Apple TV+ Releases First Trailer for Ray Liotta’s Last TV Role in ‘Black Bird’

Apple TV+ shared the first trailer for Black Bird, a new limited series from Mystic River novelist Dennis Lehane. The series features Ray Liotta in his final television role, playing Taron Egerton’s father. Liotta died unexpectedly on May 26 while filming a movie in the Dominican Republic. He was 67.

Black Bird is based on James Keene’s memoir In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption. Egerton (Rocketman) stars as Keene, a criminal who agrees to work as an informant for the government in prison in exchange for his freedom. The only trouble is his mission could not be more dangerous. He needs to meet serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) to get more incriminating evidence so Hall does not win his appeal. Liotta plays Keene’s father, James “Big Jim” Keene, and is briefly seen in the trailer. Greg Kinnear and Sepideh Moafi also star.

Lehane wrote the first two episodes and is the executive producer. Michaël R. Roskam, whose film Bullhead was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, is directing the first three episodes. Roskam also directed The Drop, which was based on a Lehane short story and was James Gandolfini’s final film. Jim McKay and Joe Chappelle are directing subsequent episodes.

Lehane said he was “humbled, honored, fist-pump elated” when Liotta agreed to star in Black Bird. He wrote the part of Big Jim with Liotta in mind. “I had no other actor in mind and was floored – humbled, honored, fist-pump elated – when he leapt at playing the part less than 24 hours after we sent him the scripts,” Lehane wrote in The Hollywood Reporter. “And the performance he gave? It was a master class. He wholly embodied a man who realizes that his lifetime of cutting corners and flitting along the edges of corruption have hung an albatross of very bleak options around the neck of his own son.”

Liotta died in his sleep in the Dominican Republic, where he was filming Dangerous Waters. While Black Box is his final TV project, he has several movies coming soon, including Elizabeth Banks’ Cocaine Bear and an untitled film directed by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia actor Charlie Day.

Liotta is survived by his fiancee, Jacy Nittolo, and his daughter, Karsen Liotta, whom he shared with his ex-wife Michelle Grace. “He was everything in the world to me and we couldn’t get enough of each other. The kind of real love that one dreams of,” Nittola wrote on Instagram on May 28. “He was the most beautiful person inside and out that I’ve ever known… And even that is an understatement.”