With impeachment hearings on everyone’s minds, Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux are returning to HBO for a limited series about Watergate.
The pair will star in and executive produce The White House Plumbers, which centers on E. Howard Hunt (Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Theroux), who planned the Watergate burglary that eventually brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency.
The five-episode series comes from Veep writers and executive producers Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck.
It will tell the true story of how Nixon’s political saboteurs and Watergate masterminds accidentally toppled the presidency they were zealously trying to protect.
The show is based partly on public records from the era and partly on the book Integrity by Egil “Bud” Krogh and Matthew Krogh.
“We’re excited to bring together such a talented team to take on this fascinating look at the internal machinations that brought down the Nixon White House,” said HBO president of programming Casey Bloys. “We’re especially happy to welcome both Woody and Justin back to HBO and are looking forward to getting started.”
The series marks a return to the pay cabler for both Harrelson, who most recently starred in the first season of True Detective, and The Leftovers star Theroux.
The two were also part of ABC’s Live in Front of a Studio Audience special in May, with Theroux serving as an executive producer and Harrelson playing Archie Bunker in a re-creation of an All in the Family episode.
The White House Plumbers is a co-production of HBO and production company Wiip.
Harrelson, Theroux, Gregory and Huyck will executive produce with former Veep showrunner David Mandel, who’s also directing; Ruben Fleischer and David Bernad for The District; Frank Rich (Veep, Succession); and Paul Lee and Nne Ebong for Wiip.
The White House Plumbers joins a roster of upcoming HBO projects that includes a limited series about Jeffrey Epstein from Adam McKay; The Most Fun We Ever Had, which counts Amy Adams and Laura Dern among its exec producers; an adaptation of Barbra Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible with Adams among its EPs; the Kate Winslet-led drama Mare of Easttown; McKay’s untitled drama about the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers; Joss Whedon’s The Nevers; and J.J. Abrams’ sci-fi drama Demimonde.