Mini-series event available on Prime Video, White House Plumbers looks back on the famous Watergate scandal and the men behind it. Woody Harrelson, Justin Theroux and the series team confide in our microphone.
It is a case as unusual as it is true, at the origin of one of the biggest political scandals of the 20th century: the burglary of Watergate. If this event, which led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon, and its major consequences have been recounted many times on the small and big screen, the White House Plumbers mini-series today shines the spotlight on the masterminds behind the operation. .
Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux, also executive producers, play respectively E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, two White House collaborators initially hired after the Pentagon Papers affair to remedy the leaks of classified information to the media…
Throughout the 5 episodes available on Prime Video via the Warner Pass, we follow these two men from their recruitment in 1971 to the planning and execution of the burglary at the premises of the Democratic Party the following year, without forgetting the impact of the scandal afterwards.
“A VERY FUNNY TRAGEDY”
If Woody Harrelson likes to joke in an interview that it was the presence of Justin Theroux in the cast that convinced him to join the project, the two actors point out that it was actually the quality of the script that thrilled them both. :
“Pete Huyck And Alex Gregory, the writers, are just amazing. These two worked on Veep, this is the best. I found the writing excellent,” says Woody Harrelson.
“Likewise ! The first script I received was hilarious. The fact that it’s almost true to life and yet inconceivable also appealed to me. It was certainly less funny at the time, but it is now when you think about it”, adds Justin Theroux.
HBO
Despite the seriousness of the subject, the mini-series indeed surprises with its surprisingly humorous tone. “I like to say it’s a very funny tragedy, says director David Mandel (Veep, Larry and His Belly Button).
And the comedic aspects are not jokes. I know how to write jokes, but this story has none. You laugh at all those things you find hard to believe, situations, characters, and a lot of it was real, that’s what’s most shocking!
When you find out about Watergate, it’s obviously a horrible betrayal of public trust – a president broke the law, the people who worked for him broke the law, but you can’t help but laugh at the that they didn’t have the right lock picking tools to open the door and had to come back.
Those two things co-exist, and the opportunity I had here was to bring them together to give the show such a unique tone.”
A TOP-FLIGHT CAST
The two stars of White House Plumbers are surrounded by an equally impressive cast: Domhnall Gleeson (About About Time, the Star Wars saga), Lena Headey (Game of Thrones), Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Ike Barinholtz (The Mindy Project), Judy Greer (Halloween Kills), David Krumholtz, Rich Sommer, Toby Huss, John Carroll Lynch, Tony Plana, and the list goes on…
HBO
Playing Dorothy Hunt, wife of E. Howard Hunt, in the series, Lena Headey was delighted to give the reply to Woody Harrelson: “We had a great time. Believe it or not, Woody likes to socialize in his spare time, so we had a blast. He is not easily offended and is very open to improvisation”.
For this role, the actress did not prepare herself in advance, preferring to trust the team around her. “Being an actor is a lot of trusting the people who guide you, and Pete and Alex, who wrote the show, and David, who directs it, are really wonderful, cooperative, warm, intelligent people, so I I just trusted them!”
Don’t miss the 5 episodes of the White House Plumbers mini-series on Prime Video, via the Warner pass!
Comments collected by Solène Boutillier during the press junket of April 17, 2023.