How 'White House Plumbers' Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux turn Watergate into dark HBO comedy

On the surface, the 1972 break-in at the Watergate Hotel that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon does not seem like the stuff of comedy gold.

And yet Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux have turned that ignominious event into an odd-couple romp as inept burglars and future felons E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, respectively, in HBO's five-part series, “White House Plumbers," premiering Monday (9 EDT/PDT and streaming on HBO Max).

The series, written by Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck, is based on various accounts of the break-in including "The White House Plumbers: The Seven Weeks That Led to Watergate and Doomed Nixon's Presidency," by Egil "Bud" Krogh and his son, Matthew Krogh.

Egil Krogh, who was imprisoned for his role in Watergate, is played by Rich Sommer ("Mad Men") in "Plumbers." Krogh, who died in 2020, was in charge of Nixon's special investigations unit, and Hunt and Liddy reported to him.  The criminal activity undertaken by this group was often comically inept, something Harrelson and Theroux exploited in ways that went beyond the script.

“There were some high jinks on set, yes,” says Harrelson, 61, laughing as he remembers a scene in which Hunt falls to the floor with chest pains. Theroux’s Liddy races to pick him up.

“I put a bunch of weights on my body, maybe 50 pounds’ worth,” says Harrelson. “I was, um, a little top-heavy.”

“A little?” Theroux, 51, shoots back. “I almost herniated several discs when I picked him up. Everyone was laughing. That devolved into crotch punches and other brotherly shoves.”

Burglars were so inept they even 'got locked in a closet'

That buddy-picture camaraderie lent itself well to a retelling of perhaps the most consequential crime in modern American political history.

There were four burglary attempts at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, suggesting the level of ineptness of the squad recruited by Hunt (a former CIA officer) and Liddy (an ex-FBI man) to bug that Watergate office. The incident made stars of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose book “All The President’s Men" became a celebrated movie.

“White House Plumbers,” the nickname given the covert “dirty tricks” unit established by Nixon as he pushed for reelection in late 1972, practically wrote itself, says director David Mandel ("Veep").

“In ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Veep’ we were writing jokes, but here we’re letting it be what it is,” he says. “You’d read about the break-ins and you’d laugh out loud. In my head, I’m going, this is a really funny tragedy."

"On the one hand, I’m yelling, ‘these sons of (expletive) broke the law.’ On the other, I’m giggling, ‘but they got locked in a closet.’”

Theroux found researching Liddy was easy, given his TV appearances

The stars employed different tactics to play their characters.

For Theroux, who plays a Nixon foot soldier who admired the Third Reich and seemed eager for orders to kill or maim, the comedy came from both a jet-black Ned Flanders mustache and a curious speech pattern.

“He never used contractions,” says Theroux. “It was always ‘I cannot,’ not ‘I can’t.’ He speaks like the written word, so that was a toehold into him.”

Liddy, who died at 90 in 2021, had a post-prison renaissance that included a speaking tour with LSD promoter Timothy Leary and guest appearances on TV’s “Miami Vice.”

Hunt's family woes ring familiar for Harrelson

Harrelson found the secretive Hunt, who died at 88 in 2007, was more difficult to make compelling. He could, however, relate to Hunt’s family dilemma, in which his rebellious children are upset about their father’s frequent disappearances.

“I’ve spent time away from my family and done things I thought I had to do,” says Harrelson, who shares three daughters, ages 16 to 30, with wife Laura Louie. “You have to figure out how to deal with that, and that part of it is where I started to connect to Hunt.”

Hunt, who – like Liddy – saw himself as a patriot and believed his actions were defensible had shadowy interactions that included involvement in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and, allegedly, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Harrelson squirms.

“There’s a lot of what Hunt did that was fairly reprehensible, which is why, to this day, I can’t quite love the guy,” says Harrelson, who opted for fake teeth and a shoulders-back, jaw-jutted impersonation.“I felt this guy was a soldier, so I played him a bit like that,” he says.

Harrelson and Theroux manage to make even dictatorial rantings funny

That seminal political moment cast a pall over Washington and sent many of its protagonists to jail. But Harrelson says he would leap at the chance to meet Liddy.

“Maybe it’s the way Justin played him, but I would love to go back in time and look him up and just hang out,” he says. “He’s a fascinating character.”

One who, astoundingly, liked to welcome house guests not with background jazz or pop albums but with recordings of Adolf Hitler speeches, as one episode reveals and (against considerable odds) makes funny.

“A bit hard to pull that off at a dinner party,” Theroux says.

Yet if you want a pair of guys to steal laughs from the darkest of corners, Harrelson and Theroux are your men.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'White House Plumbers': Woody Harrelson's HBO Watergate comedy