Terence Winter
speaker
107 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Terence Winter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And I was like, oh, my God, using your brain to psych people out and get what you want. And I just became fascinated with the idea of using psychology or psychology. human nature to sort of, you know, get my way through the world. And I just sort of became that guy and that kid, you know, who's always, even to this day, my initial instinct, if I'm presented with a problem,
I always think of what's the way to scam my way through this. And I go, yeah, you can just pay it. You can just pay the bill. You don't need to do this. Right, right, right. But that's right where I go. What lie do I tell to get? And I go, that's you from when you're 15 years old. Wow. It was so ingrained.
I think so, yeah. When I saw that pilot, my agent at the time sent it to me. And, you know, like most people, I thought, opera? What is this? And I don't even think I finished watching it. And I was, like, trembling. I was like, I know these guys. I know these people. I know how they talk. I know how they think. I called him up. I said, you've got to get me on this show.
Yeah. And yeah, that I love. I love that stuff. And it's like all the fun of of the mafia with none of the danger. Yeah. It's like I say why people ride roller coasters. It's like you feel like you're about to die, but you're not actually going to die. How exhilarating. So writing about it, you know, was much preferable for me.
Yeah. I mean, I was given a book by HBO called Boardwalk Empire about the history of Atlantic City. And they said, maybe there's a TV series in here. OK, the history of Atlantic City. That sounds great. But on the way out the door, they said, oh, Martin Scorsese is attached to that book. And I was like, oh, OK, well, that's a different story. I will find the TV series in here. You're right.
So I started reading and there was a chapter about this guy named Nucky Johnson, who I later fictionalized as Nucky Thompson. But Nucky was the corrupt treasurer of Atlantic City during the prohibition era, where, you know, you have a corrupt politician in charge of a city on the eastern seaboard where all the alcohol comes through.
And suddenly overnight, he was friends with Lucky Luciano and Arnold Rothstein and Al Capone and everybody else. I went, this is the series, this guy, this era. And I was like, I love the 20s. You know, that snappy, fast talking 1920s stuff. I've always been fascinated with that kind of dialogue.
The era, you know, was also interesting to me, too, is that even though it's 100 years ago, it still felt modern. People dressed in suits. They went out to restaurants. They talked on the telephone. They drove in cars. You know, it still felt cool. It still felt like accessible. It wasn't like 10 years earlier where it felt like, you know, Downton Abbey. But this was modern.
You know, you could wear some of those clothes today. Yeah. And I said, wow, this is such a great setup. And it's really not really been explored in TV or film. So when I went to meet, I'll call him Marty because I know him and I know it sounds douchey, but... That's his name. When I went to meet Marty, when I went to meet Mr. Scorsese, and believe me, that's what he called him initially.
He was like, oh, this is great. I've never done anything in this era before. So once he gave me the blessing, you know, we were off to the races and then, you know, the real work started. I had to, you know, we had a protagonist who was like 50 years old in 1920. So I was like, okay, so he was born in 1870. So... What books did he read? What was his pop culture references?
What was happening in 1920? There's the war. World War One just ended. He had all these guys coming home. Women just got the right to vote. Prohibition itself. What were the movies? So it's like a ton of research. You know, also, how do people actually talk? I'm sure they didn't all say 23 Skidoo every five minutes. Do the Charleston was like every time you ever see anything in the 20s. Yeah.
everybody's doing the fucking Charleston. I was like, did they do, is there any other songs written between 1920 and 1930? And it's funny. I mean, I wanted to do a thing where, you know, it was like that Nucky at some point says, if I hear the Charleston one more time, I'm going to kill somebody. And it actually didn't come out till 1924 anyway. So we didn't even touch on it until way late.
But yeah, it was just sort of, once I started doing the research, it was just fascinating. Not, not just all the other stuff, but the prohibition stuff itself was so eyeopening. In terms of the history of how it how it even came to be. And then what a disaster it became. You know, the single biggest thing that made criminals millionaires overnight. And it was like outlawing turkey sandwiches.
Right. Most people didn't give like, wait, what? I've been drinking beer my whole life now. I can't do it. Fuck you. I'm going to keep doing this. And just so many failed consequences of that law.
Yeah, it was a perfect storm. I mean, yeah, you're at war with Germany and now suddenly, you know, coleslaw is Liberty cabbage and hamburgers are Liberty sandwiches. And I mean, I think half the brewers got shut down. And I got where it came from. You know, there were... It was alcoholism was devastating.
You know, the cliche is the dad, you know, got paid on Friday and then you didn't see him and spent all his money at the bar. And, you know, and your family went destitute in days before social programs or even before AA was a thing, I guess. So there was a real it was a real problem.
Not at all. Not at all. If we were to cast the real we were to cast somebody who looked like Nucky Johnson, Jim Gandolfini would have actually been perfect. Nucky was a big, burly, bald headed guy.
You know, it started with Marty. You know, we said, all right, who are we going to get to do this? And, you know, I said, well, this is what the real guy looked like. And Marty said, well, no one's ever heard of this guy, which is also funny because when I went down to do my research in Atlantic City, the real Nucky between like 1910 and 1930 was hands down the most powerful guy in Atlantic City.
Everybody knew him. Nothing moved without Nucky. And when I went down initially and talked to old timers and people, have you ever heard of Nucky Johnson? No, never heard of him, never heard of him. After the show, oh, yeah, Nucky, my uncle worked for Nucky. Suddenly everybody knew who he was, but nobody knew who this guy was. So Marty very correctly said, it doesn't matter, we can cast anybody.
And then he just said, well, who? Let's just name actors we like. Ed Helms. Yeah, Ed Helms was not available. Not available. And I said, well, Steve Buscemi. I always love Steve. And he goes, oh, I love Steve Buscemi. And we rattled off a couple of other names. And then he's like, all right, whatever. And a couple of days later, Marty called me up.
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