Is “Boardwalk Empire” a Docudrama?
No. Creator Terence Winter wanted the setting and context to be as detailed and as faithful as possible to the non-fiction work that inspired the show, but the plot and characters are strictly fiction, even when they draw from real-life characters. As Winter told Wired, “I was inspired to fictionalize as many people as possible because of Deadwood, which I loved…I knew we had a few people — Al Capone, Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano — who I knew I could not deviate their major life arcs. I’m not going to kill Capone off in 1925. The guy lived till the ’40s. Everywhere along the line, whenever I felt I could fictionalize a character, I would, starting with Nucky.I didn’t want to be beholden to the actual Nucky Johnson’s life, because my Nucky I would like to have do things that the real Nucky probably didn’t do. Again, it’s partly to be able to surprise the audience, and partly because I don’t know if the real Nucky has relatives that are still living who are going to watch and say, ‘My uncle never murdered nine people’ or whatever I want to have my guy do.”