One Brutal Boardwalk Empire Scene Is A Standout For Charlie Cox

By the time the second season of HBO's Prohibition crime series "Boardwalk Empire" rolled around, its hero was on the outs, deeply in need of muscle as his various criminal enterprises caught up with him.

In a show already teeming with some of the finest character actors around, anybody who arrived to lend support to protagonist Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) would need to make an immediate impression on the audience. The actor would need to compete with known greats like Michael Stuhlbarg and Michael K. Williams, besides being a meaningful foil for Buscemi. Luckily for the show, this actor did.

He might not have had the name recognition of the rest of the show's cast, but Charlie Cox proved a potent screen presence on a show that was drowning in it. As the Irish mercenary Owen Sleater, he gave the show a light sense of charm that could distract from the politics and overwhelming Catholic guilt. He could also wordlessly convey the difficult past Sleater escaped as a member of the IRA. As a consequence, Sleater's indulgence in violence was highly anticipated, and eventually highly rewarding.

Showrunner Terence Winter gave the "Boardwalk" actors playing real people (or fictional facsimiles of real people) a lot of homework, so that they could be well-versed in the social and psychological pressures shaping the characters. For Charlie Cox, playing a fictional character, the chance to be on the show was simply exciting. It certainly helped that they gave him brutal action scenes, and one of his first fight scenes was a major standout.

Showrunner Terence Winter, knowing he was dealing with historical fiction, sought to differentiate "Boardwalk" from shows like "Deadwood" by emphasizing the unreal. The writers could mine a great deal of tension by incorporating fictional characters like Owen Sleater into the complex political drama the show depicted.

On his arrival in the show, Sleater is a mostly enigmatic presence, quiet and haunted. For a show deeply invested in the suffering and political rise of Irish Catholic Americans, Owen was something new. Where Nucky would have nightmares in his childhood home and Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt) would regularly succumb to the traumas of his past, Owen was content to be a mercenary. 

Owen's arrival in Atlantic City is the result of rising tensions among Nucky's politician gangster peers and rising tension in the world at large. At the beginning of "Boardwalk Empire" season 2, countless alliances have been formed against Nucky, from his former bodyguard Jimmy to his brother Eli (Shea Whigham), putting him in a desperate position. Meanwhile, an Irish politician named John McGarrigle (Ted Rooney) travels across the sea seeking funds for rebellion against the British, and finds in Nucky an interested party who's hoping for a connection on Irish whiskey in exchange for his help.

Owen comes along with McGarrigle, serving as his bodyguard. Entering Nucky's Atlantic City home, he sees the wealth to be gained in organized crime. As McGarrigle leaves, he sticks around in America, offering to work for Nucky in an unspecified capacity that he quickly spins into being muscle.

While Charlie Cox would go on to be best known for playing Matt Murdock aka Daredevil in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, his appearance on "Boardwalk Empire" looks in retrospect like a natural stepping stone. For one, there's a line from Owen Sleater's mix of brutality and Irish Catholic guilt to the same combination in Matt Murdock. For another, the relatively grounded narrative and violence of "Daredevil" relative to the rest of the MCU has much more in common with "Boardwalk" than "The Avengers."

Still, Owen's first real "fight" scene in "Boardwalk Empire" comes as something of a shock. Throughout most of season 2, Owen's characterization is largely limited to the impact he has on Nucky's household as a womanizer. As Nucky's romantic partner, Margaret (Kelly MacDonald) says, Sleater is "in the habit of toying with women," in particular the family maid Katy (Heather Lind). As Sleater plays with fire in working to initiate a relationship with Margaret, he continues to drift to the background of the show. His story is pertinent, but less flashy than most of the show's concurrent plotlines.

Until, of course, the later season 2 episode "Peg of Old." In a bar one random afternoon, Owen meets a fellow Irishman by the name of Del Grogan (Gary Troy), one whom he immediately identifies as a traitor to the cause of Irish independence — something still on Sleater's mind even in the face of the prosperity he's seen working for Nucky.

What Owen does to Grogan makes for one of the show's most brutal scenes.

While Owen spends a great deal of season 2 intimating to Nucky that his experience in Ireland has given him practical knowledge, such as bomb making, it's still hard to compare him to other tough characters like Chalky White (Michael K. Williams) or the masked Richard Harrow (Jack Huston). With Grogan, however, Owen is removed from the mob politics that govern his actions and gets to prove himself.

After the two share words about Ireland and their familial connections (a cousin named Sean is mentioned), the two eventually talk about the country's fight for independence. To Grogan, it's not a fight that matters anymore, now that he's in America. Their elliptical conversation ends as Grogan excuses himself to the bathroom. Sleater follows him in.

The result was a scene that Charlie Cox, speaking with Esquire, called his "favorite memory" from the show. As Owen works to deal out vengeance to the traitorous Grogan, the two have a messy, claustrophobic fight in the bathroom. By its end, Owen's spent numerous excruciating minutes attempting to use a garrote on Grogan, who used his fingers to block it. They come off. For a show where the writers loved killing their darlings, this is one of the most violent kills.

In the Esquire interview, Charlie Cox remembers it fondly, citing director Allen Coulter's decision to make the scene last as long as it would take for a man to choke to death as one reason it was so memorable. It became the moment that announced Owen Sleater as a major character on the show, and Cox as a star.