Kelsey Grammer Sets Directorial Debut With Civil War Epic So Help Me God Ahead of His Avengers: Doomsday Return

Kelsey Grammer has spent more than 40 years in front of the camera, but he’s now stepping behind it for the first time. The actor has officially announced his feature film directorial debut with “So Help Me God,” an ambitious Civil War epic inspired by the true story of Union soldier Albert Townsend. The project was unveiled on October 27 at the Medal of Honor Heritage Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with Civil War historian Brad Quinlin, members of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, and representatives of Civil War Roundtables in attendance.

Who Was Albert Townsend?

Townsend was a teenage Union artilleryman from Flushing, New York, who enlisted in 1861 and whose bravery reportedly helped rally his battery and hold the line at the Battle of Peebles Farm in Virginia on September 30, 1864. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor, the country’s highest award for battlefield courage, but it was never granted, apparently because his name was left out when the Army’s handwritten records were transcribed. Townsend died in 1894, and his wife, Leanna, died just three days later. Generations on, his great-great-grandsons, Douglas and Robert Scheidet, uncovered the records error and began pushing to get his service properly recognized, a campaign Grammer is now backing alongside the film.

An 1864 Harper’s Weekly sketch of the Battle of Peebles Farm in Virginia, the engagement at the heart of “So Help Me God.”

Grammer’s First Time Behind the Camera

Grammer is directing, with Mark Huffam, whose credits include Saving Private Ryan, Game of Thrones, and The Martian, producing alongside Doug Scheidet, Jennifer Moxham, and Adam Ziff. Funding is coming partly through a Republic crowdfunding campaign offering fans an “audience investment” stake in the film, and Grammer has made clear he wants the production to go all out, with real cannons, around 100 horses, and period-accurate military uniforms. “There hasn’t been a Civil War film on this scale in almost 30 years,” Grammer said of the planned production.

A Campaign Beyond the Movie

Beyond the film itself, Grammer and the production are backing a formal push to get the White House to posthumously award Townsend the Medal of Honor he was originally denied, with supporters able to add their names to a petition addressed to the President as part of the campaign. The Republic investment round launched alongside the announcement on October 27, and “So Help Me God” does not yet have a release date.

Grammer’s directorial debut arrives just ahead of his return to the MCU as Hank McCoy, better known as Beast, one of the dozens of X-Men and Avengers stars confirmed for Avengers: Doomsday, which you can track in full in our complete MCU watch order.

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Picture Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Charles H. Chapin, Harper’s Weekly (1864)