Which characters in Boardwalk Empire are real?
Boardwalk Empire ran on HBO for five seasons and 56 episodes between 2010 and 2014, and part of its trick was blending invented characters with genuine figures from Prohibition-era history. Terence Winter built the show on Nelson Johnson's 2002 nonfiction book about Atlantic City's corruption.
So who actually existed? More people than you might think — including, sort of, Nucky himself.
The real gangsters
The show's criminal underworld is stacked with historical figures, most of them played close to the record:
- Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) — the New York kingpin widely accused of fixing the 1919 World Series. Real, and really was murdered over a card game debt in 1928.
- Al Capone (Stephen Graham) — shown rising from Johnny Torrio's driver to Chicago's boss, which tracks with history. Torrio (Greg Antonacci) was real too.
- Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza) and Meyer Lansky (Anatol Yusef) — the young partners who would go on to reorganize the American Mob in the 1930s.
- Waxey Gordon, Frankie Yale, Joe Masseria, and Salvatore Maranzano — all genuine bootleggers and Mob bosses of the era.
- Mickey Doyle (Paul Sparks) — a renamed version of Philadelphia bootlegger Mickey Duffy, giggle and all.
The real politicians and public figures
Warren G. Harding, his attorney general Harry Daugherty, fixer Gaston Means, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and bootlegger-turned-informant George Remus (who really did talk about himself in the third person) all existed. So did entertainer Eddie Cantor and Atlantic City mayor Edward Bader, both of whom appear as themselves.
Who's completely fictional
Here's the surprise: almost everyone Nucky actually loves is invented. Margaret, Jimmy Darmody, Gillian, Richard Harrow, Nelson Van Alden, Eli Thompson, Owen Sleater, and Angela Darmody are all creations of the writers' room. Chalky White and Gyp Rosetti are fictional too, though Valentin Narcisse draws loosely on real Harlem figure Casper Holstein.
How real is Nucky himself?
Half real. Steve Buscemi's Enoch "Nucky" Thompson is modeled on Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, the Republican boss who ran Atlantic City from 1911 to 1941 — same first name, same brand of corruption, same taste for a red carnation.
The surname was changed deliberately, because the show's Nucky does things the real one was never accused of.
Johnson didn't order murders, and he didn't die in a hail of bullets on the boardwalk. He went to prison for tax evasion in 1941, got out in 1945, and lived quietly in New Jersey until 1968.
The real Nucky outlived Prohibition by 35 years. His fictional twin wasn't so lucky.