AMC’s Loaded Proves That Money Will Only Make You More Of What You Already Are.
Just imagine. You’ve invested billions of man-hours building an upstart company with your closest friends. After all of that blood, sweat, shouting, swearing and fighting, you actually do it. You make your fortune. You celebrate with your friends and life is now perfect, right?
Wrongo.
AMC’s new dramedy Loaded (airing Mondays at 10/9c beginning July 17) shows how having obscene amounts of money and excess can go horribly (and hilariously) wrong. Based on the award-winning Israeli series Mesudarim, the eight-episode series follows four British entrepreneurs — eclectic childhood friends Josh (Jim Howick), Leon (Samuel Anderson), Watto (Nick Helm) and Ewan (Jonny Sweet) — who sell their upstart video game company for millions.
Mary McCormack (The West Wing, In Plain Sight) stars as Casey — who she describes as a “sexy Darth Vader.” Casey is the guys’ no-nonsense boss from the American company that purchases their business. “She’s horrible. She’s really, really tough on them and she makes it difficult for them,” McCormack says. “I think they thought it was going to be all fun and then she shows up.”
The series is a healthy mix of comedy and drama that explores themes of friendship, ambition, gluttony and one’s general distaste for other people’s success.
“I think my stuff is more in the land of comedy, but the boys have more complex lives,” she adds. “The boys have family and love interest stuff going on that doesn’t always land with jokes. The show feels particularly English in that way, that it lives right smack in the middle of the two genres. It feels more like the BBC Office was, where it was definitely a comedy, but it would also break your heart.”
For this group, having money just amplifies who they really are. Take, for example, Watto, a recovering drug addict who is now addicted to shopping. “If you’re afraid, you’re just more afraid. If you’re a dick, you’re just more of a dick,” McCormack says. “In England that kind of success people immediately want to see fail. It’s just not quite the same relationship to money and overnight success [that Americans have]. I don’t think it’s as celebrated.”
And that’s where much of the humor is drawn from. “I was laughing from page one and then I got to my character’s part and I just thought, ‘Oh my God, she’s insane,’” McCormack concludes. “She has a whole riff on when [Brits] say ‘thank you’ five times before they move on. … They’re just overly polite and so all that made me laugh.”
Cheers to that!
