Miami Vice is a cultural institution that still resonates today. While 90s kids are watching their clothing and aesthetic replicated by Gen Z, the 80s staple starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas has its fingerprints on basketball jerseys and anyone who insists on attending a wedding without a reasonable dress shirt. And it turns out the show’s long run on network television included a wild array of actors who went on to have much bigger careers than their crime-filled roles may have projected.
An artist and photographer named Daniel Holland went viral on Wednesday when he started sharing screenshots of notable actors who had fairly small roles on Miami Vice. Though it ran just five seasons, the show had 112 episodes of thugs, drug runners, and people with punchable faces cross television screens across America. And as the lengthy thread on Twitter made clear, many of them turned out to have long careers after the show’s run on NBC ended in 1990.
Holland started with a pretty jarring one: Married… With Children father figure Ed O’Neill as a coke dealer.
Al Bundy as a Miami Vice Coke Dealer (1984) pic.twitter.com/Ql6Vrk5UWa
— Daniel Holland
(@DannyDutch) August 4, 2021
The show featured actors who went on to be some of the biggest names in moves, too. Both Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts got early mentions in the thread, which you really need to experience in full to appreciate.
Season 4 is when Julia Roberts made an appearance as Polly Wheeler, an art gallery manager/drug dealer’s assistant with a penchant for bad boys. And Sonny is just her type. pic.twitter.com/sZ0XOAoMjl
— Daniel Holland
Some of the tweets contain mild spoilers, but it’s really worth it to know that Willie Nelson once beat the hell out of Steve Buscemi on network television and it was considered normal in the 1980s.
Nelson plays a semi-bad guy who takes the law into his own hands before biting the dust at the end of the show. pic.twitter.com/7cW8MZAji9
— Daniel Holland
Seinfeld star Michael Richards and Liam Neeson involved? Sure are!
For the Seinfeld fans Michael (Cosmo Kramer) Richards turns up in season 2 playing a sleazy bookie. #GiddyUp pic.twitter.com/VqWsQkOVpv
— Daniel Holland
There were a ton of musicians given parts as well, including Little Richard and… a very threatening Leonard Cohen?
This is where it starts to get REALLY surreal.
Leonard Cohen appears Season 2, (“French Twist”)
Initially the plan was for Cohen to portray the main villain but his role was cut to two phone conversations totalling a minute and a half.Cohen as a villain? Yes please! pic.twitter.com/4abzhM1q9e
— Daniel Holland
The whole thread is something to experience, as there are simply a staggering array of people included here. It was enough to make “Miami Vice” trend on the platform on Wednesday, and maybe make a good number of people check out the show to point at their TV like Rick Dalton on their own time.