NEW YORK, July 12 (UPI) — Oscar-winning Whiplash, Oz and Spider-man actor J.K. Simmons says he sees Eamon Sweeney, the gang leader he plays in The Westies, as having “mentor-protege” relationships with the young criminals who work for him.

“He expects loyalty from everybody and grants loyalty to precious few,” Simmons, 71, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

Set in the 1980s in the Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, The Westies follows members of the titular Irish-American gang as they compete with the Gambino family of Italian mobsters over turf that includes the lucrative construction of the Javits Center.

Tom Brittney, Titus Welliver, Stanley Morgan, Sarah Bolger, Jessica Frances Dukes, Hamish Allan-Headley, Vincent Walsh, Allen Leech and Hillary McCormack co-star.

Premiering Sunday on MGM+, the series explores not only the clash between cultures in New York City during this era, but also the tension between the older and younger generations.

“That was one of the things that jumped off the page to me, reading just the pilot script, the first episode, which is all we get to read before we decide if we want to be involved or not,” Simmons said.

“We just get a little hint of that difference between how Sweeney relates to the Westies of his generation, the Westies of the younger generation, how he relates to Glenn Keenan, the cop played by Titus Welliver and, then, how he’s going to relate to John Gotti (Allan-Headley), one of the few actual historical characters who’s in the piece,” he added.

“There’s always a sense of the clan of the Irish, the gang, and the history of Ireland and the sense of the ferociously loyal, familial underdog.”

Granchester alum Tom Brittney, 35, plays Sweeney’s right-hand man, Jimmy Roarke.

“Jimmy is sort of Sweeney’s lieutenant, kind of the guy he sends to do some of the dirty work,” Brittney said.

“There’s a little dose of being a surrogate son, someone who’s taken under his wing at a very young age and kind of groomed to be the criminal that he is,” he added.

“There was something about being a Brit playing a New Yorker, an Irish-American, in this. It’s a fascinating thing, too, because of how young America is and how young New York is and was in the 1980s. London is a very diverse place, for instance, but the history is so long, it’s kind of embedded in a different way,” he added.

“The identity, the tribalism still being so strong between these different cultures was quite a fascinating thing as an outsider to research and look at.”

Simmons chimed in: “America was the great experiment, the great melting pot, but, then, everybody, all these different nationalities and ethnicities, came to New York City and went, ‘OK, this is our turf.'”

Although Sweeney rules his organization with an iron fist, he’s a smart guy who knows he has to change with the times to survive.

This sometimes means listening to younger members of the group who challenge him.

“Having spent so much time with Sweeney in his life, he’s worked out how to persuade him about ideas. In a way, jimmy’s done something that has got devastating consequences, potentially,” Brittney said.

“So, he has to think quick to kind of clean up his own mess and save his own life, in that way, because, as we see in the first episode, as much as there’s loyalty, and he hopes the loyalty is reciprocated, it’s a bit more unpredictable,” he added. “What is predictable is the way that he kind of, I guess, in some ways, manipulates Sweeney to go along with his plan.”

“Now I feel like a total putz,” Simmons deadpanned.

“I was playing with you the whole time,” Brittney teased.

Simmons quipped: “Wait for Season 2. That’s what I think. I’m ready to go back to work [and see] who is manipulating whom?”