Step aside Tracy Flick, there’s a new ruthless student-body presidential candidate in town: Payton Hobart, “an impossibly driven young man who dreams of being the president” and the character at the center of Ryan Murphy’s upcoming Netflix series “The Politician.”
Except the show’s trailer, which dropped Monday, reveals that Payton (Ben Platt), unlike Reese Witherspoon’s unlikable protagonist from the 1999 film “Election,” is actually pretty charming — but also possibly a murderer?
Watch the preview above and read Netflix’s official description for the series here:
Payton Hobart (Platt), a wealthy student from Santa Barbara, California, has known since age seven that he’s going to be President of the United States. But first, he’ll have to navigate the most treacherous political landscape of all: Saint Sebastian High School. To get elected Student Body President, secure a spot at Harvard, and stay on his singular path to success, Payton will have to outsmart his ruthless classmates without sacrificing his own morality and carefully crafted image. Full of dark comedy and sly satire, Ryan Murphy’s “The Politician” offers a rare glimpse into just what it takes to make a politician.
“The Politician,” Murphy’s first show at the streaming service, also stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Lange, Zoey Deutch, Lucy Boynton, Theo Germaine, Julia Schlaepfer and Laura Dreyfuss.
Murphy is writer, showrunner and executive producer on the satire, with his former “Glee” partners Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan also writing and executive producing.
The series is a 20th Century Fox-produced project, which was picked up by Netflix before Murphy exited his overall deal with his longtime studio for a reported $300 million pact with the streaming service.
See “The Politician” key art below.
“The Politician” launches Sept. 27 on Netflix.
