Great Britain is in desperate need of some anarchy right now, so thank god someone told Danny Boyle to get moving with his new show about the Sex Pistols and 70s London. After shooting took place in the capital last year, with a cast of established stars and promising newcomers (more on that below), the Disney+ show, coming 31 May, has now dropped its first trailer.
The 30 second montage, entitled “Destroy”, captures an air of the disenfranchisement and anger of British youth in the 1970s, and how a desire for revolution fuels the band, their sound and their popularity.
Commissioned by FX and headed up by the Oscar-winning director, Pistol chronicles the Sex Pistols’ rise to fame, particularly through the lens of guitarist Steve Jones, whose autobiography, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, inspired the show’s script. A press release from FX (the same folks who put Pose on the air) when the show was first announced said that it will take us “from West London’s council estates to Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s notorious Kings Road SEX shop, to the international controversy that came with the release of Never Mind the Bollocks, which is frequently listed as one of the most influential albums of all time”.
Danny Boyle added: “This is the moment that British society and culture changed forever. It is the detonation point for British street culture…where ordinary young people had the stage and vented their fury and their fashion…and everyone had to watch & listen…and everyone feared them or followed them: the Sex Pistols.”
So, a little more info on the stars in front of the camera. The show’s main actor, playing Steve Jones, is Toby Wallace, who you may have seen as the rough-edged and sensitive male protagonist in last year’s brilliant Babyteeth. Meanwhile, Louis Partridge, fresh off the back of Netflix’s Enola Holmes, will play Sid Vicious, and the excellent star of the underseen Blackbird and 1917, Anson Boon, has won the role of Johnny Rotten. Rounding out the band is The Serpent star Fabien Frankel, who’ll play Glen Matlock, Dylan Llewellyn (aka the wee English fella off Derry Girls) as Wally Nightingale, and newcomer Jacob Slater — who we have a sneaking suspicion may (or may not) be a musician first and foremost — as Paul Cook.
That’s not all though! Maisie Williams will be playing Jordan, the peroxide-haired, face-painted girl widely hailed as ‘the frontwoman of punk’. (Today, she breeds Burmese cats and is a veterinary nurse.) Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders will be played by Sydney Chandler, whose just wrapped work on the Harry Styles-starring Don’t Worry Darling, while Emma Appleton of The Witcher will tackle the character of Sid Vicious’ American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
Photos leaked from the shoot show the stars in full 70s punk regalia, which makes us excited for the official premiere, due in May. All in all, it sounds like the kind of thing we’d dig: lots of young people pissing off old Tories.