In the lead-up to 2020, the last thing anyone wants to watch is a show about politics. Luckily, the events in Ryan Murphy's The Politician could not be further from your typical election season, let alone one that takes place in high school. Sex, power, and murder make up the first trailer for the Netflix series, which stars Ben Platt as aspiring student body president, Payton, whose ambition to be president of the United States one day bulldozes everything around him. He's supported by costars Laura Dreyfuss and Theo Germaine as they go head-to-head against Lucy Boynton for control of the school (or, more realistically, control of the prom theme).
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However, that doesn't mean the stakes of the series aren't high. In typical Murphy fashion, the characters are glamorous, their motivations wildly exaggerated, and Jessica Lange is around. For an extra dose of fun, Gwyneth Paltrow stars in the series as Platt's mother.
"Your ambition frightens me," Paltrow tells her son in the trailer, which also introduces us to Zoey Deutch as Infinity Jackson, Payton's running mate who turns out to have a lot of skeletons in her closet.
"So evidently there's a videotape with some footage of you using an offensive gay slur," Peyton hurriedly says to Infinity at one point in the trailer."Do you have any idea what I might be referring to?"
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Lange, who plays Infinity's mother, asks.
"Shut up, ma'am," Peyton shoots back. "I'm not going to take your bullshit tonight."
As Payton inches closer to the coveted title of student body president and the race gets thornier, he must reckon with himself and his future, and untangle what it means to be a good person versus a successful one. Is it possible to be both?
The Politician comes to Netflix 27th September.