Jeff Daniels on “To Kill a Mockingbird”

CBS News
By: David Morgan
May 13, 2019

Actor Jeff Daniels is nominated for a Tony Award for his performance as small-town lawyer Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s classic, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The story shines a light on racial prejudice in the Deep South by focusing on Finch’s defense of Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of assaulting a white woman in the 1930s.

Appearing on “CBS This Morning” Monday, Daniels said that Finch, in the current Broadway adaptation, is not so flawless. “He’s a human being,” he said. “Aaron Sorkin, when he wrote the play based on the book, wanted to take the statue down. The point of the view in the book is pretty much Scout looking up at the great father, and we kind of wanted to get on eye level with him. We always took the approach that he was a small town lawyer who got paid in vegetables sometimes. He handled land disputes, service agreements, foreclosures, that was it. And one day the judge comes over and changes his life.”

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