While Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols series Pistol focuses on how the band shaped British punk as we know it, no one quite encapsulates the actual punk era more than Maisie Williams’ and Thomas Brodie Sangster’s characters.
Pamela ‘Jordan’ Rooke barges onto our screens with her boobs out on a bike, revelling in terrorising a seafront town just by her very presence. She later gets a train to London in the same see-through plastic top, being moved to first class as those around her gawp and make comments.
But while Jordan embodied punk, Malcolm McLaren was one of its architects – slowly moulding the Sex Pistols into the biggest disruptors and money-making machine they could possibly be. He promotes anarchy while buying into capitalism and knowingly creates a monster that he later destroys to make a statement.
Naturally, these two massive characters needed equally massive talents to bring them knowingly and lovingly to life in the new Disney+/FX series.
Speaking to Digital Spy, Maisie and Thomas talk about bringing the ’70s back to life, what it was like portraying real-life people, and lessons we could ultimately learn from the punk movement.
Maisie, what was it like working with the real Jordan/Pamela Rooke?
Maisie: I had a lot of preconceived ideas of what this story was going to be, and the way that it was going to be told, just from other things that have been made from this time, but because we had the support of so many people who were really there – including Jordan, who was an immense help to me and all areas of this production – it meant that we could bring it back to a place that was more real and we had a face to all of these iconic names.
For that reason, I think that it did give it more of a soul, and I think it definitely made it easier in a way because you don’t feel like you’re creating something. Or despite this being a fictional retelling of these events, it didn’t feel like you were creating someone entirely fictional. It felt like it was grounded within yourself and your own experiences and the experiences we recounted [of] the people who were really there.
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