Magic City Information

Magic City is an American drama television series created by Mitch Glazer for the Starz network. Starz previewed the premiere episode on March 30, 2012. It premiered on April 6, 2012. Starz renewed the series for an eight-episode second season on March 20, 2012. The series was canceled on August 5, 2013.

Set in 1959 Miami, Florida shortly after the Cuban Revolution, Magic City tells the story of Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the owner of Miami's most glamorous hotel, the Miramar Playa. Evans is forced to make an ill-fated deal with Miami mob boss Ben Diamond (Danny Huston) to ensure the success of his glitzy establishment.

Cast

Main

• Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Isaac "Ike" Evans, majority owner and boss of the Miramar Playa, Miami Beach's premier resort hotel
• Olga Kurylenko as Vera Evans, Ike's second wife, stepmother to Stevie, Danny, and Lauren Evans, convert to the Evans' Judaism, and former Havana nightclub dancer under the name "Vera Cruz"
• Steven Strait as Steven "Stevie" Evans, Ike Evans's "bad boy" older son and the manager of the Miramar's Atlantis Lounge
• Jessica Marais as Lily Diamond, Ben Diamond's third (trophy) wife and the secret lover of Stevie Evans
• Christian Cooke as Daniel "Danny" Evans, Ike's straight-arrow younger son and a law school student
• Elena Satine as Judi Silver, a prostitute who works out of the Atlantis Lounge and does occasional jobs for Ike and Stevie
• Dominik Garcia-Lorido as Mercedes Lazaro, a Miramar housekeeper in training to be a Pan Am stewardess and Danny's love interest
• Taylor Blackwell as Lauren Evans, Ike's teenage daughter
• Danny Huston as Ben "The Butcher" Diamond, a Jewish-American mobster and the silent minority owner of the Miramar

Recurring

• Yul Vazquez as Victor Lazaro, the hotel's general manager, Mercedes' father, and a first generation Cuban immigrant
• Kelly Lynch as Meg Bannock, the big sister of Ike's late first wife Molly
• Alex Rocco as Arthur Evans, Ike's father
• Leland Orser as Mike Strauss, a labor union official
• Michael Rispoli as Belvin "Bel" Jaffe, a bookie working for Ben Diamond out of the back room of the Sea Breeze Lingerie shop in the Miramar's shopping arcade
• Bradford Tatum as "Dandy" Al Haas
• Willa Ford as Janice Michaels
• John Cenatiempo as Vincent Lamb
• Michael Beasley as Grady James
• Karen-Eileen Gordon as Florence
• Taylor Anthony Miller as Ray-Ray Mathis, a doorman at the Miramar
• Karen Garcia as Inez, Arthur Evans' nurse
• Shelby Fenner as Myrnna
• Patti Austin as Ella Fitzgerald
• Ricky Waugh as Barry "Cuda" Lansman
• Matt Ross as Jack Klein, State Attorney for Dade County
• Todd Allen Durkin as Doug Feehan
• Chad Gall as Ethan Bell
• Garrett Kruithof as Stout
• Gregg Weiner as Phil Weiss
• Avi Hoffman as Sid Raskin
• James Caan as Sy Berman, a Chicago-based mob boss

Series overview

Season		Episodes	Originally aired		DVD and Blu-ray release date
			Season premiere	Season finale	Region 1	Region 2	Region 4
	1	8
	2	8

Episodes

Season 1 (2012)

No. in series	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date	U.S. viewers (million)	Aux4= 0.30	ShortSummary= It is December 31, 1958. Isaac "Ike" Evans, the owner of Miami's most glamorous hotel, the Miramar Playa, prepares to ring in the new year of 1959 with a concert performance from Frank Sinatra, but must first deal with unrest from his employees, who want to unionize and threaten to derail his plans. Evans is forced to make an ill-fated deal with Miami mob boss Ben Diamond to ensure the success of his glitzy establishment. Meanwhile, Ike's son Stevie begins a relationship with Lily, who unknown to him at the time, is the new wife of Diamond.	LineColor=000000 }}	Aux4= 0.37	ShortSummary= Ike is forced to deal with the disgruntled father of Mike Strauss, who had suddenly disappeared. Meanwhile, the DA uses Danny to help him fight organized crime. Elsewhere, Stevie decides to continue his affair with Lily, despite discovering who she truly is.	LineColor=000000 }}	Aux4=0.38	ShortSummary= Ike tries to bribe government officials, in hopes of them legalizing gambling for his hotel. Ben begins to worry that his wife is sleeping around. Vera has an unexpected visitor from her past. Meanwhile, Ike is forced to ask his wealthy former sister-in-law for a big favor.	LineColor=000000 }}	Aux4=0.39	ShortSummary= While Ike has to deal with a break in at his hotel, Vera begins planning an extravagant charity function that she hopes Jackie Kennedy will attend. Elsewhere, Victor struggles to get his wife out of Cuba.	LineColor=000000 }}	Aux4=0.50	ShortSummary= Ike is determined to save Judi Silver from Ben Diamond. Polaroids of Stevie and Lily surface. Vera tries something new to get pregnant, Danny and Mercedes' bond grows, and Klein's search ramps up.	LineColor=000000 }}	Aux4=0.43	ShortSummary= Ike and Ben Diamond bet big on a boxing match. Jackie Kennedy cancels on Vera. Danny gets blackmail photos meant for Stevie, and Klein finds something that will change Ike's life forever.	LineColor=000000 }}	Aux4= 0.47	ShortSummary= Danny confronts Stevie about his affair and uses the DA to uncover blackmail. Klein shows Ike damning evidence, and Meg refuses Ike's offer. Caught lying to Ben, Ike must make a deal.	LineColor=000000 }}	Aux4= 0.50	ShortSummary= Judi Silver falls into Klein's hands, while Victor and Mercedes get bad news. Lily and Stevie's affair gets more dangerous. Juggling family, Ben Diamond, and a new partner, Ike's future is uncertain.	LineColor=000000 }}

Season 2 (2013)

No. in series	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date	U.S. viewers (million)	Viewers= 0.50	ShortSummary=	LineColor=000000 }}	Viewers= 0.34	ShortSummary=	LineColor=000000 }}	Viewers= 0.45	ShortSummary=	LineColor=000000 }}	Viewers= 0.52	ShortSummary=	LineColor=000000 }}	Viewers = 0.34	ShortSummary=	LineColor=000000 }}	Viewers= 0.44	ShortSummary=	LineColor=000000 }}	Viewers= 0.56	ShortSummary=	LineColor=000000 }}	Viewers=0.53	ShortSummary=	LineColor=000000 }}

Production

Conception

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Magic City was created by Mitch Glazer, a native of Miami. Glazer wrote the series around his experiences growing up in Miami. He once worked as a cabana boy in a Miami Beach hotel and his father was an electrical engineer at the city's grand hotels in the late 1950s. He grew up listening to stories of the exploits of staff and clientele. Many of the incidents that Glazer relates in the series "are based on stories that happened, that I saw, or older brothers and sisters or my parents told me." As a journalist, he did extensive research on what was happening in the lobbies of hotels in late 1950s and early 1960s. "There's wiretaps"?tapes they've made public now"?where the CIA gives Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli $300,000 and poison powder to kill [Fidel] Castro in the Boom Boom Room in the Fontainebleau Hotel," he said. Included in the series, Glazer states, will be CIA activities in Cuba and Civil Rights issues. He first envisioned Magic City as a feature film, but said he quickly realized he had more stories to tell than would fit in a film.

Glazer had written different versions of Magic City for years. He originally wrote and sold it to CBS, who eventually let it go to the Starz network. "CBS was really nice to me and generous in letting it go to Starz. It's not a procedural, it's not a franchise. It needs to be allowed to do the sexuality and violence and the things that were part of Miami Beach in the 1959," he said. In 2007, president and C.E.O. of the Starz network, Chris Albrecht was fired from HBO and joined Glazer and some of his friends for a research expedition to Havana. "It was an insane group," Glazer remembered. "Jimmy Caan and Robert Duvall and Benicio Del Toro." They were visiting a Havana hotel designed by the architect Morris Lapidus when Glazer remarked to Albrecht, "You know, I grew up in this kind of hotel. My father worked with Morris Lapidus on the Fontainebleu and Eden Roc as an electrical engineer." In 2009, after Albrecht became president and C.E.O. of Starz, Glazer recalled, "I sent him a script I had written years before, and he called me literally hours later and said, 'This is amazing, let's do this.'"

Reception

Critical reception

The first season has received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 of reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 56 based on 27 reviews. Glenn Garvin of the Miami Herald said of the series "The sordid ugliness that festers inside Magic City's voluptuously beautiful wrappings makes irresistible television." The Contra Costa Times' Chuck Barney praised the cast and visual style. He said in his review "Through the early episodes, nothing really happens that you couldn't see coming. Still, the setting is so seductive, the period details so vivid and the acting so stellar, that it's as intoxicating as a potent mojito."

Accolades

Year	Award	Category	Recipient	Result	Ref.
2013	Young Artist Award	Best Performance in a TV Series - Supporting Young Actress	Taylor Blackwell

See also

• List of films and television shows set in Miami