From Michael Pitt’s Jimmy Darmody to Jack Huston Richard Harrow, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire has made a habit of killing off beloved characters. Recently, the show’s creator Terence Winter sat down with NPR Fresh Air host Terry Gross about the final season of the hit series:
“Part of what makes [Boardwalk Empire] special for me is that we try to be as true to the characters as possible and let the chips fall where they may in terms of actor deals and commitments and that sort of stuff. We made a deal with ourselves early on, on The Sopranos, that we would never keep a character alive because we like the actor who portrayed them. Because [then] we felt we would never kill anybody. You start to get very close to people, and if you start to let personal relationships bleed into the work, it really colors it in a bad way. …”
Winter went on to add that he gives everyone who is about to killed off a special phone call:
“The hardest part of my job [is] making the phone call [to the actor], putting people out of work. [It's] tough. I've made a lot of those tough phone calls. ... I make the call before the actor reads it in the script or hears it from somebody on the crew. ... I actually called one actor and I said, “Hey, it's Terry Winter,’ and he said, ‘Well, I guess I'm dead.’”
The second episode of the final season of Boardwalk Empire airs this Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. on HBO.
