Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux on playing bumbling Watergate villains in White House Plumbers

In David Mandel's historic comedy of errors White House Plumbers, perennially affable actors Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux play two bumbling cads involved in one of the most shameful events in American history.

Harrelson plays author and former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, whose list of dastardly deeds includes the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and rumored involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Theroux is G. Gordon Liddy — lawyer, former FBI agent, and noted Hitler enthusiast.

Together, and with full compliance of then-President Nixon and his administration, Hunt and Liddy organized the break-in of the Watergate Hotel that eventually led to the resignation of the 37th president of these United States.

But All the President's Men this is not. Mandel, whose previous series Veep brutally skewered D.C. insiders, exposes Hunt and Liddy for what they were: two hapless idiots who failed their way into history.

Here, Harrelson and Theroux discuss playing the worst people for laughs.

HBO

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So why do you think this particular story and these particular people are ripe for comedy, especially now?

JUSTIN THEROUX: Well, the story is hilarious. The actual facts of the case are hilarious. It's one of those weird things where you think, "We've seen the Watergate story from the angle of two dogged journalists following the money, but we have never seen the actual crime." So I think just that in and of itself is revealing. And the facts around it, obviously, are so dumb that it's ripe for comedy.

WOODY HARRELSON: Yeah, all the silly things that brought down a president and you're like, "Is this really possible?" Yeah, that's how it happened.

THEROUX: That's what happened. Just the fact that it took them four times to even get in the front door is hilarious. Maybe the plan should have been called off on the second time, or maybe the third time —

Or maybe the first time.

THEROUX: Or maybe the first time, since it was a betrayal of national trust.

It was so unnecessary to begin with.

THEROUX: Yes, exactly. I mean, Nixon won in a landslide, so they could have just sat home and made a chicken.

HARRELSON: But thank God they did it, because they brought down Nixon, so it's wonderful that they did it.

Phil Caruso/HBO

Did you guys do research on your characters? Was there anything that surprised you about them, or impressed you, or intimidated you?

THEROUX: Impressed is the wrong word. It was more like I was fascinated by how driven and ambitious Liddy was and this code of, I guess, honor that he had with himself. It was just mind-blowing. He was very — he just had this strange code in the way he lived his life.

One of the things that surprised me was that he was sentenced to 20 or 25 years and he was going to do the entire time. And the only reason he left prison was because Jimmy Carter of all people pardoned him or commuted his sentence and essentially released him. But he was going to do the entire bullet in there. And that was shocking to me, among many other things.

HARRELSON: No, I was impressed with how reprehensible Howard Hunt was. Historically, he's a good example. His trajectory is a lot like America's trajectory. A lot of key events, whether it be the Bay of Pigs, the murder of Che Guevara, the Kennedy assassination. This guy was there with so many horrible events in American history and culpable.

So yeah, I didn't like him as a human, but I did relate in some ways to his family dynamic. Mine is not as much turmoil, but certainly he spent a lot of time away from home and that has consequences.

Phil Caruso/HBO

How do you get into character? How do you approach a character like that when you don't like him, when you find him reprehensible in so many ways?

HARRELSON: Well, it's like Justin says, no matter what, you have to suspend your attitude toward a character. In fact, you really need to like the character you play. And I do find that's true when you're playing the character — while I was playing Hunt, I got to say, yeah, I liked him.

But I even think within Hunt there was a bit of self-recrimination, not on the important things, well, all important things, but not in what he did for his country.

THEROUX: Same thing. You have to leave judgment of your character at the door just in order to be able to enjoy playing them. And obviously, there's huge ideological differences that I have with the man, G. Gordon Liddy. But at the same time, there were things that I had to appreciate, certain traits that he had, a stick-to-itiveness.

Phil Caruso/HBO Justin Theroux, Woody Harrelson

Can you both speak a bit to Hunt and Liddy's war on the left, as [Hunt's wife, played by Lena Headey] Dorothy called it. As those characters, could you understand the motivations and what drove them so much and what they were trying to protect? And how do you think they would fit into today's political landscape?

HARRELSON: Oh, they'd fit right into the modern landscape.

THEROUX: Yeah. I mean, they are that toxic combination of zealotry, patriotism —

HARRELSON: Nationalism.

THEROUX: Nationalism, and for Liddy, a little bit of fascism. So I think, and they really were the first, or at least in Liddy's case, the first person who embraced infamy ... he was the definition of shameless. And I don't think he ever saw himself as having done something wrong. He was doing something in the service of his country, which is a terrifying thought.

When someone cannot be shamed and in fact goes in the opposite direction and embraces what people are saying they should be shamed for, that's bizarre. That was unique, I think, at that time.

Phil Caruso/HBO

The show deals a lot with conspiracies, and considering the time we live in with fake news and where the truth is always under attack, what do you think this show adds to the conversation about conspiracy theories and the culture wars?

THEROUX: Oh, I don't know, man, that's a big bite to try and take. I think, this was the first time that something happened on the political landscape that was obviously extremely well documented by the people who did it, meaning with the ledgers and the payments and the payoffs, and then there were these very open hearings that took place at a snail's pace. And so there's something admirable in the fact that the system, for better or worse, did self-correct, I guess, and that it resulted in the resignation of a president who probably should have resigned over that.

You can definitely see ripples emanating out from Liddy and Hunt to today where people who are unashamed to deal in dirty tricks. Roger Stone is really just a 2.0 version of Liddy. He has, I'm sure, studied him and followed his playbook.

HARRELSON: I do think it's ironic though, speaking of conspiracies, that Nixon gets brought down for this break in, this relatively benign activity. Whereas the genocides going on in Vietnam, in Laos, in Cambodia, sponsored by the US, and he started carpet bombing, started using Agent Orange and all of the really, truly deeply reprehensible things and the genocide, that's not even mentioned as a negative footnote in Nixon's past. They don't really talk about it negatively at all. 2.9 million people died in Vietnam, mostly civilians, not much mention of that.

THEROUX: But bugging those phones.

HARRELSON: Bugging the phones. That's what got him.

White House Plumbers — also starring Headey, Judy Greer, Domhnall Gleeson, Toby Huss, Ike Barinholtz, and Kathleen Turner — premieres May 1 at 9pm ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

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