With Seven Spielberg, Hanks is currently
developing for Apple a third miniseries, following
“The Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.”
For Hanks, whose father served in the Navy, his
attachment to the era goes deeper than DNA.
It’s about connecting to the wartime mentality
of survival and sacrifice.
“I’m asked by every journalist, ‘Why do you
keep going back to World War II?’” says Hanks,
donning a vaguely European accent. “The
answer is because I come back to that
position of the stress upon a human being’s
psyche. It doesn’t have to be a captain,
necessarily, on board a destroyer in the
middle of the North Atlantic. It can be on an
8-year-old kid or a 24-year-old woman or
even a 54-year-old man back in the United
States wondering, ‘Are we going to live or die?
Are we going to be free or not? How long is
it going to go on?’ To me, that’s the human
condition in every circumstance, even in
today in 2020.”
The film had just weeks of post-production
remaining when Hollywood shut down.
During that time, a modern-day Navy
captain, Capt. Brett Cozier, was removed from
command on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore
Roosevelt after pleading for permission to
take crew members ashore during a COVID-19
outbreak on the ship. In Cozier, who like
Hanks later tested positive for the virus,
Hanks saw the kind of character he’s often
drawn to playing.
“I thought,” said Hanks, “that guy’s kind
of badass.”