Enoch Malachi "Nucky" Thompson is a fictional character and the protagonist of the HBO TV series Boardwalk Empire, portrayed by Steve Buscemi. Nucky is loosely based on former Atlantic City, New Jersey political figure Enoch Lewis "Nucky" Johnson.
Nucky is employed as treasurer of Atlantic County, but in effect controls the region as a political boss. He is a corrupt and powerful politician who leads a double life as a gangster, and continuously struggles to meet his interests on both fronts. Charming and intelligent, he is adored by the people of Atlantic City, especially its poor and immigrant inhabitants, for his numerous acts of charity. However, in private he has a tight grip on the city's politics and vice. Throughout the series he is portrayed as a Machiavellian politician who makes his henchmen do the dirty work, while showing a more humane side to his friends and family. However, by the end of season 2 he is shown becoming more ruthless in order to compete in the violent bootlegging business.
Buscemi won Best Actor in Dramatic Series at the 68th Golden Globe Awards for his performance as Nucky. In flashbacks throughout the fifth season, he is played by Nolan Lyons as a child and Marc Pickering as a young man.
Fictional biography Enoch "Nucky" Thompson was born around 1870 and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the eldest child of a poor Irish Catholic family. His father Ethan was an abusive alcoholic who at one point scarred Nucky's hand with a fireplace poker. Nucky's sister Susan later died of tuberculosis. As a child, Nucky began working for local political boss Commodore Louis Kaestner (Dabney Coleman), who became his mentor in politics. For a time, Nucky attended New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton and planned on becoming a teacher. However, he left college and returned to Atlantic City, working his way up the ladder to become the deputy sheriff in the Commodore's political machine under the close watch of Sheriff Jacob Lindsay (Boris McGiver).
Nucky became sheriff after he arranged for the Commodore to rape Gillian Darmody (Gretchen Mol), who was only 13 years old at the time. Fifteen years prior to the series' timeline, Nucky lost his infant son, Enoch Jr., to pneumonia, a tragedy that drove his wife, Mabel, to kill herself. Nucky helped raise Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), the Commodore's son with Gillian, and pulled strings to get him into Princeton University. He is disappointed when Jimmy drops out to enlist in World War I, but still gives him a job as his personal driver after the war ends. When Jimmy finds out that Nucky enabled the Commodore to rape Gillian, it creates a rift between them.
Season one In the pilot episode, set the day before Prohibition is to take effect, Nucky – despite publicly supporting the ban of alcohol – conspires with other local politicians to profit from a bootlegging scheme. He is assisted by his younger brother, Atlantic County Sheriff Eli Thompson (Shea Whigham). Nucky makes a deal with mobsters Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg), Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza) and Johnny Torrio (Greg Antonacci) to let them purchase his seaborne liquor shipments exclusively. However, Jimmy conspires with Torrio's driver, Al Capone (Stephen Graham), to rob Nucky's shipment to Rothstein after the mobster takes Nucky's casino for over $90,000. The heist ends in bloodshed as Jimmy and Capone kill Rothstein's men. Nucky gets Jimmy out of trouble, while privately reproaching him and banishing him from Atlantic City. He later recruits Jimmy back from Chicago when Rothstein seeks revenge for the robbery. The truck heist also leads to Nucky being put under investigation by Nelson Van Alden (Michael Shannon), an agent from the Bureau of Prohibition who suspects he knows more about the hijacking than he admits.
Nucky meets Margaret Schroeder (Kelly Macdonald), a pregnant member of the Women's Temperance League who seeks work for her abusive husband, Hans (Joseph Sikora). Nucky is immediately taken with her and gives her some money. However, Hans gambles the money away, and subsequently beats Margaret so badly that she miscarries the child. Enraged, Nucky has Hans killed and framed for Jimmy's hijacking, and secures a job for Margaret at a boutique after she gets out of the hospital. Nucky and Margaret soon become lovers, and by the end of the season he informally adopts her children, Teddy and Emily. This creates tension between him and his former mistress, Lucy Danziger (Paz de la Huerta). Margaret eventually learns the extent of Nucky's corruption, including his order to have Hans killed. She leaves him after they have a heated argument. When Margaret finds out that Nucky had lost a child, however, she meets with him to express her sympathy, and he tells her that the time he spent with her and her children was the happiest of his life. Moved by his sincerity – and realizing that she and her children would likely starve without his support – Margaret renews their relationship.
Rothstein, seeking revenge for the robbery, employs the D'Alessio brothers to strike back at Nucky's enterprise. They first make their move by lynching a driver of Northside gangster Chalky White (Michael K. Williams), one of Nucky's partners. Sometime later, two of the brothers rob one of Nucky's aldermen, George O'Neill, in broad daylight on the boardwalk. Later, they rob Nucky's illegal casino, shooting Eli when he walks in on them. Nucky is forced to demote Eli while the heat blows over, and while he eventually reinstates his brother, their relationship is badly strained. A few days later, two of the D'Alessio brothers try to shoot Nucky as he and Margaret are walking down the boardwalk, but Nucky's butler, Eddie Kessler, deflects the gun away at the last second, and an innocent woman is shot in the shoulder. Nucky gets a break when Mickey Doyle, who has been partnered with the D'Alessios, double crosses them and gives information to Nucky about the conspiracy. Nucky has Chalky to arrange a false deal with Meyer Lansky in the hopes of luring the D'Alessios out of hiding. Chalky captures Lansky and two of the D'Alessios when they meet with him, including one of the would-be shooters from the attempt on Nucky's life. Both D'Alessios are killed and Lansky is allowed to leave with a message for Rothstein.
At the end of the season, Nucky and Rothstein come to a truce: all will be forgiven and Nucky will use his political connections to help Rothstein dodge a federal indictment for fixing the 1919 World Series in exchange for $1 million and for Rothstein giving up the remaining D'Alessio brothers, whom Nucky quickly has tracked down and killed. As Nucky rings in the new year of 1921 with Margaret at his side, Jimmy, Eli and the Commodore conspire to overthrow him and take over Atlantic City.
Season two A few months later, Nucky is arrested for voter fraud concerning his behind-the-scenes role in the election of Mayor Edward L. Bader (Kevin O'Rourke), with corruption and murder charges soon to follow. Nucky suspects that the Commodore, Jimmy and Eli are plotting against him, a suspicion that is confirmed when his cronies defect to Jimmy's side. After the Commodore suffers a debilitating stroke, Eli panics and goes to Nucky for help, but Nucky gets into a violent argument with his brother and disowns him. Shortly afterward, one of Jimmy's men makes an attempt on Nucky's life.
Following his father's death, Nucky resigns as treasurer and tells Jimmy and the Commodore that they have won. It is a ruse, however; soon afterward, he sets in motion a plan to drive Jimmy and his partners out of business. He has his new driver, Owen Sleater (Charlie Cox), blow up the warehouse containing Jimmy's alcohol, and persuades Chalky to instigate a strike among the city's Black service workers, leaving the speakeasies and restaurants too understaffed to serve alcohol. Nucky then travels with Owen to Ireland to sell Thompson machine guns to the Irish Republican Army in exchange for Irish whiskey. Jimmy is left with no product or customers, while Nucky becomes the most powerful bootlegger in Atlantic City.
By this time, the U.S. Attorney's Office has found damning evidence of Nucky's crimes. Nucky gives Margaret temporary guardianship of a valuable piece of real estate so that she and the children will be taken care of should he go to prison. Emily contracts polio, which Margaret believes is divine retribution for their sins; she considers cleansing her soul by testifying against Nucky, which would send him to the electric chair. Nucky tells her that he wants to marry her and become a better man, while admitting that marrying her would make her unable to take the stand against him. The next day, Margaret sees him teaching Emily to walk in her leg braces and realizes that he loves her and her children. They get married that afternoon at Margaret's church.
Jimmy meets with Nucky to apologize for his treason, offering to help. On Nucky's order, Jimmy and Richard Harrow (Jack Huston) kill Alderman James Neary (Robert Clohessy), the prosecution's main witness. The U.S. Attorney's Office is forced to drop the charges. Nucky then visits Eli and makes him a deal: he will plead guilty to the voter fraud case and be sentenced to two years in prison, thus protecting Nucky from being charged again. That night, Nucky calls Jimmy and tells him that he has kidnapped Manny Horvitz (William Forsythe), the man who killed Jimmy's wife Angela (Aleksa Palladino). It is a trap, however, as Nucky actually plans to kill Jimmy as retaliation for an assassination attempt that Jimmy had ordered on him earlier in the season. Jimmy realizes that he's walking into a trap, and as such shows up to the meeting unarmed. Nucky's men hold him at gunpoint, and Nucky shoots him twice in the head, killing him. The next day, Nucky lies to Margaret about reconciling with Jimmy, a lie she immediately sees through. To punish him, Margaret signs over the deed to his real estate – which he had planned to use in a lucrative road construction deal – to her church.
Season three At the start of 1923, Nucky faces trouble from Gyp Rosetti (Bobby Cannavale), a New York gangster who works for Joe Masseria (Ivo Nandi). Due to political turmoil involving U.S. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty (Christopher McDonald), whom Nucky pays $40,000 a month to protect him from any criminal investigations, Nucky agrees to simplify his operation and sell exclusively to Rothstein. Infuriated, Rosetti takes over Tabor Heights, a small town on the road between Atlantic City and New York where convoys stop for gas. He then blockades any of Nucky's alcohol deliveries from going through. The feud escalates when Rosetti hijacks a convoy, killing eleven of Nucky's men. Rothstein sends Benjamin Siegel (Michael Zegen) to kill Rosetti, but the hit is unsuccessful. However, it does force Rosetti to flee Tabor Heights and go back to New York.
Back home, Nucky's marriage to Margaret is now no more than a public show, and Nucky spends much of his time in Manhattan with his mistress Billie Kent (Meg Chambers Steedle). When Eli is released from prison, Nucky gives him a job in a liquor warehouse, but wants nothing to do with him personally. This changes when Eli tries and fails to stop one of Nucky's convoys from being ambushed by Rosetti's men. After an Easter dinner with the family, Nucky reconciles with Eli, and they go back to working together.