The Hot Zone: Anthrax, which premiered November 28 on National Geographic, follows after the success of the anthology's preliminary season. Originally meant as a miniseries, The Hot Zone has expanded from the Ebola virus to now tackling the Anthrax attacks of 2001. And much like the first season starred a number of high-profile actors, its follow-up is led by TV titans such as Tony Goldwyn and Daniel Dae Kim.
Goldwyn plays Bruce Edwards Ivins, a microbiologist who wound up becoming a suspect himself while assisting the FBI. The actor spoke to Screen Rant about getting to know the life of the man he portrays and other surprising discoveries about the events depicted in The Hot Zone.
Screen Rant: This is one of those shows where the more I watched it, the less and less I recognized you. You did such an amazing job in this show, but without spoiling too much, can you talk to me about who Dr. Bruce Ivins was and what his involvement with anthrax was?
Tony Goldwyn: I appreciate that. Bruce Ivins was the lead Anthrax researcher for the U.S. government. He worked for the USAMRIID which is the division of the army that does bioweapons research and his specialty was anthrax. In 2001, which a lot of people remember when the anthrax attacks happened, Bruce's lab was where all of the samples came from.
And he was a guy who became obsessed with this investigation. And he's someone when you meet him he's the really sweet guy, very outgoing, kind of bizarre and nerdy, but very, very bright and sort the class clown, everyone kind of loved him, but it turned out he was hiding some very deep dysfunction. He suffered from severe mental illness. When this investigation heated up, it ended up really derailing Bruce's whole life and in a really interesting and surprising way. It's quite a rollercoaster ride, this story from the point of view [of] Bruce Ivan, for sure.
Every single episode you just peel back the layer of Bruce a little bit more and more, and it gets so interesting. Can you talk to me about how the attacks on 9/11 affected Bruce?
Tony Goldwyn: Bruce was someone who was a profound Patriot. Very much had devoted his life to protecting the United States and the American way by doing this biodefense research. He was researching this anthrax vaccine and trying to develop a state-of-the-art anthrax vaccine, which had been used in the first Gulf war after Saddam Hussein had used anthrax against his own people. Anthrax became this biological weapon that we were very worried about. Toward the late nineties, it became less of an issue and Bruce's research started becoming less well funded and he was extremely upset and angry about that and felt people didn't understand how dangerous bioweapons were. Then 9/11 happened and Bruce was like, "What did I tell you?"
This is why I said the world is a dangerous place. And he kind of freaked out and felt this clarion call. Then, when the anthrax attacks happened three weeks later, Bruce saw himself as the superhero who was finally like [an] X-Men who showed the world and would not shut up about it. It was a very galvanizing event for him. I think he was deeply upset about it. You know, he wept when it happened, the very thought of it just hit him to his core, but he also felt galvanized by it and that it gave him a sense of purpose and vindication.
I remember the anthrax stuff happening around that timeframe, but I didn't realize how deep this went and it uncovered a ton of things that I just didn't know about. When reading these amazing scripts, what new details did you discover about the anthrax attacks after 9/11?
Tony Goldwyn: Oh, so many. I remembered the attacks because I live outside of New York City. We didn't open our mail for a month. I had little kids at the time and we put Cipro the antibiotic in their backpacks when they went to school. I mean, it was no joke. But then when the threat seemed to diminish and that we invaded Afghanistan in Iraq and that took all the headlines, we sort of forgot about it. And I did not know how long the investigation, it went six years and they never actually proved who did it.
I did not know that there was a suspect that they chased for publicly vilified for two years, the FBI and it turned out he was innocent and his life was destroyed. I did not know that the Bush administration used a compound that was thought to maybe be in the anthrax letters and connected it to Saddam Hussein as justification to go and invade Iraq which was also false. There were a lot of things that come out in our show and many, many more that I had no idea about.
The Hot Zone: Anthrax is now available to stream on Hulu.