Maggie Gyllenhaal signed on as a producer to ensure the integrity of the sex trade drama.
Maggie Gyllenhaal signed on as a producer to ensure the integrity of the sex trade drama.
No show in television history has been shown more reverence than David Simon's The Wire. The layered Baltimore-set crime drama's reputation only grew after it ended in 2008, and its expanding post-show popularity helped to usher in the binge-watching era.
Journalist-turned-producer Simon went on to examine post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans in Treme (2010-13), and co-wrote the acclaimed 2015 miniseries Show Me a Hero, but now he's unveiling his biggest swing since The Wire, a bold new SoHo drama called The Deuce.
Co-created with novelist/producer George Pelecanos (a Wire and Treme alum), The Deuce takes place in New York's crime-ridden Times Square in 1971, where prostitution, pornography and evolving social values were coming together to create the modern sex industry. The ambitious drama comes at the subject from a variety of perspectives and has attracted a high-profile cast led by Oscar nominees Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Franco.
Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Deuce.
Gyllenhaal stars as Candy, an independent prostitute without a pimp, a risky move when working The Deuce, the local nickname for the seediest part of 42nd St. Gyllenhaal is also a producer on the series, a position she asked for to help ensure the integrity of her character.
"I felt I needed some sort of guarantee that the show was gonna tell a story that I wanted to be a part of," Gyllenhaal tells TimeOut in Los Angeles. "Especially because I was playing a prostitute, because my body was going to be so big a part of the work I had to do, I wanted a guarantee that my mind was also going to be included."
When Candy, who has a son being raised by her parents in the suburbs, is exposed to the burgeoning world of hardcore pornography, her world view begins to change.
"You see her family life, her artistic life, you see her intellectual life, you see her sexual life," says Gyllenhaal. "You see all elements of this person whose job in the first half of the season is being a prostitute. And then her job shifts and that's where it gets really interesting to me. I think Candy's really interested in sex and the ways that it affects people and I think she's an expert in it. But she's looking at porn as a piece of art."
HBO, the American cable network behind The Deuce, is infamous for featuring abundant nudity in its dramatic programming. The Deuce's subject matter obviously allows for plenty of bare skin, but it's too stark to be considered exploitative. And Gyllenhaal says that some degree of arousal in the viewer helps make the point.
"In a way, if the show also turns you on a little and then makes you consider what's actually turning you on and the consequences for the characters that are turning you on, of what's getting you hot, I think it's a better show."
James Franco says his role in The Deuce is his first grown up role, not playing a 'man-boy'.
Although it's very much of the era it's set in, The Deuce can't help but say a lot about the contemporary world.
"Well, I think it's become clear," says Gyllenhaal, "in a way that maybe it wasn't totally clear a year ago, that there is a huge amount of misogyny in the world. And here we have this opportunity to pick it up and lay it on the table and to do it in a way that's thoughtful and smart, I think, and also real."
"I feel like playing a prostitute who does go through very, very different things, as a filter through which to look at women in our relationship to sex, to power, to cash, to art, is one of the most interesting ways to go into really exploring the state that we're actually in right now."
Although Candy is an entirely fictional creation, Franco's Vincent Martino has his origins in a real person.
A scene from The Deuce.
"There's one guy that was an inspiration for one of my characters, Vincent, that George and David knew," Franco tells TimeOut. "I didn't get a chance to meet him. He passed away right before we shot the pilot but there are tonnes of transcripts of interviews with this guy. I think even before David and George met him, he had dreams of a show about himself."
Franco says "one of my characters" because he also plays Vincent's scoundrel twin brother Frankie, whose gambling debts force Vincent into running a mob front bar in Times Square.
"As an actor it's fantastic, I get the best of both worlds," says Franco. "I get to play Vincent, he gets to have the whole emotional story and romance and all that stuff. And then Frankie gets to come in at key moments and just be a goofball goombah and it's great. I like to say I get to play the Harvey Keitel and the Robert De Niro roles in Mean Streets."
One of Hollywood's busiest actors and film-makers (he directed two episodes of The Deuce), Franco acknowledges that his role here represents something new for him.
"One thing George said, I took as a huge compliment, and I think it's probably true: This is the first time I've kind of had an adult role, performance. Like, I'm almost 40, but I've played a lot of, you know, man-boys, I guess Frankie is the sort of man-boy, but Vincent is sort of a man, the first time I've played a man. And that was great."
