Jeff Daniels embodies Charlie Croker in Netflix's 'A Man in Full'

ATLANTA — Jeff Daniels has played a difficult TV anchor, a goofball opposite Jim Carrey and FBI news director James Comey. He’s been a menacing outlaw, a pretentious writer and a sweet malt shop owner.

Now on Netflix’s limited six-episode series “A Man in Full,” Daniels gets to embody Charlie Croker, a proud 60-year-old Atlanta real estate mogul facing the imminent collapse of his business empire.

Croker, a Georgia Tech football hero, possesses a heavy Southern accent, a crap knee, a sizable ego and a love for quail hunting. His name sits atop what is actually the Truist Plaza building downtown.

“It was a chance to play a larger than life character,” said Daniels, who was born in Athens but grew up in Michigan, in a brief Zoom interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “You don’t get those a lot. It’s not something Gary Cooper would have played. He’s the star of his own show with everyone he ever meets. He assumes they love him as much as he loves himself.”

David E. Kelley, known for TV shows such as “Ally McBeal,’ “The Practice” and “Big Little Lies,” adapted the 742-page 1998 Tom Wolfe novel, bringing it to present day.

The opening scene of the series appears to be inside the Georgian Terrace across from the Fox Theatre. Shania Twain was paid big bucks to perform for Croker’s 60th birthday. At one point, the country legend serenades Croker with her ballad “You’re Still the One” while he looks on, a self-satisfied grin painted on his face.

“That was day two of shooting when I got to walk forward with my arms crossed while Shania sang to me,” Daniels said. “I emailed David and said, ‘That’s when I had Charlie, when that moment happened. Just sing to me, Shania!’ The audacity of that just floored me.”

But soon enough, he is faced with big problems. Planners Bank, which is some sort of fictionalized version of SunTrust Bank back in the day, decides it’s time to take Croker down for failing to pay back $800 million in loans and begins seizing his assets, including his beloved private jets. An angry Croker tells his attorney (Ami Ameen) how he wants to wreak revenge, using no shortage of scatological language.

“He’s a man’s man,” Daniels said. “To him, men know everything and toughness rules. We kind of stick a pin in him and let him deflate.”

Croker flails about trying to find a white knight, inviting a potential investor to his quail plantation and horse farm, where he sees a loose rattlesnake and decides to wrangle it himself, a way to show off his machismo. That, Daniels said, took some acting.

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