Pistol on Disney+: A guide to the real-life punks who brought anarchy to the UK

Pistol, Danny Boyle’s long-awaited six-part series about the Sex Pistols, is premiering on Disney+ on May 31.

The show, which is based on guitarist Steve Jones’ 2017 memoir Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol, will follow the chaotic journey of the founding band member as he goes from scrappy teen to major music legend.

The show has a packed cast including Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams, Iris Law and Toby Wallace. It’s been written by frequent Baz Luhrmann collaborator Craig Pearce and directed by Boyle – who is known for the 1996 cult classic Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later, 127 Hours and, of course, the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony.

The official trailer was released at the beginning of the month and shows two sides of 1970s Britain through a vintage camera lens: the old one – with tweed, rivers, the Royal Family, and men in suits - versus the new one – set alight by the Sex Pistols and the punk scene. Their new world is noisy and brash: there are bust-ups with police, giant hair and eye make-up, snogging scenes, and loads of music.

“We’re going to kick this country awake if it kills us,” says one member of the band in the clip.

“Actually we’re not into music, we’re into chaos,” says a mop-haired bloke in another scene.

What makes it so fun is that it’s all based on real life. From Sid Vicious to Vivienne Westwood, to Johnny Rotten – all the famous faces of punk are there. So here’s our breakdown of the real characters, who they were, and who plays them in the show.

Steve Jones (Toby Wallace)

Steve Jones was the Sex Pistols’ guitarist. Born in Shepherd’s Bush to a hairdresser and a professional boxer, Jones, who wasn’t interested in school, flirted with petty crime as a teenager. In 1972 he decided to form a band with two of his friends Paul Cook and Wally Nightingale. And the rest is, well, music history.

Jones said in his 2016 autobiography that he was functionally illiterate until he was in his forties and was apparently addicted to sex as a younger man too. Now he lives in Southern California and works as a DJ.

Australian actor Toby Wallace – who won a Marcello Mastroianni Award at the 2019 Venice Film Festival for his role in the film Babyteeth – will play the young Jones.

John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten (Anson Boon)

Johnny Rotten was the lead singer of the band. Born in London to Irish emigrants, he was part of a group that would frequently hang out at Vivienne Westwood’s fetish shop SEX. Like all pivotal moments in history, Rotten was at the right spot at the right time, and the future rocker was chosen to be the band’s frontman in 1975.

The Sex Pistols split up just three years later and then Rotten formed the post-punk band Public Image Ltd.

In the forthcoming series, Rotten is played by British actor Anson Boon whose credits include Blackbird and The Winter Lake. However, Lyndon isn’t happy about the TV show: In an interview with The Sunday Times last year, he said that the series was the, “most disrespectful s**t”. Later, he tried to block the Sex Pistols’ music from being used in the series but lost his case in August.

Paul Cook (Jacob Slater)

Hammersmith-raised Paul Cook was the Sex Pistols’ drummer. He first met Steve Jones at school, but it was while bunking off with his mate in 1972 that they formed the band called The Strand. Over the following three years the same band transformed into the Sex Pistols.

Cook, who still lives in Hammersmith, is being played by musician Jacob Slater, who you may know from fronting the bands Dead Pretties and Wunderhorse.

Glen Matlock (Christian Lees)

Matlock was the Sex Pistols’ bass guitarist until 1977 when he left and was replaced by Sid Vicious.

Matlock’s path to the top seems like a Jarvis Cocker verse: he attended Saint Martin’s School of Art, worked at Vivienne Westwood’s former partner Malcolm McLaren’s clothes shop Let It Rock (which would morph into SEX) and met the other band members. One thing led to another and he started rehearsing with Steve Jones and Paul Cook. These days, he’s still performing and signed a new solo record deal in January.

Matlock is being played by London-born Christian Lees, who is best known for appearing in Jerry Lee Lewis’ biographical series Sun Records.

Sid Vicious (Louis Partridge)

Sid Vicious, arguably the most notorious member of the Sex Pistols, was only in the band for one year until it broke up in 1978. Born John Simon Ritchie, and known as John Beverley, his home life was difficult, with his mother grappling with a drug addiction. By the age of 16, he had been kicked out of school and contemplated suicide.

In 1973 he met John Lydon. Together they quit school, began squatting, started hanging round at the super cool King’s Road in Chelsea, and ended up, you guessed it, spending time at Vivienne Westwood’s shop. His drug addiction spiralled however. When his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, was stabbed in their room at the Chelsea Hotel in New York during a binge, he was accused of her murder, but the case never came to trial - Vicious died himself in 1979 of a drug overdose. Malcolm McLaren remained convinced of Vicious’s innocence, writing later, “She was his first and only love of his life. … I am positive about Sid’s innocence.”

18-year-old Louis Partridge — who was Lord Tewksbury in the Milly Bobby Brown-starring Sherlock Holmes flick Enola Holmes — will play Vicious.

Wally Nightingale (Dylan Llewellyn)

Wally Nightingale was a founding member and guitarist of the band that would become the Sex Pistols. He met Cook and Jones at school and was a member of The Strand, but his involvement was all pretty short-lived. He was fired from the band in 1975 after manager Malcolm McLaren supposedly said he didn’t have the right look.

Then it all gets a bit sad for Nightingale. He tried to have a music career, but it wasn’t a success. He became addicted to drugs, spent time in prison for an associated conviction and died aged 40 of a drug-related illness.

Dylan Llewellyn, whose credits include Martin “Jono” Johnson in Hollyoaks and James Maguire in the Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls, plays Nightingale in the series.

Malcolm McLaren (Thomas Brodie-Sangster)

Malcolm McLaren was the band’s manager. And you know what that usually means: drama. In McLaren’s case, he met Cook and Jones at SEX, the shop he co-owned with girlfriend Vivienne Westwood. He managed the band and was instrumental and organising some of their biggest spectacles, including the 1977 police-raided boat trip down the Thames. He was later accused by band members of mismanaging them. John Lydon once called him “the most evil man in the world”. He died of cancer in 2010.

McLaren is played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who has been in dozens of films and series including The Queen’s Gambit, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Nanny McPhee, Nowhere Boy, The Maze Runner and Game of Thrones, but who is is still fondly remembered as Liam Neeson’s cute stepson in Love Actually.

Vivienne Westwood (Talulah Riley)

We all know Dame Vivienne as the major British fashion designer, but Westwood started out her career as a factory worker, teacher and jewellery designer, before meeting Malcolm McLaren and running the famous shop. She’ll be played by Talulah Riley, who is known for starring in Westworld, Doctor Who, The Gemma Factor and Pride and Prejudice. She was previously married to Elon Musk - twice.

Chrissie Hynde (Sydney Chandler)

Chrissie Hynde is the founding member, lead vocalist and guitarist of the rock band the Pretenders. She was in London working as an architect and then as a writer at NME, before working at SEX. She’s played by rising star Sydney Chandler, who is having a busy year, also starring in Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling and Isaac Garza’s Chemistry.

Nancy Spungen (Emma Appleton)

Philadelphia-born Nancy Spungen was the girlfriend of Sid Vicious. It’s a short and tragic story: she had a history of mental illness, ended up in London at the peak of the punk rock movement, got involved in a spiral of drugs and domestic abuse with Vicious, and ended up being found in a bathroom with a fatal stab wound at 20 years old. Vicious was charged with her murder but died of an overdose before the trial.

Emma Appleton — who is Princess Renfri in the Netflix’s The Witcher and will soon star in the BBC adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love — plays Spungen.

Siouxsie Sioux (Beth Dillon)

Siouxsie Sioux was the lead singer of the rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees. Before becoming a major icon in her own right, Sioux, who was born Susan Ballion, was a big Sex Pistols fan, becoming part of the Bromley Contingent — a group of followers of the punk band that included Soo Catwoman. Beth Dillon, who starred in Mindy Kaling’s 2019 Four Weddings and a Funeral series, will play Sioux.

Soo Catwoman (Iris Law)

Susan Lucas aka Soo Catwoman was a member of the Bromley Contingent. She made her name with her iconic Catwoman haircut which features hair around the sides cut close to the head and two pronounced points at the front, almost like exaggerated cat ears. Iris Law, daughter of Jude Law and Sadie Frost, plays Soo Catwoman in her screen debut.

Pamela Rooke aka Jordan (Maisie Williams)

This is Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams’s most prominent role on the small screen since the epic fantasy series finished in 2019. Williams will play Pamela Rooke aka Jordan Mooney, who worked with Westwood at the SEX boutique in the mid-1970s.

Pistol is available to stream on Disney+ from May 31