Over on the bowels of 4Chan, there’s a regular commenter who goes by the name of “Scriptf*g,” who works on Boardwalk Empire and has been dropping intel on the show for years. Is he reliable? Well, he’s anonymous, and on 4Chan, so he has that going against him, but otherwise, over the years, he’s provided a lot of information about upcoming plotlines that no one would know unless they had access to the scripts. The details he offers about certain cast members seem legit. If you go through the last four years of his posts, it’s evident that he has a lot of inside information that could only be known from someone who works on Boardwalk. Some of those stories — especially about Michael Pitt and crazypants Paz de la Huerta — are fantastic.
But we’ll start with the more depressing news. According to this source, the next season of Boardwalk Empire will likely be its last. Even more distressing is the fact that it will probably only get eight to 10 episodes to wrap up. Showrunner Terence Winter is apparently anxious to move ahead on his other project, a 1970’s rock n’ roll drama for HBO with Martin Scorsese and Breaking Bad’s George Mastras, which will star Bobby Cannavale as Mick Jagger. As to that show, “Scriptf*g” has read the pilot, and knows a lot about it, as well:
It’s like Mad Men but a Record Label. It’s like Boogie Nights when you’re dealing with coked out talent and big shots trying to find the next big thing. Mix that up with the 1970s backdrop in NYC and the insane stories from Mick Jagger and the like and you’ve got one hell of a show there.
The number of episodes in next season of Boardwalk is not, however, official:
It’s not official yet. It’s just rumblings I’ve heard throughout the office. First it was 10 episodes, then maybe 9 and now I believe they’ve settled on 8. This probably won’t be announced for some time until HBO figures out their schedule and budgets I’m sure but I’ve been told that 5 will be the last season.
That blows, because Boardwalk has really grown into one of the best shows on television, although it doesn’t get as much coverage in the media as it should.
As for Paz de la Huerta? She is every bit as insane as you’d think, according to the source:
I’ve told her stories too many times. She’s a crazy bitch. She would come drugged up to set. Would walk around naked (not that that’s a bad thing), she would shave her pu**y in front of crew, she had her period one time and asked the AD (assistant director) for a tissue for her “pu**y” and then she left said bloody tissue on set and in the bathroom. This one time she made a PA go into the bathroom with her and made the girl PA hold her hand while she took a sh*t. She would always be screaming and crying on set. Causing all kinds of scenes. Her dialogue or scene for a normal actress should take a few hours max. Paz would f**king have like 3 lines of dialogue and it would be an entire day. It was brutal. She also brought her black life coach to set. It was ridiculous. Unfortunately, I never got to smell her though.
Interestingly, according to the source, there was some talk of keeping Bobby Cannavale’s Gyp Rosetti on the show beyond season three, but apparently, they couldn’t figure out how to make that happen, story-wise. The source also noted that — not only is Richard Harrow dead — but that his people (wife, son) probably won’t return to the show, either.
Finally, I’ve heard rumblings of what a pain Michael Pitt was on the set of Boardwalk, but “Scriptf*g” not only provides details, but he suggests that Pitt and his Jimmy Darmody character were killed off because the cast and crew got tired of dealing with Pitt.
I guess, initially, they were planning to have Jimmy and his wife, Angela, move to New York, but “that ended up not happening because of Pitt.” Here’s what kind of pain in the ass he was:
[Pitt was] late a lot (this costs production money), [he had] trouble remembering lines (they had to reshoot an entire scene because he couldn’t remember his lines…this costs production money), [was] constantly questioning his character’s storyline, tried to change dialogue a lot, would wander from the set, got into a little fist fight with William Forsythe during the Jimmy death scene, etc. They had plans for him and Angela’s character but they pretty much just got tired of him.
Then he offers a more specific example:
An example I use is in S2 when he has the sit down and they discuss killing Nucky. He couldn’t remember a line to save his life. They had to end production early that night because of it and had to reshoot the entire scene with the stand-ins so he could say his lines. Every time you see just pitt in that scene he’s talking to nobody’s. It was really bad.
Asked if they had considered bringing Pitt back in last season’s finale — when his body was dug up — the source says no.
They were done with him. They were thinking about making a look-a-like dummy for the unburied body but they went with a skeleton instead. That was probably the closest chance to seeing Pitt again on the show.
Too bad about Pitt, because Darmody was a great character, but I’m not too bummed about it. Boardwalk has obviously flourished without Darmody.
(Source: 4Chan)
