Woody Harrelson, Justin Theroux (and his mustache) are HBO’s White House Plumbers
The first trailer for HBO's White House Plumbers traces the downfall of Nixon's presidency
TV News HBO
The end of two award-winning HBO shows is nigh, with Succession and Barry culminating their fourth and final seasons soon. So naturally, the cable network is ready to launch a brand new drama that might take over your weekly water cooler discussions. Today, HBO released a first look at its upcoming series White House Plumbers, which debuts in early May (and was one of our most anticipated new shows of the year).
Created by Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck, White House Plumbers is a five-part political miniseries led by Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux—both HBO vets hailing from True Detective and The Leftovers, of course. And let’s not overlook Theroux sporting a lovely oversized mustache in the trailer below. They play saboteurs E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who accidentally topple the Nixon presidency they’re zealously trying to protect.
The show chronicles how the White House hired Hunt and Liddy, former CIA and FBI, respectively, to investigate the Pentagon Papers leak. They’re white men who fail upwards—a trend that hasn’t slowed down since the ‘70s (or forever)—so the unlikely pair is charged with bugging the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex. And, well, we all know what happened next.
As seen in the clip, White House Plumbers isn’t a straight drama as much a political satire. So it makes sense that Veep’s David Mandel directs the show. WHP’s stacked cast also includes Lena Headey, Kiernan Shipka, Ike Barinholtz, David Krumholtz, Yul Vazquez, Judy Greer (RIP, Reboot), Domhnall Gleeson, Gary Cole, Toby Huss, F. Murray Abraham, and Kathleen Turner.
While HBO gears towards ending Succession, Barry, and the second season of Perry Mason, it’s nice to know we have more exciting projects coming up at athe network, including the returns of Somebody Somewhere and A Black Lady Sketch Show.
We now add White House Plumbers to the list. It will premiere on May 1, 2023.
13 Comments
I’d probably be more interested in this if I hadn’t just watched Gaslit last year. It was fairly good, and this feels like someone remaking the exact same show.
It’s goddamn unsettling how much Justin Theroux looks like 70’s era Liddy. Like clone scary. Every story I heard from those that existed around him assured Liddy was a absolute nutball who they were pretty sure would wind up in some kind of bloody firefight and they just hoped it wouldn’t include them in the crossfire. Hunt himself believed the man was certifiable and wouldn’t touch him with a 10 foot cattle prod after all the shit went down. Really looking forward to this….the story is a wild case of fuckups, coverups, ineptitude, and politics. Typical Washington DC shit.
I’m here for the retro kitsch satire but this historical era just doesn’t hit anywhere near as dramatically as a backdrop to whatever character stories one wants to tell as it once did. I watched All the Presidents Men last night for the first time in a while and I was struck by how the underlying events and tension from the risks of exposure seem so relatively tame compared to what’s gone at various points in the last 20ish years. Sweet summer populace.
The issue is that the stuff that Nixon got impeached for wasn’t nearly the worst shit he did, which is why it seems so mundane. Here’s a short list of worse things he did, both during the 1968 election and once he was President.
1. Violated the Logan Act by conspiring with the North Vietnamese to scuttle peace talks that were being held in the few weeks before the election, leading to a 6-year prolonging of the Vietnam War.
2. Invading Cambodia without any sort of Congressional authorization.
3. Directly weaponizing the IRS to target political enemies, and firing IRS commissioner(s) who refused to do so.
4. Near constant campaign finance violations and money laundering throughout his years as President (specifically outright bribes funneled through his friend Bebe Rebozo)
5. Numerous recorded orders to invade/bomb countries the US was not currently at war with (such as Syria and Jordan), but were countermanded (and outright ignored) by people such as Kissinger.
Things seem more severe because we live in a 24-hour news cycle where significant leaks and preemptions are commonplace. Truly, the only things that immediately come to mind that are on the level of Nixon’s worst actions are (coincidentally enough) two things that Reagan did: violating the Logan Act by backchanneling to the Ayatollah during the Iran Embassy hostage negotiations to scuttle a deal that was in the works by Jimmy Carter, and Iran/Contra. I despise Trump, but nothing in his 4 years rise that he did (or that we know about) rises to those levels.
In case you were wondering what the real mustache looked like:
And let’s not overlook Theroux sporting a lovely oversized mustacheI hope at one point he has to plop it down on some kinda oversized mustache scanner to gain access to a secure area.
Re. the trailer: no one said “Wait, what?” during the Seventies. What anachronistic dialogue in retro films have you other Clubbers noticed?