See Mike Myers Officially Return To What He Does Best
One character is never enough!
This article is more than 2 years old
Following in the footsteps of the late Peter Sellers — who often played multiple roles in films, including playing three characters in the classic 1964 war satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb — Mike Myers became known in the ’90s for taking on more than one character in his popular comedies. He played both mild-mannered Charlie McKenzie and his father Stuart, for example, in the 1993 comedy So I Married an Axe Murderer, and of course with each new installment of his Austin Powers series he kept adding one more role to his workload. Now, for his new Netflix comedy series The Pentaverate, Myers is taking on a ridiculous eight characters, and you can see at least a few of them in the teaser trailer released today.
As you can see in the trailer, The Pentaverate seems to be a play on conspiracy theories surrounding secret societies like the Freemasons and the Illuminati who many “creative” thinkers maintain are the true puppet masters of the world. Among the eight roles Mike Myers plays in the film is Ken Scarborough — the man you see at the end speaking into a microphone. Scarborough will apparently be the series’ hero who will set out on a quest to expose the Pentaverate in order to get his job back. You can watch the teaser below.
As Deadline points out, the marketing team for the new Mike Myers series is having a lot of fun with the number five. Along with the premiere date of May 5 (which, of course, is 5/5), Netflix posted the video at 5:55 PM PST. And of course, there’s the title.
As usual, the different roles Mike Myers will assume are — in some cases — opposing each other in the story. Along with Scarborough, Myers will play conspiracy theorist Anthony Lansdowne, far-right radio host Rex Smith, the Pentaverate’s big cheese Lord Lordington, and the secret group’s computer whiz Jason Eccleston. Then there’s Shep Gordon who used to manage rock bands, Bruce Baldwin who was once a successful media tycoon, and the former oligarch Mishu Ivanov.
Reading the list of roles Mike Myers will play in the series, you can’t help but wonder if some real life is seeping into his character creation. Many of his The Pentaverate characters are people who “used to be” more important than they are — e.g. a former oligarch, a former rock band manager. Considering in the ’90s Myers seemed to be close to the top of the comedy roost, and since then his credits have been crowded with commercials and music videos, it’s tough to not see some autobiography fighting through.
If you’re a fan of Mike Myers, then there’s a good chance this isn’t the first time you’ve heard of this fictional secret society, though you may not remember when you first heard of it. In So I Married an Axe Murderer, the main character’s father Stuart tells his son’s friend Tony (Anthony LaPaglia) about a secret society called — that’s right — the Pentaverate. Stuart claims this group is made up of the wealthiest people in the world, and that its members include the Queen, the Vatican, and Colonel Sanders. You can watch a clip of that scene below.
