Danny Boyle is back with his first project since 2019’s “Yesterday” with a miniseries about the rise and fall of The Sex Pistols. And while some people are excited about the show, one of them isn’t ex-Pistols frontman Jon Lydon. In fact, Lydon wants nothing to do with the show, but that doesn’t appear to both Boyle or the cast of the series.
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Last year, while the show was in production, The Sunday Times ran an interview with Lydon who, after having seen publicity stills from the show, called it the”most disrespectful shit I’ve ever had to endure.” Afterward, Lydon attempted to keep the series from completion, but he lost a court battle to his old bandmates Steve Jones and Paul Cook, who are more than happy to see their story onscreen. So, needless to say, a biopic miniseries about his days as Johnny Rotton isn’t Lydon’s cup of tea.
Does Lydon’s hostility toward “Pistol” bother its director and cast? Not at all, apparently. Boyle told EW that he doesn’t mind Lydon’s response, finding it true to the Sex Pistol attitude, and that “it’s a small price to pay to be unpopular with John.” “If you’re going to get upset about that, you don’t understand the history of the group and the subsequent history post-group,” Boyle said. “The discord is fundamental to it — it’s part of the energy that Malcolm [McLaren, the Sex Pistols’ manager)] clearly wanted to build from. He takes an intemperance, an anger, a kind of resentment, a feeling of a chip on the shoulder, and then it extrapolates from there into the world through the music. And it’s what gives the songs such bite, I think.”
Cast members of “Pistol” feel similarly to Boyle. “I love it,” said Toby Wallace, who plays Jones in the series, “I think good on him. He’s got that kind of really rebellious fuck you attitude [that] especially nowadays is quite hard come by. I’d be disappointed if there wasn’t some kind of a row. I don’t think it’s going to hurt the project, so there you go.” “Pistol” also stars Anson Boon, Maisie Williams, Louis Patridge, Emma Appleton, and Jacob Slater.
So, in a phrase, nevermind the Jon Lydon bollocks, because “Pistol” premieres on Hulu on May 31. Watch the trailer for the show below (and check out our review of it here).