This is from deadline.com
If The Trial of the Chicago 7 wins the SAG Award for Best Ensemble, it would mark a precedent-setting third time that Michael Keaton has been in the winners circle, previously in eventual Best Picture
winners Spotlight and Birdman. Deadline caught up with an actor willing to share the spotlight, hang onto certain things - a Batman reprise in The Flash - and try his first TV series for Hulu, in Dopesick,
a drama about the insidious rise of addictive prescription Opioid pain killers. In The Trial of the Chicago 7, Keaton's turn as former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark is pivotal in showing just how
desperate the U.S. government and a federal judge wanted to imprison protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They disregarded
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Clark's testimony about his investigation that would have upended the entire trial by pointing the finger at authorities for inciting a riot. Keaton doesn't have nearly as many lines, or screen time, in
the Aaron Sorkin-directed Netflix drama as does Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Strong, Yahya Abdul Mateen II, Mark Rylance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, or Frank Langella. But he delivers an important
B-12 shot at an important moment.
You have two scenes in Trial of the Chicago 7. While you certainly left a mark, you are usually atop the call sheet. Why did you do the film?
Keaton: Let me go back in my history with Aaron Sorkin. We share a business manager, and a long time ago I watched this television show called Sports Night. I said, I don't know if this is a show
that'll last, but this is some really good writing. I checked him out, and then my business manager said, oh, yeah, I manage him. I almost never do this, but I told him I wouldn't mind meeting with this
guy because, this is some writer. We had lunch, all three of us. I think I threw a rough idea out at him and said, I'd like to do something with you. All these years go by and we never do anything. He
calls and says, I'm doing a reading with some actors of A Few Good Men, are you free? This was five years ago. Chris Pine, and a bunch of really good actors took part.
What part did you read?
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