Andrew Garfield Dissects Religious Themes In ‘Under The Banner Of Heaven’

In FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven, available only on Hulu beginning April 28, actor Andrew Garfield plays Detective Jeb Pyre in the original limited series inspired by the true crime bestseller by Jon Krakauer. Pyre, a devout Mormon, begins discovering truths about the LDS religion that make him question his own faith during a murder investigation.

Garfield was looking for a unique challenge to follow up Spider-Man: No Way Home, a late 2021 box office juggernaut, with, and Under the Banner of Heaven served as just that. Andrew was tasked with threading quite the needle when it came to playing Pyre as somewhat affected by his faith during the course of the investigation but not entirely.

“Yeah, that was the balance to strike for sure in terms of playing the character; that’s the struggle,” Garfield told me. “That’s the root of what the character is going through. Where’s the conflict in himself between his own religion trying to hold onto his very narrow view of the world and what this case is cracking open.

“And as he does his job and pursues the truth in his job, he’s forced to reckon with how he’s blinded himself, how he’s been blinded by his religion that he was born into and it all starts to dissolve, the structure of his religion and his psyche start to crumble before his very eyes and he’s doing whatever he can to keep whatever remains of it together so he doesn’t have to completely blow up his entire life and start again.

“But the truth will have its way with you no matter what and I think that’s one of the great themes with this story is that the truth always comes out, it always catches up.”

The series ties in some of the events of the main storyline with how the Mormon religion was founded.

“It’s interesting when the characters are looking at the inception of this religion and it’s actually the makers, the imaginers of the religion, Mormonism, that kind of planted the seeds of toxicity from the beginning,” Garfield said.

“This idea of self-revelation, this idea of, ‘Well yeah, maybe a man can actually marry as many women as they want and women aren’t allowed to do the same, god just told me that.’ Like, okay, how do you discern between the holy spirit and your own selfish desires? So the fact that we’re looking at a religion that was founded on those kind of principles, it’s tricky; I don’t know where God is in any of that particularly.”

Andrew’s co-star, Gil Birmingham (Yellowstone, Hell or High Water) noted the unfortunate commonality of misconduct in other religions as well.

“I don’t think it’s exclusive just to that particular organization,” Birmingham said. “You can look at other religions; we talk about the residential schools in the native community, and these are fallen angel leaders within the church community.

“There’s a certain level of corruption or misguidedness or just power, it’s a human thing, but if you don’t have it contained, then you could go down a very dangerous road.”

The show, which will have a seven-episode run, also stars Sam Worthington, Denise Gough, Wyatt Russell, Billy Howle, Adelaide Clemens, Rory Culkin, Seth Numrich, Chloe Pirrie and Sandra Seacat.