The first trailer for Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix show ‘Hollywood’ has dropped – WATCH
The limited series is a re-telling of Hollywood's Golden Age and stars Patti LuPone, Darren Criss and David Corenswet.
By Tim Heap
Prolific queer auteur Ryan Murphy is adding another show to his crammed collection with the upcoming Netflix release of Hollywood, which gets a first-look trailer today (21 April).
After the success of shows including Nip/Tuck and Glee in the Noughties, the past few years have seen Murphy deliver series including Pose, The Politician, Feud and the long running anthology drama American Horror Story.
Now, in what’s billed as “a love letter to Hollywood”, he’s transporting viewers to post-World War II Tinsel Town for a re-telling of its so-called Golden Age, when studios ran the show and made stars out of moving-picture stars out of aspiring young actors.
Co-created with frequent collaborator Ian Brennan, the seven-episode series will follow a group of these young upstarts as they try to get their foot in the door.
Fresh from playing River in The Politician, David Corenswet plays fresh-face Jack, who takes a job at the Golden Tip Gas Station, offering a different kind of “fill her up” to customers with the right password – enter gay icon Patti LuPone.
Screenwriter and part-time gay hustler Archie (Jeremy Pope) looks to shake up the racial status quo in Hollywood, and half-Filipino director Raymond (Darren Criss) hopes that his passing privilege can help him change the world through film.
While the series introduces many fictional characters, it also portrays real-life Hollywood icons such as sleazy “star-maker” agent Henry Willson (Jim Parsons) and actor Rock Hudson (Jake Picking) – who was closeted throughout his career and died in 1985 of AIDS-related health complications.
Other actors cast in the series include Stanley Tucci, Queen Latifah, Samara Weaving and Holland Taylor.
With each character offering a glimpse behind the gilden curtain of 1940s Hollywood, the series explores and eposes the race, sexuality and gender-based biases and inequality that exists to this day – and imagines a world where things might have been different.
Watch the trailer below, and mark 1 May to binge-watch Hollywood when it’s released worldwide.