“City on Fire” blazes with New York’s newcomers

Blazing through the “City on Fire” mini-series (ahown here) is an eternal notion: Move to New York City; transform your career, your life, your self.
That’s what Mercer, a key characters, tried. He’s from Texas; so is Xavier Clyde, who plays him.
He’s “the dreamer,” Clyde told the Television Critics Association. “He wants to be the next great American novelist and go to New York and make a difference. And I just wanted to live my dream of just doing this (acting) for a living. And to do that in one of the greatest cities in the world.”
Except dreams can evaporate. “City on Fire” opens (Friday, May 12, on Apple TV+) with a shooting; it later peaks with a citywide black-out.
In between, we see the idealism of young arrivals – Mercer, the would-be writer from Texas; Charlie (Wyatt Oreff), a lovestruck teen from Staten Island. (In the photo here, Mercer is at the right, Wyatt at the left.)
They bring an honesty “that is so not New York,” said actress Jemima Kirke. “It’s the least honest or sincere city in the world, right? Full of cynicism.”
Kirke grew up in New York City. In 2003 (when “City on Fire” is set) she was 18, sampling an energetic night life. “People were hurling themselves at having fun or escaping or living their best life.”
Apple has had a habit of turning popular novels into mini-series. “The Last Thing He Told Me,” with Jennifer Garner, has its second-to-last episode Friday … the same day “City on Fire” begins.
In this case, however, there’s a key change from the book:
The novel peaks with New York’s 1977 black-out, but writer-producer Josh Schwartz (“The O.C.,” “Gossip Girl”) detoured. “That’s a period that’s been told before,” he said.
So Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, his writing/producing partner, switched to 2003. That year also had a black-out … and was another time when changes were spreading quickly.
“New York was the internet before the internet,” said Nico Tortorella, who plays a troubled artist. “This is a love letter to the city, post-9/11” that shows “how the music changed in that time period.”
It was a time when small clubs rippled with potent music. It “was when rock-and-roll kind of got re-invented or saved,” Schwartz said.
This vibrant scene is savored by Samantha (Chase Sui Wonders), a college student. She loves the music, Wyatt loves her and they prowl the clubs. “There is a young-love story to the show,” Schwartz said, “but there’s also a big family dynamic …. It’s multi-generational.”
There are a few familiar faces. (Kirke, who plays a rich and bitter mother of two, was Jessa in “Girls.”) But mostly there are newer actors who – like the characters – are from somewhere else.
Oreff is from Los Angeles … Tortello is from Wilmette, Ill. … Wonders is also a Midwesterner.
“I grew up very sheltered in the suburbs of Detroit,” she said. It was “very monotonous – baseball fields and barbecues and hockey rinks – a lot of hockey rinks. I grew up in and on the ice. So going to New York was always a dream.”
She did know one New Yorker: Anna Sui, her aunt on her paternal side, is a noted fashion designer. (Wonders’ roots are Chinese on her father’s side, European on her mother’s.) Still, she hesitated.
“New York was like always a dream and not something I did until I was older and in college,” she said. “And even then, I was terrified. I was like, ‘Who would choose to live here?’ So many smells.”
She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard (where she wrote for the Lampoon), then thrived in the city, working as a writer, producer and actress. Now she plays someone who adapted to city life and “just knows the fabric of the gross landscape of the East Village like the back of her hand.”
Samantha is fascinated; others are sometimes frightened by this city on fire.