Danny Boyle and 'Pistol' Team Talk Real Sex Pistols' Involvement in Miniseries

The Sex Pistols were only together for about three years. But during the height of their run in the late 1970s, they were the face of the rising U.K. punk scene. Cobbled together by their manager Malcolm McLaren and backed by his wife Vivienne Westwood, the Sex Pistols had a tumultuous run full of big egos, bigger ideologies, and clashing personalities in which music was never the main focus. 

That journey is highlighted over six episodes in FX's biographical drama Pistol, based on guitarist Steve Jones' memoir, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol. The miniseries was created and written by Craig Pearce (Elvis) and directed by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), who both also executive produce.

"It's the story of a group of young people who were the forgotten generation," Pearce tells Metacritic. "They were just forgotten kids. And they came up and they rose up in a rebellious, chaotic explosion and proved everyone wrong. They created their own future and changed music and culture forever." 

"It wasn't just a musical movement. It was a philosophical movement and revolution in dressing," adds Boyle. "Punk said, it's not just the music, not just the philosophy of chaos and creativity, but also the way you look, the way you dress. It's a provocation. It's a tool by which you change the world, a tool by which clothes (or the lack of them) change the world." 

Boyle reveals that, in retrospect, Sex Pistols were a huge part of his life growing up. "It's a weird thing to say, because it was such an irresponsible group," he explains. "But I owe them for everything I've done. I kind of owe my whole career to them, so this felt really important to do  and to do it as accurately as possible. And also to make no compromises because it was a very uncompromising movement." 

Here, Boyle, Pearce, and seveal of the show's actors talk to Metacritic about dramatizing these larger-than-life personalities.

Steve Jones (Toby Wallace) 

One of the original members of Sex Pistols (back when the band was named the Swankers), Steve Jones had a tough upbringing. He was the band's original singer, but McLaren named him the new guitarist after their first performance. The only problem was he didn't know how to play. So, he taught himself three months before their first gig, fueled by black beauties.  

In putting together the series, Pearce and Wallace met with the real Jones to get his input and to answer their questions about the experience. 

"You have to say it's not a documentary, there will be things that you don't like, but I hope it's true to the spirit, the essence of it," explains Boyle. "This is another actor playing you. And he will bring something to it that you'd never even imagined. There are two of you in the room. There's two Steve Jones in the room. There's the real one that you've got your research from, and then there's Toby's one. Sometimes they intersect or sometimes they don't. But there's a fluidness about that, which I love actually." 

John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon (Anson Boon) 

When Pistol was first announced, the real John Lydon spoke out against the series and has had zero involvement in its production. That didn't deter Boon, who plays the animated singer. He studied Johnny Rotten's stage presence and replicated his performances for the live ones the actors were asked to do for the show. 

"Everything that you see in the show we actually recorded on the day. Nothing's prerecorded. Nothing's edited in post. It's all live performance," he says. "These guys were almost part of the audience. They were voices of this disenfranchised audience, voices of the people. The audience gave us so much. It was incredible when we got to play these live gigs and we're really playing all the music." 

Boon also read Lydon's books in preparation for the role and in the process admits he became a huge fan. "It would have been the icing on the cake if I'd gotten to meet John," he says. "But, particularly in his first book, he's just so generous and so self-reflective. There were so many details in there that I was able to put into my performance. He's really a special artist. I just wanted to do him the justice he deserves. So yeah, I hope he recognize that. We'll see." 

Malcolm McLaren (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) 

The band's manager was responsible for putting the Pistols together and, eventually, dismantling them by putting them in pressure cooker situations, knowing their personalities would clash. Part of the reason he reportedly wanted to blow the band up was they had gotten too big to be the rebellious act he'd envisioned. 

McLaren died in 2010 from cancer at the age of 64, so it's unclear what he would have thought of the project, but it's a thought that's crossed actor Brodie-Sangster's mind before embodying him.  

"I think that would have been very problematic if he was still around because I think he would have both wanted to own it and destroy it," he says. "Malcolm was an absolute genius. He was, at his heart, a chaotic kind of thinker. That's what made him so, so brilliant. I can't imagine he would have really been able to settle with this show in a sense, because he was such a big personality. He was always creating and destroying, creating and destroying, creating and destroying. I think he would have found it hard to reconcile that with this project." 

"I kind of wished that he was around. But at the same time, I'm quite glad that I didn't have to deal with him," adds Pearce. "But I would have loved to have heard what he said. I'd love to have gone and met and had a coffee with him and just chatted to him, and probably picked up the bill afterwards." 

Paul Cook (Jacob Slater) 

Paul Cook was the Sex Pistol's drummer, and he was also one of Jones' oldest friends despite having a much different family life. Like Jones, he was involved in the TV series and gave his input as needed, which Slater took advantage of throughout filming.  

"Paul was really important in Steve's life. For that reason, he was kind of the rock that Steve could come back to," Slater muses. "He was also the rock in the musical sense as well, because he never faulted. He never wavered. He was a really, really great drummer. And if he hadn't been there, you know, there's an old saying, which is you're only as good as your drummer. So without him, they wouldn't have had that backbone to be able to do what they did." 

Sid Vicious (Louis Partridge) 

Sid Vicious, a childhood friend of Johnny Rotten's, was the last to join the band after McLaren orchestrated the firing of bassist Glen Matlock. Before the switch, Johnny felt ganged up on by the other members and so by having Sid by his side, the thought was the guys would be on more equal footing. Unfortunately, Sid had no idea how to play, and despite Jones' trying to teach him the basics, the pressure became too much. He began leaning on his girlfriend, a problematic groupie named Nancy Spungen, and drugs.  

"[His downfall] I think, is a massive blend of many, many things," Partridge says of the late musician, who died of a drug overdose in 1979 at the age of 22. At the time he was under indictment for the murder of Nancy.  

"Sid as a person was quite an extreme personality," Partridge continues. "Back then as well, you're a kid and then you're an adult. There was no in between. Sid and Nancy had to grow up pretty fast. They both had their challenges and were thrust into some wild, frenzied world that I don't think we could ever completely understand."   

Nancy Spungen (Emma Appleton) 

The real Spungen died in a hotel room when she was 20 years old. She had been stabbed in the stomach with a knife and bled to death on the bathroom floor. Although Sid was arrested and charged with her murder, his involvement was never proven as he died while out on bail. Years later, before his own death, McLaren wrote how he didn't believe the man could have killed the love of his life.  

Appleton, who repeatedly studied videos of Nancy on YouTube before auditioning for the role and worked hard to nail her specific accent, didn't want to think about who actually killed the woman while playing the part. Instead, she wanted to think about Sid and Nancy in terms of who they were as people and what their relationship was like. 

"I've always known them as being this infamous, iconic, tragic duo in popular culture," she says. "There's something that they recognized in each other, they were like magnets. It was a vulnerability and a destructive quality, and also feeling like outsiders and like the world didn't understand them. So, they created their own world and they just kind of understood each other. Their world revolved around each other, basically." 

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