P.J. Byrne—best known for playing the shitty-toupee-wearing Rugrat in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street—is joining the case of Scorsese’s still-untitled, long-in-the-works, rock ’n’ roll-based drama he’s producing for HBO alongside Mick Jagger and Wall Street screenwriter (and Boardwalk Empire creator) Terence Winter.
Byrne joins a cast that already includes Olivia Wilde, Ray Romano, Juno Temple, and star Bobby Cannavale, as Scorsese examines the one industry that can hold a candle to the sleaziness of early-2000s Wall Street: the music industry in the 1970s. Byrne will play the business partner of Cannavale’s record company executive, who searches for an act that can save his label in a New York where the nascent genres of punk, disco, and hip-hop are beginning to collide.
While the show still doesn’t have a title or a premiere date, the idea potentially has something for everyone. People who grew up on the music of the ’70s get to see the gritty, behind-the-scenes machinations dramatized. Boardwalk fans get what will most likely be another Winter project full of historical accuracy and crackling dialogue. And HBO is undoubtedly pleased that, as prostitution was rampant in New York in the ’70s, there are plenty of opportunities for otherwise-boring conversations to take place in brothels.