Toby Wallace
OF ‘PISTOL’ ON HULU AND DISNEY+ CANADA
“The Chi” (Showtime — season premiere, June 26)
Several new characters join the ensemble cast for the fifth season of this critically acclaimed comingof-age drama, revolving around residents on the South Side of Chicago. New guest stars include Nia Jervier (“Dear White People”) as Tierra, the polished and ambitious god-niece of Douda (Curtiss Cook), whom he recruits for a rebranding effort; Carolyn Michelle Smith (“Russian Doll”) as Deja, a new love interest for Shaad (Jason Weaver); L’lerrét Jazelle as Fatima, a fearless local journalist;
and Antonyah Allen as Simon, a classmate of Kevin (Alex Hibbert).
In playing John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten in “Pistol,” what have you learned about the time and place that birthed music’s Sex Pistols?
I do remember when we walked in to start rehearsal, one of the first things I remember Danny (Boyle, the series’ director) saying to us, “Oh, your generation is so stimulated all the time.” Even the clothes we were wearing and the stuff we were listening to, we are
always so stimulated as a generation.
I think that really wasn’t the case back in the ‘70s. It was pretty grim. It was kind of postwar. It was very, I guess, bleak in terms of stimulation ... just kind of one of the first things that I remember being surprised by. And we got to play with that, I guess, as (the Sex) Pistols because they
were outrageous.
What was your training to portray The Sex Pistols like?
We all worked with Rick and Karl, who were part of the band Underworld, who basically taught us how to be the Sex Pistols for two months, and we got pretty tight
by then. We were a band, we were a full-on band.
The gigs that we played in the TV show were crazy because we’d play at all these actual venues and get 100 extras in or something. And Danny would do these speeches beforehand to rev up all the extras. They were quite, like almost like poetic, kind of really, like, empowering speeches, and all the extras would go
crazy. They would love it.
Why do you think The Sex Pistols had such an impact musically?
It felt like it was the simplicity that’s behind the music and always keeping it simple, but really raw. It was the really raw expression of a class that was underserved and underrepresented, and they expressed it in their own way from the streets, and
that’s what everybody related to.
It was so kind of rugged, and they didn’t try to overcomplicate it or make it this kind of big show, kind of showboating-performance-type thing. It felt very truthful.