(Christian Toto – NewsBusters) Jason Clarke got quite the education after accepting the lead role in Chappaquiddick.
The movie, out April 6, follows the events surrounding the 1969 death of Mary Jo Kopechne. Sen. Ted Kennedy (Clarke) was driving Kopechne, a campaign worker for his late brother Robert F. Kennedy, home on the Massachusettes island of Chappaquiddick when he crashed his Oldsmobile through a fence, landing the car in a pond.
Kennedy escaped the submerged car but Koechne remained trapped inside. The Senator waited 10 hours to call for help.
“I was overcome, I’m frank to say, by a jumble of emotions: grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion and shock,” he said at the time.
The diver who pulled Kopechne’s body from the car said she didn’t drown instantly. A trapped pocket of air temporarily kept her alive, but no autopsy was performed on the body.
Much of this proved new to Clarke, the Australian actor from Terminator: Genisys and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
He’s since gotten up to speed on the issue.
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