The new trailer for the Apple TV+ limited series Black Bird offers a first look at Ray Liotta’s last TV role. Liotta achieved acting immortality with his performance as gangster Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 classic Goodfellas. Tragically, the 67-year-old actor passed away last month while working on the film Dangerous Waters in the Dominican Republic.
Tributes to Liotta naturally flooded in from all directions following his untimely passing. This included a remembrance from his Goodfellas co-star Robert De Niro as well as one from Goodfellas director Martin Scorsese. But the fondly-remembered Liotta’s prodigious acting legacy is in fact still being built upon, as the late star is set to appear in the upcoming Apple TV+ drama Black Bird, a six-episode limited series co-starring Taron Egerton, Paul Walter Hauser and Greg Kinnear.
Apple TV+ has indeed now released the first trailer for Liotta’s TV swan song Black Bird. Here the Goodfellas star plays Big Jim Keene, a decorated police officer and the father of the show’s main character Jimmy Keene (Egerton). See a first look at Liotta’s last TV appearance in the space below:
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The clip reveals that Jimmy Keene is behind bars after being convicted of what appears to be a serious crime. By Liotta’s brief snippets of dialog it seems Big Jim Keene had dreams for his son but that the younger Keene went astray at some point. This sets up the series’ story, which sees Jimmy Keene getting a chance at freedom but with a catch. In order to gain his release from prison, Keene must transfer to a maximum security facility for the criminally insane and befriend and coax a confession out of an inmate named Larry Hall (played by Cobra Kai‘s Hauser) whom the police suspect of having killed multiple as-yet-uncovered victims. Things obviously get very tense as Keene moves to the much more terrifying prison and attempts to get close to a man who by all accounts is a murdering monster.
Liotta’s role in this television series is clearly a small one, but it’s one he’s well-suited to given the world-worn experience and gravitas he came to possess as an older actor. The big selling point here though is the thriller story from Dennis Lehane, a writer known for his work on hard-hitting series like The Wire and Boardwalk Empire, not to mention hugely successful novels like Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island. Fans of Lehane and Liotta – and Egerton and Hauser – will all get to enjoy Black Bird when it hits Apple TV+ on July 8, 2022.
