The Deuce chronicles that moment in time when sex went from being a back-alley, brown-paper-bag commodity to a billion-dollar universal in American life, a moment when ground zero for the earliest pioneers in the flesh trade was the midtown heart of the nation’s largest city, New York’s Times Square.
Titled after the local slang for New York’s fabled 42nd Street and starring James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Deuce begins its eight-episode season SUNDAY, SEPT. 10 (9:00-10:20 p.m. ET/PT)
The series follows the rise of the porn culture in New York from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s, exploring the rough-and-tumble world of the sex trade from the moment when both a liberalizing cultural revolution in American sexuality and new legal definitions of obscenity created a billion-dollar industry that is now an elemental component of the American cultural landscape.
Beginning in 1971, the show follows a cast of barkeeps, prostitutes, pimps, police and nightlife denizens as they swirl through a world of sex, crime, high times and violence and the porn business begins its climb from Mafia-backed massage parlors and film labs to legitimacy and cultural permanence.
While The Deuce is structured as a fictional narrative, it results from research by producer Marc Henry Johnson, who chronicled the rise and fall of the sex industry and The Deuce demimonde through the lives of a pair of real-life twins who eventually became Mob fronts for the Gambino family in midtown, rising to some prominence in their own right.
The cast includes: James Franco as identical twin brothers Vincent and Frankie Martino; Maggie Gyllenhaal as self-made prostitute Candy; Gary Carr as pimp C.C.; Margarita Levieva as college student-turned-barmaid Abigail “Abby” Parker; Lawrence Gilliard, Jr. as police officer Chris Alston; Dominique Fishback as prostitute Darlene; Emily Meade as 20-year-old prostitute Lori; Gbenga Akinnagbe as pimp Larry Brown; Chris Bauer as Bobby Dwyer, a construction foreman and brother-in-law of the Martinos; Chris Coy as bartender Paul Hendrickson; Natalie Paul as reporter Sandra Washington; and Michael Rispoli as mafia captain Rudy Pipilo.