Seventeen years ago, Paul Giamatti earned his first Emmy for playing the second president. The actor portrays the titular politician in director Tom Hooper’s seven-part HBO miniseries John Adams , which chronicles the initial 50 years in American history. Adapting author David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, John Adams continued Hooper’s collaboration with HBO that began with the Emmy-winning 2005 miniseries Elizabeth I , starring Helen Mirren.

Hooper, who would later win the best director Oscar for 2010’s The King’s Speech , was looking for an actor to properly convey the demons surrounding the Founding Father known for helping to draft the Declaration of Independence and serving as the nation’s first vice president under George Washington before being elected to

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