Shea Whigham: We love that guy! He’s an esteemed character actor. He’s not Steve Zahn (although we love that guy too). He’s someone we’re always happy to see pop up in whatever we’re watching.
Our latest “Oh hell yes, Shea Whigham’s in this?” moment came just a few minutes into the new limited series American Primeval, out today on Netflix. From Friday Night Lights creator Peter Berg—and starring Dillon Panthers alumnus Taylor Kitsch—American Primeval is set in 1857 on the Utah frontier. Life is rough out there. Mormons, Native Americans, and the federal government are all caught in a brutal ongoing battle.
But first, Shea Whigham, wearing a historical hat. He plays Jim Bridger, the proprietor of the Fort, a place for passing travelers to rest and acquire supplies. He’s a classic fixer—pleasant, helpful, and grizzled as all hell.
This is notable for a few reasons. First of all, of course there are historical hats in American Primeval: it’s a Western, a genre as amenable to hats as a horse to a cowboy.
And of course Whigham is wearing a hat. As I watched him in American Primeval, I had an unbidden flashback of Whigham in a cavalcade of period pieces—Boardwalk Empire, Perry Mason, and so on. And I realized—Shea Whigham is kind of always wearing a historical hat. Of course, this isn’t technically, factually true. He’s appeared in a lot of stuff sans chapeau. But spiritually, it is. So without further ado, we present to you our gallery of Shea Whigham in historical hats.
