Brendan Gleeson expertly channels Trump in the trailer for The Comey Rule

Showtime is inviting viewers to relive the last presidential election just before the next one.

The network on Monday debuted the first full trailer for The Comey Rule, its new miniseries based on former FBI Director James Comey's book A Higher Loyalty. Jeff Daniels stars as Comey, while Brendan Gleeson plays President Trump, who in the trailer is seen asking for "loyalty" from the FBI director at their infamous 2017 meeting. Trump also asks Comey to "lift this Russia cloud," as Comey has said the president asked of him.

The trailer also shows Comey learning Trump won the 2016 presidential election, with actual footage from the election interspersed, and he's later told that he went to the FBI "to put bad guys away, not to help them become president."

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The Comey Rule features the "first depiction ever of Donald Trump as a dramatic character," as director Billy Ray told Vanity Fair last month. So how can an actor manage to accurately capture someone like Trump, especially when audiences are so very familiar with him? According to Ray, the goal was to actually tone down reality.

"Everywhere that we could, we dialed it down," Ray told Vanity Fair. "We made the contrast between the bags under his eyes and the orange skin softer than it actually is. We made the hair a little less cartoonish than it actually is. We made the suits fit a little bit better. We went out of our way to play fair because we felt we owed that to the public."

The Comey Rule was set to air after the 2020 presidential election against the objections of Ray, who was pushing for a pre-election date, as was Comey himself. The network has since adjusted the schedule and plans to debut the two-night miniseries on Sept. 27. Brendan Morrow