Damian Lewis Talks Billions, New York and Donald Trump, Luxury London, May 6, 2016

Damian Lewis is one of the great British actors of our time, with a host of acclaimed TV shows to his name. Now, he’s starring in Sky Atlantic’s Billions. Here, he talks about preparing for a role, loving New York City and the luxury of flying by private jet

Damian Lewis is somewhat enigmatic. A well-respected British actor (he was awarded an OBE in 2014), he’s attractive, but doesn’t fall into the pretty-boy category, and he maintains a sense of easy likeability despite his often gritty roles. Lewis is playing self-made billionaire Bobby Axelrod in new TV show Billions, a man conflicted by the trappings of greed and power that come with newly acquired wealth.

Lewis is no stranger to portraying complex characters, you need only look at his turn as Nicholas Brody in Homeland to see how he thrives in this type of role.

For Billions, Lewis worked to get to grips with all facets of Axelrod’s character, incorporating the good, the bad and the ugly. “His self-belief and confidence is appealing…and the way in which he epitomises the rise of the working man and prescribes in some way to the American dream is attractive to people. He comes from a background of fire chiefs, nurses and police, an Irish blue-collar background. And I think it’s appealing that he is married to a woman of his own background. Malin Ã…kerman, who plays my wife, is staggeringly beautiful, but she is not a trophy wife. She’s someone that he’s known for most of his life and she comes from the same sort of neighbourhood,” Lewis tells me.

The actor is thoughtful and obviously intelligent. Educated at Eton College, he also attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and believes in researching a role thoroughly. When preparing for Billions, he started by reading around the subject. “I can recommend Investopedia to the starter investor, also Andrew Sorkin’s book, Michael Lewis’ book, and Greenblack’s book. There’s lots of literature out there.” Then, he spent time with some seriously successful “hedge fund billionaires”, looking for common psychological behavioural traits, which, he says, was “pretty enjoyable and helpful.”

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Naturally, playing a successful financier and reading around the subject must lead to thoughts of one’s own portfolio; but Lewis is already set up on that front and disarmingly modest.

“I have some investment and I don’t think anyone would take my meagre sums of money into their hedge fund. I have a typical layman’s portfolio which is a little bit of moderate risk, a little bit of greater risk, something put aside for my kids, the usual stuff.”

Lewis has two children: a daughter, Manon, aged nine, and a son, Gulliver, aged eight, with his British actress wife Helen McCrory. Lewis and McCrory sound reassuringly normal. When we ask Lewis what he would do with Axelrod’s billions, he responds quickly, in much the same way as you or I may when asked to spend fantastical sums of money, without the jaded, blasé air that so many in his position could easily adopt. “A jet. I’ve been on a private jet only two or three times in my life and it’s one of life’s great luxuries. You arrive at a small airport that looks more like your sitting room and are offered a cappuccino, while your bag is whipped from out of your hand and then just ten minutes later you’re asked to step onto the plane and then you’re off. And it’s just totally terrific.”

Should aviation purchases fail, or if there happens to be enough cash left over, there’s always the option of buying Liverpool Football Club, of which Lewis is an avid supporter. “Liverpool FC could do with a bit of help, so yeah, why not?”

Clearly not adverse to taking risks, Lewis has made a series of intelligent choices in his career, leading to him winning both a Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe Award. But what did he enjoy most about working on Billions? Lewis cites the cast and crew, who are “A-listers through every position and that makes it just a great, enjoyable thing to be part of.” The second highlight was working in New York. “I had doubted it was still a great city having been there a lot in the mid-’90s and knowing that it had been somewhat, tamed, shall we say, by Giuliani and Bloomberg, but it is still a great city; it’s still one of the greatest cities.”

And when fans ask Lewis if he thinks Axelrod would vote for Donald Trump in the forthcoming US Presidential elections, his answer gives little away: “he might.”

On a micro level, politics and political attitudes trickle down to how people approach the TV show itself. Asked if Axelrod is a villain or character to be supported, Lewis’ answer is considered and well thought-out: it needn’t be one or the other. (“That’s a simplistic view, isn’t it?”) “I think it depends on how conservative you are. A more liberal viewer enjoyed and supported Brody in Homeland and a more conservative viewer thought he was just an outright terrorist and was to be condemned. So, it sort of depends on the personal politics, with a small ‘p’, of the viewer, I think.”

Among travel and politics, another interest of Lewis’ is music. Fans of Billions will know Axelrod is a serious Metallica fan, and the band appears in the first season. Lewis admits he’s a fan, but his tastes sound somewhat eclectic. “We filmed a scene with Metallica, which was just fantastic… When I was 15, 16, a lot of my friends were walking around with Metallica and Iron Maiden jackets and I think I was doing a bit of that. But there was also a bit of Bill Haley thrown in and quite a lot of Supertramp, if I remember – which is the other end of the musical spectrum.”

Perhaps the person who most appreciated Lewis’ encounters with Metallica is his son. “I met Lars Ulrich a couple of times previously, and he was kind enough to give a pair of his drumsticks to my son, who is a drummer. So that’s pretty cool.”

Lewis is perfect for the type of large-scale, internationally acclaimed shows he’s currently starring in, and he’s acutely aware that he’s lucky to be acting in a time where so much is possible.

“Premium cable TV has had a golden age for the past ten to 15 years. TV sort of changed, becoming more global, less parochial, less provincial. It started to follow a film model, with film directors and writers [and actors] filming…all over the world. It suddenly just became a more global enterprise, more like film.”

“What they’ve been able to do – because you have 12 hours to tell a story, rather than just over two – and what they’ve done very well, is have these more complex, ambiguous characters and heroes who are flawed and anti-heroes who you want to like. I think both Bobby [Axelrod] and Chuck, who is Paul Giamatti’s character, occupy that territory.”

Along with changes to the industry have come changes among viewers in terms of how we choose, consume and access our content. Lewis is happy with the current status quo, and optimistic about the future of the television medium. “It’s a great time to be working in TV. Its ambition and what it wanted to achieve has changed. If the younger generation aren’t reading novels any more, they’re watching 60 hours or five seasons of one of these types of dramas.”

“It’s very exciting to be working in it. I feel very lucky that I just came of age, as an actor, at a time when there was this sort of tectonic shift between film and TV. It’s great fun.”

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