Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons recently appeared on BBC’s The One Show on June 23, 2026, to promote his upcoming drama series, The Westies. While the actor made headlines for his blunt admission that he holds no interest in the ongoing World Cup—preferring instead to follow his beloved Detroit Tigers—the primary focus of the appearance was the official unveiling of his new project.
The Westies is set in the early 1980s and centers on the real-life Irish-American organized crime syndicate that operated out of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. According to the official synopsis, the plot revolves around the construction of the Jacob Javits Convention Center, a massive infrastructure project that promised a significant financial windfall for the gang.
The series explores the high-stakes power dynamics of the era, highlighting how the Westies, despite being vastly outnumbered by the Italian Five Families, maintained control through tactical brutality. The narrative arc focuses on the internal friction between the gang’s old-school leadership and a younger, more volatile generation. This instability, coupled with a looming FBI investigation into the Italian mafia, serves as the primary conflict of the series. No official release date for the series has been announced yet.