A dark but lesser known corner of New York history explodes onto the small screen this week with the arrival of The Westies, a gangland saga spotlighting the infamous Irish gang of the same name in Hell’s Kitchen during the early 1980s. With its powerful mixture of fact and fiction, it’s a must-see for anybody with an appetite for gangster stories.
Despite being outnumbered fifty-to-one by the Five Families of the Italian Mafia, the Westies’ leader, Eamon Sweeney (J K Simmons) is determined that a massive construction project on their turf will bring money not just to the community but his gang as well. Keeping the peace with the Italians is essential and, although the two factions seal a fragile deal, it’s constantly threatened by the violence between the brash, headstrong younger generation and the more old-school leadership. With the FBI closely investigating both gangs, it threatens to turn into a powder keg at any moment.
In the exclusive interviews below, we sat down with the show’s top drawer cast of J K Simmons, Titus Welliver, Tom Brittney and Jessica Frances Duke, together with showrunners Chris Brancato and Michael Panes, and discovered most of them had memories of living in New York during the Westies’ era. Welliver saw members of the gang in a local bar and describes them as “a very insular group” had a friend whose dad was a member of the gang, a them in a local bar, while Brancato and Panes both grew up in different areas of the city – Harlem and Hell’s Kitchen respectively – which fuelled their interest in urban crime. Since then, they’ve worked on shows including Narcos and The Godfather Of Harlem.
Oscar winner Simmons admitted to being fascinated by his character’s enigmatic quality – and says he has “a pitch for season two” to shed some light on his mysterious background. And self-confessed “history nerd” Jessica Frances Duke describes how she dug deep into the FBI story to find the role model for her agent, Birdie, who is the only black woman in the Bureau.
You can watch the interviews below.
The Westies premieres on 12th July 2026 exclusively on MGM+ in the UK.
