Hearing an actor—especially an actor well-known for his voice, as Oscar winner J.K. Simmons certainly is—try out a new accent always seems to follow a fraught emotional path. There’s the initial bafflement and confusion—”What’s that supposed to be? Why would he think that works?” that eventually, hopefully, shades into indifference, before ultimately giving way to acceptance. We will confess to currently still being in that first phase with Simmons’ new vocal affectation for MGM+’s crime series The Westies; we thus invite you to join us in our efforts to acclimate, courtesy of the show’s first teaser trailer, released today.
As (sort of) laid out in the thirty-second teaser, the new streaming series sees Simmons playing Eamon Sweeney, the fictionalized leader of the real-life Westies criminal organization, an Irish-American group that vied with other mobs for control of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen from the 1960s forward. In this case, that apparently involves making nice with some of the higher-ups in organized crime, even while picking fights with John Gotti’s Gambino crime family. If we’re being honest, though, all of that is dispensed with here too quickly to really clock: The trailer knows you want to see (and, uh, hear) Simmons, and puts him front and center. (To the point that we don’t even get a glimpse of the show’s other lead, Bosch star Titus Welliver, who reportedly plays Sweeney’s childhood friend who eventually became a New York cop.)
Created by TV vets Chris Brancato and Michael Panes (who previously worked together on MGM+’s Godfather Of Harlem), the series also stars Tom Brittney, Jessica Francis Polk, Stanley Morgan, Sarah Bolger, Allen Leech, Hamish Allan-Headly, Vincent Walsh, and Hilary McCormack. It’s set to debut on MGM+ with a two-episode premiere on July 12; hopefully, by then, we’ll be prepared for the full brunt of The Accent to hit.
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