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“It’s the great American tragedy,” Eastwood, 89, tells the Sun in an exclusive interview. “It’s the ultimate drama in a way because he’s a real-life hero who has been completely screwed over by the public and the media’s rush to make a judgment.”

Jewell, played to brutal effect by Paul Walter Hauser (I, Tonya; BlacKkKlansman), was exonerated, but not before his life was ruined.

He died at 44 in 2007.

“It’s an important story to tell,” Hauser says, seated beside the venerable filmmaker. “It’s not just a notable tragedy … we’re trying to right the wrongs of that false narrative of him.”

Richard Jewell — which casts Kathy Bates as his mom Bobbi, Sam Rockwell as his attorney Watson Bryant, Jon Hamm as the FBI agent who targets the security guard and Olivia Wilde as the reporter who starts the wildfire of accusations that dogged Jewell — is written by Billy Ray and is based on a 1997 Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner.

But the film, which opens today, has faced questions about its accuracy.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has taken issue with a scene in which Wilde’s Kathy Scruggs offers to sleep with Hamm’s Tom Shaw for information on Jewell.

Speaking to Variety, Wilde defended her portrayal. “I think it’s a shame that she has been reduced to one inferred moment in the film,” she said.

Hamm echoed her sentiments earlier this week at the Atlanta premiere of the film. “I think that there were certainly suggestions of impropriety with her character, but there are also some suggestions of impropriety with the character that I play, and that’s part of the tragedy of this story,” Hamm told 11 Alive.