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The Deuce is an American drama television series set in and around Times Square, New York. It was created and written by author and former police reporter David Simon and his frequent collaborator George Pelecanos.
It follows the story of the legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s, exploring the rough-and-tumble world at the pioneering moments of what would become the billion-dollar American sex industry. The show’s title is derived from the nickname for 42nd Street between Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue.
The Knockturnal: Talk about where you draw that from, and where are we going to see your character go this season?
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Gary Carr: Sure. Everything that you mentioned there, that was all in the script. First, it comes with the paper, and that’s what’s great about George and David. Like they write these, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant scripts, and you’re just like, “wow.” It all feels so easy actually once you’re in it. Where do we see C.C. go? I think, again, what’s really beautiful about the script is that we see a journey with him. He’s not just a pimp. That’s his profession, the profession that he’s chosen. Or maybe not, actually. As I did research for this, I realized a lot of these guys really haven’t chosen-
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The Knockturnal: They kind of just end up in it.
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Gary Carr: Yeah, exactly. It’s about survival. That’s always really interesting to watch and to document. Yeah, I just enjoy watching him survive. I’m excited for everyone else to see that as well.
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The Knockturnal: How did the script find you? Or how did you find the script?
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Gary Carr: I was in London … turning a lot of things down. Or just reading stuff and being like, “No way.” Then my agent had to speak with me like, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I want to do something fucking great.” I want a great script. I mean, I was getting good scripts, but it gets to the point where you start being very picky about your work. I want my body of work to be stellar when I look back. I think you can afford to — people always tell you in like early stages of your career, “You can’t afford to be picky,” and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but it’s never been about that for me. It’s always been about the work, and doing the best work. This script came along, and like everything in me was like, “Oh, shit. I have to do this.” I sent a tape, and sent a note saying, “Look. I will fly over tomorrow if like half of you want me to be in this.” They said, “Yeah, fly over.” I flew over, did some more research, got in the room, and yeah, it went great.
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The Knockturnal: How do you pick a script?
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Gary Carr: It could be many different things, but with this script, it was the fact that it was about a subject manner that not many of us really know much about unless we’re in it. I’m not in the porn industry. I definitely don’t know about the porn industry during that time. Only from certain movies, and even then … I love the fact that I left the script being more informed. I also love the fact that I was seeing these complex characters, and these real human beings on screen, or in the script. I love that life. I see that that’s the most attractive thing. I’m not trying to be funny, but that’s the biggest hard on for me. If I see real characters in the script, I’m like, “Okay, cool. I need to do this.”
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The Knockturnal: Talk about what’s your favorite HBO show that you wish you were a part of?
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Gary Carr: The Wire! What else am I going to say? Girls? No, no, I’m kidding. Girls is cool. The Wire changed my life, my acting life anyway. I was like, it’s possible to create greatness … Not just as an actor, as a creative as well. I’m a filmmaker, and I’m a musician, and when you see work like that, you’re like, “All right, I’m never going to settle ever, ever again.” I was going to always, always, always, always do my best and fight to create the best work, and the best content. Yeah, The Wire for me. That’s what it’s about.
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The Knockturnal: You have Maggie and James both as producers on this project. Talk about working with them, and what they brought to it, and what it was like.
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Gary Carr: They’re just great people to lead a cast. It was really inspiring watching James. He played these twins, and so brilliantly, and then we knew that he’s EP’ing as well. Then also to jump into the director’s chair, and direct himself playing twins, as well as all of us … it’s showing me that he had vision, and he knew what he was doing. There wasn’t one point where I was like, “This guy’s a bit stuck.”
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The Knockturnal: On working with Maggie:
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Gary Carr: I heard stories of her connecting with real sex workers, and advocating for them, and getting their support, and that’s so important to me to hear that. That’s a big deal because I think people forget that … They see all this stuff, they’re like, “Cool, The Deuce,” and blah, blah, blah. But it’s about people. And we’re representing real people, it’s really important that we do that with respect and sensitivity. I feel like she led that. That was really cool.
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The Knockturnal: On working on his American accent:
Gary Carr: I will tell you, from since like this high, we grew up watching American TV, right? So, our shows like in the summer, me and my brothers and sisters, we stayed home a lot, my parents worked a lot, we just watched marathons of Sister, Sister, Moesha. Every single show you could think of … yeah, we got good education when it came to America. We had some great networks with that. Another one, which I loved was One on One.
The Knockturnal: Oh, that’s my show. Kyla Pratt!
Gary Carr: Yeah, you know that. Amazing, amazing. We just like drowned ourselves in that stuff, man. Those are great shows. We’d re-enact our own scenes and stuff like that. I guess when you’re a young kid in London, anyway, watching TV from America, you end up just like imitating, I guess. But for this particular role, I had a brilliant, brilliant dialect coach, Jerome Butler. He worked with me on a previous project, as well, a film where I had to play a guy from New Orleans. Jerome is so detailed. I’m playing an African American guy in the 1970’s, so patterns of speech, the musicality of the voice is very different to what we’d expect now. Yeah, I just love doing detailed work.
The eight-episode season airs on Sundays (9:00-10:30 p.m. ET/PT).
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