‘Boardwalk Empire’ season 4 to present Al Capone, the family man ‘likable guy’ with a ‘sense of humor’
HBO’s crime drama Boardwalk Empire will be entering its fourth season and exposing the audience to a deeper and more authentic portrayal of Al Capone.
The new season begins Sunday, is set mostly in Atlantic City, N.J., and centers on Steve Buscemi’s Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, a fictional politician and gangster who traffics liquor. This season promises to feature more of Graham’s emotionally complex Capone and will introduce Capone’s brothers, Frank and Ralph.
The new Chicago Tribune article details how Empire certainly will maintain the man capable of violence, but also reveal his nature as a jokester and family man.
Jonathan Eig, the Chicago-based author of “Get Capone,” said Graham’s representation is closer to the real man, in that it shows Capone as “the kind of person that you would not mind sitting down next to in a bar.”
Graham “captures a lot of Capone’s charm and humor,” Eig said. “Even when he is going off on someone, he sometimes has a little smile on his face and he is laughing, and that was true of Capone. He was menacing and he was definitely frightening and dangerous, but at the same time he wanted people to see him as a likable guy, and he did have a sense of humor.”
Deirdre Marie Capone agreed: “Starting in the last season, they softened (Capone) and made him more human, because he was human and complex.”
Played by Stephen Graham, Capone is an interesting paradox.
“Those people to me are very interesting to play,”Graham said to the Tribune. “They are very interesting characters, and I like the paradox in them kind of people, where, on one level, they try and lead a normal life, and underneath it they are kind of sociopathic or psychopathic. Which is great to play because it is a million miles removed from me, and I am never going to play Mr. Darcy. It’s great to be able to play these characters and the complexity of the characters.”
Check out the full article here
Boardwalk Empire returns Sunday at 8pm on HBO.
