Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, Armie Hammer, and Joel Edgerton to star in limited series about Watergate

By Shannon Miller  |  February 21, 2020 | 8:54pm
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Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, Armie Hammer, and Joel Edgerton to star in limited series about Watergate
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L to R: Julia Roberts ( Michael Loccisano), Sean Penn (Mike Coppola), Armie Hammer (David Livingston), and Joel Edgerton (Roy Rochlin) Image:

Now that Mr. Robot has concluded, creator Sam Esmail is moving on to his next major project: a star-studded look at the Watergate scandal, per Variety. Sure, there isn’t exactly a shortage of Watergate content, but we’d never begrudge the public a bedazzled nugget of political scandal to distract from our current political garbage barge fire, so sure, bring on Julia Roberts! In a new limited series titled Gaslit, Roberts will join Sean Penn, Armie Hammer, and Joel Edgerton to examine, as Variety notes, “untold stories and forgotten characters of Watergate, from Nixon’s bumbling, opportunistic subordinates, to the deranged zealots aiding and abetting their crimes, to the tragic whistleblowers who would eventually bring the whole rotten enterprise crashing down.” Gaslit is based on Slate’s popular podcast Slow Burn.

Roberts will play socialite-turned-whistleblower Martha Mitchell, the wife of Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell, who will be played by Penn. (Drunk History recently did a boozy primer on Mitchell, should you need a refresher.) Hammer will step in as White House Counsel John Dean who will have to weigh integrity with keeping the President’s many secrets, and Edgerton will portray former FBI agent and talk radio show host G. Gordon Liddy, who helped manage disparaging news leaks for Nixon during that time. Roberts is also billed as an executive producer. The series is currently being shopped around to premium and streaming networks, though we can’t imagine that it will be on the market for long.

 
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