‘The Westies’ Stars Titus Welliver, J.K. Simmons & More on Brewing Power Struggle

Set in Hell’s Kitchen during the 1980s, The Westies follows Irish gang boss Eamon Sweeney (J.K. Simmons) as he tries to maintain a fragile truce with the Italian Mafia while profiting from the massive construction of the Jacob Javits Convention Center. After one of his own men jeopardizes the alliance by kidnapping an Italian gangster, Sweeney makes a ruthless decision to preserve the peace, putting his fiercely loyal lieutenant Jimmy Roarke (Tom Brittney) in an impossible position. Warning: Spoilers ahead for Episodes 1 & 2 of The Westies. 

The series begins with Westie Davey kidnapping a member of the Gambino family for disrespect, setting off a crisis for the Westies. Holding him at gunpoint in a parking garage, Eamon arrives and makes it clear that the gang is no longer at war with the Italians and orders the man’s release. Eamon then shoots Davey himself to enforce the new alliance and send a message that no one is above his authority. The move shocks the younger Westies, who loved and adored Davey, but his antics would have disrupted the balance Sweeney and the Irish gang reached with the Italian mob and their deal with the Javits Center.

Meanwhile, Jimmy struggles to keep his troubled brother from another mother, Mickey Flanagan (Stanley Morgan), a Vietnam veteran battling severe trauma, from spiraling out of control. Out of the mental asylum where he was given a daily dose of electroshock therapy, Mickey is in bad shape, dealing with a variety of mental health issues and a whopping case of PTSD from the war.

One of Eamon’s footsoldiers, Detective Glenn Keenan (Titus Welliver), is a corrupt cop with deep ties to the neighborhood. His bad habits make him the perfect patsy for the FBI, as Agent Birdie Polk (Jessica Frances Dukes) strongarms Keenan into helping her build a RICO case against both the Irish mob and the rising Gambino crime family led by John Gotti (Hamish Allan-Headley). Forced to choose between protecting his son and betraying old allies, Keenan begins feeding information to federal investigators while trying to stay in Sweeney’s good graces.

A former Marine with two tours of duty in Vietnam under his belt, as well as a Medal of Valor, Keenan is a man who always made the wrong choice, but now wants to finally step up with his son’s future on the line as the boy works for Sweeney.

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“Birdie is the catalyst for that, because what she does is she brings to attention the fact that his son is being drawn into Sweeney’s world. They’re estranged. They don’t see each other, but suddenly he sees his son potentially in peril, and I think there’s an awakening there,” Titus Welliver explained to TV Insider. “He’s never going to be father of the year, but there’s an awakening, and in the process of that awakening, there’s a forced kind of reflection that Keenan doesn’t want to deal with, because he is so filled with self-loathing and self-hatred, but I think that what then becomes his focus is to try to save his son, because it’s too late for him.”

While Eamon fights to hold onto his authority, the cracks within the organization begin to widen as younger members are growing more ambitious, Sweeney’s decisions are questioned, and decades of loyalty are being tested. Even so, the Westies remain fiercely protective of one another, a bond that made the gang as dangerous as it was difficult to dismantle.

“There’s a power structure in place that I’ve been at the top of. Eamon Sweeney has been at the top for a while, so maintaining control is a primary motivator for Eamon, and I think the older Westies,” J.K. Simmons told TV Insider.

“Being that the person who has been in control and been their kind of carer in a lot of ways for most of their life, [Eamon’s] grip on that control might be slipping,” clarified Tom Brittney. “[We are] seeing the younger Westies kind of navigate what it looks like when your leader’s starting to not lead as well.”

“The Westies is this very tight — obviously there are little fractures as there are within any group — but, I think overall it’s a very much us-against-the-world kind of mentality that this small ferocious group had,” explained Simmons.

“There have been tons of mob shows set in New York, tons of mob shows about the Italian mafia, and so right away we had to try to distinguish this from other shows that had been made of similar ilk, and so focusing on the Westies was the first order of business,” said cocreator Michael Panes. “If the Italians were organized crime, the Westies were ‘disorganized crime.’ It was 20-odd guys who were drinking and laughing and stealing and murdering, and so we wanted to try to represent them in an underdog type of way, and also within the Westies group themselves.”

“In order to create conflict, we create a sort of generational divide between the older Westies and the younger Westies, and that plays out over the course of the season. So that was the idea from the very beginning to try to distinguish it from other things you’d seen before,” explained Panes.

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Jimmy’s personal life becomes increasingly complicated as his partner Bridget (Sarah Bolger), an outspoken Irish republican activist, reconnects with former rebel Brendan Cahill (Allen Leech), who draws her into a dangerous gun-running operation tied to the Troubles. At the same time, Mickey’s worsening mental state and impulsive actions threaten to destroy everything Sweeney has built.

By the second episode, one bad decision snowballs into another after Jimmy kills a Gambino soldier. The boys scramble to dispose of the body piece by piece, plant false evidence, and stay one step ahead of both the Mafia and the FBI, but every cover-up only digs the hole deeper. With Gotti sniffing around, Sweeney struggling to keep the peace, and Mickey ultimately taken by the Italian gang, the episode ends with the Westies staring down the very war they have been desperate to avoid.

The Westies, Sundays, 9/8c. MGM+