World Screen @ 35: Billions

As World Screen celebrates its 35th anniversary, we want to present a series of articles that recap and highlight the best of the interviews we have conducted. We are focusing on the evolution of scripted TV series.

In our last article, we looked at Showtime’s critically acclaimed and conversation-starting series Homeland, whose A-list stars included Damian Lewis. He returned to Showtime in 2016 in Billions. Today, we examine that series and hear from Lewis other stars.

While HBO was garnering critical acclaim and much public and press attention for Game of Thrones and other dramas, the other American premium pay service Showtime was capturing a fair share of praise with its growing slate of originals.

“We’ve made a major investment in owned original programming these last several years,” said David Nevins in 2015, then the president of Showtime Networks. “We’re up to ten series on the air, and I expect [that] to get a little bit bigger over time. The strategy is to be the home of the most cutting-edge, exciting, adult, sophisticated premium programming. It’s a good time at Showtime. Above all, we have more shows that matter right now. There’s broad diversity, from Ray Donovan to The Affair to Homeland; it’s a pretty rich assortment of shows, and that’s what drives our subscribership.”

Billions premiered on Showtime in 2016. Although it was eight years after the 2008 financial crisis, much of the audience was still interested—whether through outrage or awe—in the secretive inner workings of hedge-fund managers and the aura surrounding the superrich. In the first season, Billions pits self-made billionaire Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis) against U.S. Attorney, born of privilege, Chuck Rhoades. Between these two Alpha males is a woman who is arguably smarter than both of them, psychiatrist Wendy Rhoades, Chuck’s wife, and the performance coach at Axe capital. The captivating performances of Damian Lewis, Paul Giamatti and Maggie Siff, flanked by the rest of the cast, bring to life a contemporary story that illustrates a timeless human quest—the struggle for power.

“I love Billions,” said Nevins in 2015. “It’s a cutting-edge, timely show that looks at our relationship with the superrich: what’s fair, and what’s not fair. You’ve got a clash of two incredibly powerful characters embodied by two great actors, Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis. They are electric on screen together. Damian is playing a hedge-fund guy—a billionaire, but with real emotional and moral complexity. He’s got Paul Giamatti (as a U.S. attorney) coming hard after him, and how does he handle that? How does Paul’s character handle it? And, Damian’s character has got his own issues and challenges. There’s nothing better than watching two great actors challenge each other straight on.”

Damian Lewis, who had already starred in a Showtime series, Homeland, said in a 2016 interview that he was drawn to Billions “because I feel there is a place on TV—and Showtime is very interested in this—for finding subject matter that can become bigger than the TV show itself so that the conversation can extend into the news pages. A show like Billions [is like that because] it explores contemporary financial culture, which is something that we’ve all become more familiar with. Since the crisis of 2007-2008, people have a bit more of an understanding of what happened. Some people are angry; others are just fascinated by that world and what drives those people. We haven’t really had that story told, and it seemed a good opportunity to tell it. People have preconceptions about hedge-fund billionaires, so I think we had an opportunity to explore the world those people live in and to explore the individual as well, and to just get people to think about it in a less black-and-white way. That’s why I decided to do the show, and hopefully, we will achieve that.”

In Homeland, Lewis portrayed the ambiguous Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, who had been captured and held prisoner by the Taliban, and upon returning home, suspected of being turned by his captors. Lewis was praised in that role for his ability to communicate so much with a glance, without speaking. Axe in Billions is much less subtle.

“This is a noisier show than Homeland,” explained Lewis. “It’s a little bit more front foot, a little bit more Alpha—Alpha male and Alpha female. Sometimes the language is slightly heightened in a Tarantino-, Sorkin-esque kind of way. It gives great rhythm and music to the language, but it means that things are more expressed than they are implied. It’s more explicit, I would say. I think the writers are extremely interested in ambiguity and in playing with the notion of [questioning] who is good and who is bad, who’s likeable, and who’s unlikeable. But in terms of performance, it’s been much more front foot. It’s been much more aggressive, more confrontational, and I hope not without its subtlety and nuance; but the style of the show is much more New York-y.”

 To prepare for the role of Axe, Lewis said he “sat down with many powerful hedge-fund guys, all of whom are billionaires, some of whom were directly involved in the crash of 2007-2008 [and others] who have become successful more recently. And I investigated the intellectual process. I was interested in whether there was a moral position that any of them took. I was interested in what they saw as the positive effects of a hedge fund and whether they were prepared to concede that there were any negative effects. I was much more interested in really finding out the mechanisms of a hedge fund—where it fits and what role it can play within the market—because that’s what most people don’t understand. It was interesting to learn in my talks with them that the hedge funds sit apart from mainstream Wall Street and consider themselves to be apart from it. And I think they are feared by mainstream Wall Street! But also, I find myself sympathizing with them. I think the first thing to say is that, individually, they behave differently from one another, so it’s impossible to broadly say they are all [similar]. But I think the ones that are liked and have integrity have been maligned, and I think hedge funds do have a role to play. I have sympathy with the idea that they are market regulators; they can go in and hold firms that might not be performing to account.

“Certainly in 2007-2008, with the subprime mortgages, there were a bunch of guys who just couldn’t believe what was happening, who couldn’t believe that no one else had seen how dysfunctional the market really was at that point,” continued Lewis. “They tried to point it out, but they went on to make lots of money as a result of shorting the market. They played by the rules of the game. They actually weren’t the ones, it seems to me, who were corrupt. It seems like there was corruption and coercion everywhere else. That would be my view.”

Paul Giamatti plays Chuck Rhoades, who at the beginning of Billions is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Like Lewis, Giamatti also met with real-life prosecutors to get a feel for their world.

“I met Preet [Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York] and some of the other guys who worked at the U.S. Attorney’s office. Some of them were on-the-line prosecutors who are doing the actual prosecuting in the courts and building the cases, and they’re all incredibly smart. I remember the first thing I thought when I met Preet was; I won’t be able to appear to be as smart as this guy is because his mind works so fast! [Laughs] I worried about being able to seem that intelligent. They’re very smart guys. Fortunately, our writers write the characters, so Chuck sounds very intelligent! Other than that, everything was in the script. It’s a very complete script; you’ve got everything about the guy. And they let this character go all over the place, almost more so than the other people. He’s allowed to go crazy, weird places.”

One of the themes Billions explores is power—gaining it, its impact on the people who wield it and losing it. “It’s not a flattering portrait of people in power of any kind,” said Giamatti, “and it’s questioning the different types: political power, financial power, and it’s a toss-up which is more corrupting, which is worse. It’s hard to tell. It’s not a flattering portrait of men with power—or women, actually, too—but it’s not a flattering portrait of male power. The only saving grace of these guys is they trip themselves up a lot of the time. [Laughs] Chuck almost more so than Axe. But I think Chuck is a little bit less pathological than Axe. Axe is a bit more of a psychopath. He doesn’t react well to losing his power at all. He confuses justice and power.”

“Certainly, one of the intentions of the show is that people will be revealed to be not what they seem,” said Lewis in 2016. “We have a man from privilege and wealth who is working in public office for not much money. And we have a man from a blue-collar, working-class background who has made a lot of money. There is the theme of regulation versus libertarianism. There is a bit of a class theme in there and, obviously, money. You will see likeable things about Bobby, who you suppose, in the beginning of the show, is being pursued by the U.S. attorney. And there is no reason to believe the U.S. attorney is wrong: he thinks he’s got a whiff of insider trading and unlawful business, and there is no reason not to believe him. The attorney, in turn, will reveal himself to be an equally ambitious, grasping and aggressive Alpha male in the same way that Bobby can be. The whole thing has become sort of gladiatorial; it’s like two kings in their own kingdoms, and we observe what they have done to attain power and what they will do to preserve it.”

In between Chuck and Bobby is Wendy Rhoades, Chuck’s wife, and psychiatrist, who is also Axe Capital’s performance coach who helps the traders make millions of dollars each day. Maggie Siff plays Wendy and, in a 2018 interview, said, “Everybody on the show is so smart, but she is always a slight step ahead of everyone, including Axe and Chuck. Both of them can’t help themselves. They both have places and people and environments where their intelligence falls away, and they act viscerally, especially Axe. Axe is the king of acting impulsively in spite of himself. Because of Wendy’s training and the way she is oriented, she is a lot more preternaturally calm. She can often see a little bit further than other people can, especially when it comes to the realm of impulse and emotions. It’s incredibly fun because she is playing with people who are brilliant and who, in her lingo, are peak performing. That gives her a thrill. The darker part of her nature is that she is very intoxicated by that kind of power and brilliance and being able to play alongside that power.”

Siff took a deep dive into the work of performance coaching. “I talked to as many people as I could. I did a lot of research with a psychotherapist performance coach. I read a lot of Ari Kiev, who was famously Steve Cohen’s in-house psychiatrist [Cohen is the founder of SAC Capital Advisors]. Then I talked to some people who did approximately what Wendy does. Nobody is really Wendy out there in the world, though. The [writers] take a lot of inspiration from author and life coach Tony Robbins, so I went down a Tony Robbins rabbit hole and had a phone interview with him. I did a lot of research on S&M and we have a BDSM [bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism] consultant.”

The reason for the research into these behaviors is that Chuck Rhoades has a predilection for S&M, and his wife Wendy is willing to oblige him.

“One of the interesting things [Chuck] is that he has this self-loathing, which makes him question himself sometimes—that makes him an interesting character,” observed Giamatti. “Where it comes from? I don’t know; his father is so hard on him. He’s obviously got a weird relationship to women. But for a lot of those guys, that stuff just comes from a body chemistry thing where they like the feeling of pain. But for Chuck, the psychological element is a good thing, in a way. This self-doubt and self-loathing, I think, is the only saving grace for the guy. He is critical of himself in the way the other people aren’t, to a certain extent. Then he goes right back to being a horrible person!”

There is more to S&M than meets the eye. Oddly enough, it’s considered a form of caring. “Our consultant emphasizes that whenever she talks to us,” explained Siff. “And that’s what I think makes it a really interesting component of Wendy and Chuck’s marriage. The way we conceive of it is this is something that Chuck really needs. And Wendy, because of who she is fundamentally but also because of her training, feels that she can call on that part of herself. I think she discovers that it’s a part of herself that she enjoys and is quite good at. It comes perhaps a little more naturally than she thought it would. So they make room for that in their marriage and it is an expression of care. When we are working on those scenes, the consultant says you are using elements of pain, but there is a tickle preceding that. And the alternation between those things is ultimately an act of caring for somebody.” 

Billions introduced Taylor Mason, played by Asia Kate Dillon, in season two as the supremely intelligent intern at Axe Capital. Taylor is the first gender non-binary character in a TV series, but it’s her analytic mind and out-of-the-box thinking that make her a precious asset for Axe and then a dangerous opponent.

“I think it’s done something wonderful on our show that I haven’t been able to fully articulate,” said Siff. “Before, it felt like the show was [all about] Alpha men and Alpha women, and there was this male-female polarity between Wendy-Lara [Axelrod] and Axe-Chuck. The introduction of Taylor has shaken up the foundation and thrown everybody into a new light.”

Beyond presenting interesting, complex characters, what propels Billions is outstanding writing, brought to life by brilliant performances. The actors appreciate the material they work with and the skill of their fellow castmates.

“The cast is amazing, said Giamatti. “There’s never a second’s doubt that you’re not going to be working with the best people possible. They’ve had an ingenious ability to cast not just great actors but really good people, too. Everybody is just a lovely person. They’re all super prepared. If you weren’t prepared with this stuff, it would sink in two seconds because you can’t wing this language. And they also want it absolutely perfect. And punctuation perfect even sometimes, too.”

“Paul is one of the smartest actors I’ve worked with,” said Lewis. “He is totally present. Emotionally, intellectually and physically, he inhabits his space entirely. He’s a force to be opposite of, and I love it. I’d love to get on stage with him actually! He’s a complete gentleman and a lovely guy. It’s been wonderful. He has an ability to inhabit his lines in a credible way. He is totally present; that’s what I would say about Paul; that’s what’s so engaging about watching him as an actor and being in the space with him; he creates a force because of how present he is, intellectually, emotionally and physically. It’s thrilling to be working with him.”

“They are both amazing—amazing actors, amazing human beings,” observed Siff. “They are funny and irreverent. They are not nearly as Alpha as their characters! Luckily, it falls away fast when the cameras aren’t rolling.”

Season five of Billions premiered in May of 2020, but only seven episodes aired as production was halted because of COVID-19. The remaining episodes will air this year, and Showtime has renewed the show for a sixth season.

Addictive series have garnered loyal subscribers to premium pay channels. The broadcast networks, in the meantime, have been attracting sizeable audiences, year after year, with procedurals. They are the bread and butter of their prime-time schedules. We look at some of the most successful and remunerative cop, medical and legal dramas in our next post.