Apple Releases Trailer for Octavia Spencer’s ‘Truth Be Told’ Coming to Apple TV+ Dec. 6

As the release date for its new video streaming service inches closer, Apple is continuing to share more trailers and release dates for the other upcoming shows that will be debuting in the weeks following the Nov. 1 launch.

The list of shows that will be available on day one is well known, and Apple released trailers for many of them beginning as early as July, beginning with the For All Mankind trailer to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. This was followed by a trailer for The Morning Show, another one for the comedy series Dickinson, and both of its upcoming kids’ shows.

While all of these shows clearly indicated a Nov. 1 launch date, Apple teased several other titles that were merely listed as “Coming Soon.” However, last week Apple shared that its new M. Night Shyamalan series Servant was scheduled to arrive on Nov. 28, and now it looks like the Octavia Spencer led crime drama Truth Be Told will be landing a week after that on Dec. 6. The timing of these suggests that this could even be the start of a trend for Apple of announcing dates and trailers eight weeks prior to the debut of each of its new shows.

With the tagline “Every truth has a consequence,” Truth Be Told stars Octavia Spencer as Poppy Parnell, a “true crime” podcaster who comes to believe that her work covering a high-profile murder case 18 years earlier may have in fact put the wrong man in jail. From the trailer, the show appears to be a gripping psychological thriller that takes Parnell on a desperate and aggressive search for the truth in the midst of a world that really doesn’t want to hear about it.

In addition to Spencer, the series also stars Aaron Paul as Warren Cave, the man who was possibly wrongfully imprisoned, as well as Lizzy Caplan, Elizabeth Perkins, and Michael Beach, among others. The story itself is based on a novel by Kathleen Barber titled Are You Sleeping?

More TV Deals

As impressive as Apple’s current lineup is, the company isn’t sitting still. According to Variety it’s just signed a “multi-year overall deal” with Alfonso Cuarón, the driving force behind Netflix’s award-winning film Roma — the movie that created quite a buzz earlier this year when it not only walked away with three Oscars but actually came close to winning Best Picture.

In fact, two of the awards Roma took away in February were for cinematography and directing, which were both big wins specifically for Cuarón, who was the writer, director, producer, editor, and cinematographer for what was essentially a semi-autobiographical look at his own childhood. It was his second Oscar as Best Directory, however, having previously received one for Gravity back in 2014.

So getting Cuarón on board is quite a coup for Apple, but what’s even more interesting is that Apple seems to be pegging him to write television projects, rather than feature films. There’s also the fact that this is an “overall” deal, meaning that he will be developing projects exclusively for Apple TV+; although he will still retain his deal with Anonymous Content and work with other collaborators on film projects, Apple will have exclusive rights to anything he creates for television.

To be fair, while much of Cuarón’s notable work has been done on the big screen, he’s not a stranger to working in television, having co-created the short-lived NBC drama Believe in 2014, and also writing and directing a Mexican anthology series La Honda Marcada. He was also said to be working on a horror series titled Ascension back in 2017, but it’s unclear if that project is still on the table.

Apple has actually signed very few “overall” deals like this, which makes getting Cuarón on board even more noteworthy. It attempted to woo J.J. Abrams into the fold with a deal with Bad Robot Productions, but Abrams chose to sign with WarnerMedia instead, even though Apple was offering more money, since he felt that Warner would give him a higher profile.