Since yesterday’s notice, the cast keeps growing for Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger’s still-untitled HBO show about New York’s music scene in the 1970s. Several more actors have joined a sprawling cast that now includes Andrew Dice Clay as a coked-up radio station executive and Danish actress Birgitte Sørenson as an Edie Sedgwick-like muse to Andy Warhol (who has not yet been cast, and may or may not be a character on the show).
Portraying the singer of the fictional punk band Nasty Bits is a relative unknown named James Jagger, son of series co-producer Mick. That bit of nepotism should come as no surprise, however, as virtually the whole cast has some pre-existing relationship with the creators. Let’s see how much of it we can sort out: The show is being scripted by Terence Winter, a Sopranos writer who went on to script The Wolf Of Wall Street for Scorsese, who previously directed the pilot for Winter’s series Boardwalk Empire. The elder Jagger, of course, has provided the soundtrack for Scorsese’s entire career. Series star Bobby Cannavale played a memorable villain on Boardwalk. P.J. Byrne, whose casting was announced earlier in the week, played a supporting role in Wolf; series regulars Joe Caniano and Max Casella appeared on both Sopranos and Boardwalk; Robert Funaro was also on The Sopranos; and J.C. Mackenzie acted for Scorsese in The Wolf Of Wall Street, The Aviator, and The Departed.
Besides Clay and Sørenson, the only cast members without a prior Scorsese connection seem to be Olivia Wilde, Ray Romano, Juno Temple, and Ato Essandoh (Django Unchained, Copper). But Marty hasn’t cast his Sinatra biopic yet, so there’s still time to see Wilde as Mia Farrow, Romano as Joey Bishop, and Essandoh as Sammy Davis, Jr. After all, it’s not like any new actors would be willing to work with Martin Scorsese.