‘Manhunt’ – Interview:

30 August, 2023 Siobhan Marie Day 0 Comments 3 categories

Paul Bettany interviews with Ricky Camilleri of YouTube's "BUILDseries" and discusses his new Discovery Original Series, "Manhunt: Unabomber" on July 24, 2017. Photo Credit: BUILDseries

PAUL BETTANY SPEAKS ON MANHUNT: UNABOMBER…

On July 24, 2017, in promotion of his new Discovery Original Series, Manhunt: Unabomber, star Paul Bettany, who portrays the Unabomber, Theodore John Kaczynski, in the anthology series from the Discovery Channel, sits down with YouTube’s interview series, BUILDseries and its interviewer host, Ricky Camilleri to discuss making the miniseries and what inspired Bettany to want to play Kaczynski and a number of other questions about the film.

Genre: Drama, and True crime, Created by Andrew Sodroski, Jim Clemente, and Tony Gittelson, Starring: Sam Worthington, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Bobb, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Lynn Collins, Brían F. O'Byrne, Elizabeth Reaser, Ben Weber, Chris Noth, with Composer: Gregory Tripi (season 1), Country of origin: United States, Original language: English, No. of seasons: 2, No. of episodes: 18, Executive producers: Dana Brunetti, John Goldwyn, Troy Searer, Andrew Sodroski, Kevin Spacey (season 1), and Greg Yaitanes, Producer: David A. Rosemont, Production companies: Discovery Communications, Trigger Street Productions, and Lionsgate Television, Original Network: Discovery Channel (2017-2020)

Paul Bettany as Theodore Kaczynski in "Manhunt" (2017) Photo Credit: Discovery Communications

Theodore John Kaczynski (/kəˈzɪnski/ ⓘ kə-ZIN-skee; May 22, 1942 – June 10, 2023), also known as the Unabomber (/ˈjuːnəbɒmər/ ⓘ YOO-nə-bom-ər), was an American mathematician and domestic terrorist. He was a mathematics prodigy, but abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a primitive lifestyle. Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski murdered three individuals and injured 23 others in a nationwide mail bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the natural environment. He authored Industrial Society and Its Future, a 35,000-word manifesto and social critique opposing industrialization, rejecting leftism, and advocating for a nature-centered form of anarchism. Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

BUILD is a live interview series like no other—a chance for fans to sit inches away from some of today’s biggest names in entertainment, tech, fashion and business as they share the stories behind their projects and passions. Every conversation yields insights, inspiration and plenty of surprises as moderators and audience members ask questions. It all happens several times a day live and live-streamed on BUILDseries.com. Photo Credit: BUILDseries

Bettany discusses why he choose he role of the Unabomber as well as the complicated childhood of Kaczynski that ultimately led to his life choices later and resulted in terrorizing fellow Americans by blowing them up with mail bombs. While discussing with Camilleri about the research he did fro the film, Bettany discusses Kaczynski’s brilliance, in terms him being the youngest student admitted to Harvard University, at the age of 16, and becoming the youngest professor at 23, at Berkeley at the University of California. Bettany discusses that as a result of being 16, when he was participating in a Harvard experiment for the CIA in relation to bulling tactics made effective during Soviet interrogations, he was subjected to horrible conditions that broke him as a child and had the long term effect on his psyche that we see later in his life.

Police officers bring Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, to court for arraignment, April 4, 1996. Kaczynski later pled guilty to the mail bomb attacks that killed three people and injured 23. Photo Credit: © Ralf-Finn Hestoft/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

A montage of news headlines featuring the Unabomber attacks. Photo Credit: Google Images

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Harvard's founding was authorized by the Massachusetts colonial legislature, "dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches"; though never formally affiliated with any denomination, in its early years, Harvard College primarily trained Congregational clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century. By the 19th century, Harvard emerged as the most prominent academic and cultural institution among the Boston elite. Following the American Civil War, under President Charles William Eliot's long tenure (1869–1909), the college developed multiple affiliated professional schools that transformed the college into a modern research university. In 1900, Harvard co-founded the Association of American Universities. James B. Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II, and liberalized admissions after the war. The university is composed of ten academic faculties plus the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences offers study in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate academic disciplines, and other faculties offer only graduate degrees, including professional degrees. Harvard has three main campuses: the 209-acre (85 ha) Cambridge campus centered on Harvard Yard; an adjoining campus immediately across Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston; and the medical campus in Boston's Longwood Medical Area. Harvard's endowment is valued at $50.7 billion, making it the wealthiest academic institution in the world. Endowment income enables the undergraduate college to admit students regardless of financial need and provide financial aid with no loans. Harvard Library is the world's largest academic library system, comprising 79 individual libraries holding 20 million items. Throughout its existence, Harvard alumni, faculty, and researchers have included 188 living billionaires, 8 U.S. presidents, numerous heads of state, Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, members of Congress, MacArthur Fellows, Rhodes Scholars, Marshall Scholars, Turing Award Recipients and Fulbright Scholars; by most metrics, Harvard ranks among the top globally in each of these categories. Additionally, students and alumni have won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, 110 Olympic medals (46 gold), and have founded notable companies. Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. It was established in 1868 and is the state's first land-grant university and the founding campus of the University of California system. Berkeley is one of the top universities in the world with the most top-ranked departments nationally and the most companies founded by undergraduate alumni than any other university worldwide. Berkeley is also a founding member of the Association of American Universities and hosts multiple research institutes dedicated to STEM fields. Berkeley has founded and currently manages three national laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Berkeley also played a role in the Manhattan Project and the discovery of sixteen chemical elements. Berkeley's athletic teams, which compete as the California Golden Bears in the Pac-12 Conference, have won 107 national championships, and alumni have won 223 Olympic medals (including 121 gold medals). Among Berkeley's alumni, faculty, and researchers are 190 recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship, 107 Nobel laureates, 68 recipients of the National Medal of Science, 34 Pulitzer Prize winners, 30 Wolf Prize winners, 25 Turing Award winners, 19 Academy Award winners, and 14 Fields Medalists. The university has also produced seven heads of state or government, six chief justices, and at least twenty-five billionaires. It is also a leading producer of Fulbright, Rhodes, Marshall and Gates Cambridge Scholars. Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency at Langley, VA. Photo Credit: Google Images

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, between 1945 and 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported opposing sides in major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based on the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their roles as the Allies of World War II that led to victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arms race and conventional military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means, such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, sports diplomacy, and technological competitions like the Space Race. The Cold War began shortly after the end of World War II, started a gradual winding down with the Sino-Soviet split between the Soviets and the People's Republic of China in 1961, and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Photo Credit: Google Images

Bettany goes on to discuss with Camilleri the implications of a terrorist like Kaczynski, one that is homegrown and the particular responsibility that the United States Government played in creating this “monster,” as Bettany references, when comparing him to the monsters our government promises to protect us from on the home front, like that of terrorists from other nations, when the series touches on the issue of focussing more on the monsters within our own walls. Kaczynski is still the record holder for how long the manhunt was pursued for him, it lasted decades before he was finally caught in a isolated cabin in the middle of the woods in Lincoln, Montana.

President George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet and others stand on the seal of the Agency March 20, 2001 at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Bush toured the facility and met some of the Agency''s employees. Photo Credit: David Burnett/Newsmakers

A seal reading "Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation" is displayed on the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building in Washington, DC, o August 9, 2022. Photo Credit: Stefani Reynolds / AFP

The Newsweek Cover the week of July 10, 1995 featuring the hunt for the Unabomber. Photo Credit: Google Images

FBI agents arrested an unkempt Kaczynski at his cabin on April 3, 1996. A search revealed a cache of bomb components, 40,000 hand-written journal pages that included bomb-making experiments, descriptions of the Unabomber crimes and one live bomb. They also found what appeared to be the original typed manuscript of Industrial Society and Its Future. By this point, the Unabomber had been the target of the most expensive investigation in FBI history at the time. A 2000 report by the United States Commission on the Advancement of Federal Law Enforcement stated that the task force had spent over $50 million throughout the course of the investigation. After his capture, theories emerged naming Kaczynski as the Zodiac Killer, who murdered five people in Northern California from 1968 to 1969. Among the links that raised suspicion was that Kaczynski lived in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1967 to 1969 (the same period that most of the Zodiac's confirmed killings occurred in California), that both individuals were highly intelligent with an interest in bombs and codes, and that both wrote letters to newspapers demanding the publication of their works with the threat of continued violence if the demand was not met. Additionally, Kaczynski's whereabouts could not be verified for all of the killings. Since the gun and knife murders committed by the Zodiac Killer differed from Kaczynski's bombings, authorities did not pursue him as a suspect. Robert Graysmith, author of the 1986 book Zodiac, said the similarities are "fascinating" but purely coincidental. At one point in 1993, investigators sought an individual whose first name was "Nathan" because the name was imprinted on the envelope of a letter sent to the media. Photo Credit: Google Images

Kaczynski's cabin, photographed in 1996 Photo Credit: AP

Bettany goes on to interview and discuss with Camilleri his other motivations for playing Kaczynski and what he thought about having empathy for him while not being sympathetic to him foe the crimes he committed, Bettany also takes questions from the audience int he studio for the interview with BUILDseries.