Andrew Garfield Stars in Mormon Drama ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’: Everything to Know

Credit: Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Andrew Garfield Stars in Mormon Drama 'Under the Banner of Heaven': Everything to Know

Ripped from the headlines. Andrew Garfield is the latest star to get in the true crime game with his new series, Under the Banner of Heaven. The Oscar nominee plays Detective Jeb Pyre in the FX on Hulu drama, which is based on Jon Krakauer's 2003 nonfiction book of the same name. Jeb is investigating the real-life 1984 murder of Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter, Erica. Jeb, a devout Mormon, deals with a crisis of faith as he learns how the Lafferty family's own beliefs may have led to Brenda and Erica's deaths. "I prepared heavy in the lead-up to shooting," Garfield exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the show's April 28 premiere. "I researched a lot and I did all of my preparation in a really deep way. I went to Utah. I spent a lot of time with Mormons: ex-Mormons, gay Mormons, bishop Mormons, detective Mormons." The Hacksaw Ridge actor is known for his deep commitment to his roles, but Under the Banner of Heaven's dark subject matter forced him to step back in a way he hadn't before. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDRqWtwbiSM&ab_channel=FXNetworks[/embed] "I would leave work at work for the first time," he explained to Us. "I really needed to break from that world and be as ordinary and as kind of restful as possible so that I could come back the next day and throw myself back into that very, very dark, subterranean kind of hellscape that we were having to inhabit as these characters." Daisy Edgar-Jones, who plays Brenda, said that downtime was very important during filming, which took place in Calgary, Canada, near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. "We ate so much food!" she told Uproxx in April. "That was a big part of it. Also ... we did a lot of hiking, which, coming from London, I’m a city gal. I’m not great at long-distance walking. I did enjoy it. Just not the more uphill moments. But on the whole, it was a great bonding experience for all of us." Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the show's first three episodes, grew up in the Mormon church and has revealed how Krakauer's book inspired him to look more deeply at the religion. "For the first time, so much of my own history, my ancestry and the answers to why things were the way they were when they didn’t seem to fulfill the basic tenets of Mormonism — meaning they didn’t seem to make the family stronger — now I started to understand why and where that patriarchal structure came from," he told IndieWire in April. "It was like a lightning strike for me, reading that book." After reading it, the Oscar winner knew he wanted to bring it to the screen, though it took him a while to get the ball rolling. Initially, the show was conceived as a movie, but the book proved too unwieldy to adapt into one two-hour film. "The day that [producer] Brian Grazer called me and said, 'Hey, the miniseries is a legitimate form again. What do you think?' That was a very happy day," Black recalled in the same interview. "I thought if I had seven, eight, nine hours, I could absolutely do it." Keep scrolling for everything to know about Under the Banner of Heaven. [podcast_block]

Credit: Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Andrew Garfield Stars in Mormon Drama 'Under the Banner of Heaven': Everything to Know

Ripped from the headlines. Andrew Garfield is the latest star to get in the true crime game with his new series, Under the Banner of Heaven. The Oscar nominee plays Detective Jeb Pyre in the FX on Hulu drama, which is based on Jon Krakauer's 2003 nonfiction book of the same name. Jeb is investigating the real-life 1984 murder of Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter, Erica. Jeb, a devout Mormon, deals with a crisis of faith as he learns how the Lafferty family's own beliefs may have led to Brenda and Erica's deaths. "I prepared heavy in the lead-up to shooting," Garfield exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the show's April 28 premiere. "I researched a lot and I did all of my preparation in a really deep way. I went to Utah. I spent a lot of time with Mormons: ex-Mormons, gay Mormons, bishop Mormons, detective Mormons." The Hacksaw Ridge actor is known for his deep commitment to his roles, but Under the Banner of Heaven's dark subject matter forced him to step back in a way he hadn't before. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDRqWtwbiSM&ab_channel=FXNetworks[/embed] "I would leave work at work for the first time," he explained to Us. "I really needed to break from that world and be as ordinary and as kind of restful as possible so that I could come back the next day and throw myself back into that very, very dark, subterranean kind of hellscape that we were having to inhabit as these characters." Daisy Edgar-Jones, who plays Brenda, said that downtime was very important during filming, which took place in Calgary, Canada, near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. "We ate so much food!" she told Uproxx in April. "That was a big part of it. Also ... we did a lot of hiking, which, coming from London, I’m a city gal. I’m not great at long-distance walking. I did enjoy it. Just not the more uphill moments. But on the whole, it was a great bonding experience for all of us." Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the show's first three episodes, grew up in the Mormon church and has revealed how Krakauer's book inspired him to look more deeply at the religion. "For the first time, so much of my own history, my ancestry and the answers to why things were the way they were when they didn’t seem to fulfill the basic tenets of Mormonism — meaning they didn’t seem to make the family stronger — now I started to understand why and where that patriarchal structure came from," he told IndieWire in April. "It was like a lightning strike for me, reading that book." After reading it, the Oscar winner knew he wanted to bring it to the screen, though it took him a while to get the ball rolling. Initially, the show was conceived as a movie, but the book proved too unwieldy to adapt into one two-hour film. "The day that [producer] Brian Grazer called me and said, 'Hey, the miniseries is a legitimate form again. What do you think?' That was a very happy day," Black recalled in the same interview. "I thought if I had seven, eight, nine hours, I could absolutely do it." Keep scrolling for everything to know about Under the Banner of Heaven. [podcast_block]

Credit: FX Networks/YouTube

Who's In it?

In addition to Garfield and Edgar-Jones, the cast includes Gil Birmingham as Jeb's partner, Bill Taba, and Billy Howle as Brenda's husband, Allen Lafferty. Sam Worthington, Wyatt Russell, Denise Gough and Rory Culkin play other members of the Lafferty family, which is led by patriarch Ammon (Christopher Heyerdahl).

Credit: Rob Latour/Shutterstock

Who Else Is Involved?

Black's cowriters include Gina Welch and Emer Gillespie. David Mackenzie, who directed Hell or High Water and Outlaw King, helmed the first two episodes, while Black, Isabel Sandoval and Courtney Hunt directed the other four installments. Ron Howard, who was originally attached to direct the project when it was in development as a feature film, is an executive producer alongside Grazer.

"I am grateful we didn’t succeed in making it as a movie," Howard told IndieWire in April. "I think we always would’ve felt we’d compromised what we loved about the book."

Credit: FX Networks/YouTube

What's It About?

Garfield's character, Jeb, is fictional, but the case he's investigating is real. In July 1984, Allen Lafferty came home in American Fork, Utah, to find his wife, Brenda, and their daughter, Erica, dead. He quickly realized that his spouse had struggled against her attackers. Authorities initially thought Allen was a suspect, but he had been working on a construction site 80 miles away. He believed that his brothers Dan and Ron were involved, and a manhunt began. (In real life, both Dan and Ron were convicted of murder in 1985.)

"I've seen a lot of death in my career," Terry Fox, who was a detective at the time, told Salt Lake City's KSLTV in 2019. "This one was different in the case, that it was religiously motivated. You can use the word brutal, horrific. And I just don't throw those out lightly because this was a really, really brutal murder. It was different from a lot of crime scenes in a lot of ways."

Credit: FX Networks/YouTube

The Source Material

Krakauer, whose other books include Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, originally meant for the book to be an exploration of faith, but after speaking to Dan Lafferty (played by Russell in the series), he decided to juxtapose the story of Brenda's murder with the history of the Church of Latter-day Saints. The book delves into the early days of the Mormon church, including Joseph Smith's founding of the religion and Brigham Young's journey to Utah with his followers. For the contemporary portions, Krakauer spoke to members of the Lafferty family and other fundamentalist Mormons.

Credit: FX Networks/YouTube

How to Watch

The first two episodes of Under the Banner of Heaven premiere on FX on Hulu April 28. Additional episodes will follow on Thursdays.