looming Tower today. Directed by Weeds’ Craig Zisk, and based on a book by Lawrence Wright, the series focuses on the intelligence community’s attempts to track the rise of al-Qaeda and its connected groups in the 1990s, and the ways that ego and misinformation got in that investigation’s way.
Daniels stars in the miniseries as John O’Neill, an FBI special agent who spent years investigating the rise of Osama bin Laden and his followers, working with young agent Ali Soufan (Tahar Rahim), and asking questions like, “Why the hell doesn’t the FBI have more than eight Arabic speakers in its ranks?” Daniels is joined by a variety of heavy hitters, including Alec Baldwin, Michael Stuhlbarg, The Americans’ Wrenn Schmidt, and Peter Sarsgaard, playing an arrogant CIA agent who blocks O’Neill’s investigation at every turn.
The Looming Tower debuts on Hulu on February 28.