Categories Billions Print Media Review

Billions Third Season is the Showdown Fans Have Been Waiting For – March 19, 2018

Preview of the First Five Episodes of Season Three

by Keith Nelson, Jr. | Digital Trends | March 19, 2018

Source: Showtime

On The Lox’s 1998 song Money, Power, & Respect, Lil’ Kim rapped that those three words are what you need in life. It’s now 20 years later, and the third season of Showtime’s hit drama Billions shows why that can be the worst advice.

(Spoilers ahead for those not caught up with seasons 1 and 2)

Over the course of Billions‘ first two seasons, Charles “Chuck” Rhoades Jr (Paul Giamatti), the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has been on a mission to put billionaire Robert “Bobby” Axelrod (Damian Lewis), the hedge fund manager of Axe Capital, behind bars for the nefarious ways Axelrod built his fortune. It’s not easy for Chuck to pin down a man who is every bit his intellectual equal, and up to now the show has largely revolved around a cat-and-mouse game, with Rhoades and Axelrod alternating between the hunted and the hunter. By the end of the second season, Axelrod is finally arrested, thanks to a legally questionable ploy Chuck uses that involves betraying the people he loves.

We were able to preview the first five episodes of season 3 ahead of the season premiere on March 25. The new season picks up following the events of the season 2 finale, which exploded the Billions status quo and left characters trying to reassemble their lives amid the wreckage. No matter how Billions plays out, though, the show centers around the entertaining dynamic of its two lead actors.

Continue reading Billions Third Season is the Showdown Fans Have Been Waiting For – March 19, 2018

Categories Billions News Print Media Review

Axe to Grind: Australia’s Financial Review – March 19, 2018

Global Connections – Stan Australia Ad

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | March 19, 2018

Bobby Axelrod makes the cover of Australia’s Financial Review. This Wall Street bad boy has an axe to grind and stands to lose billions.

Categories Billions Print Media Review

Billions: Confusion and Conflict in the World of Finance and Politics – March 18, 2018

“Every American Has a Little Bit of Bobby Axelrod in Them”

by Stuff | March 18, 2018

Source: Showtime

Damian Lewis has a simple way of explaining what drives the sexy, ego-driven world of high finance that is the SoHo show Billions.

“This is a show about compromise, about the desperation in people, and the lengths they are prepared to go to, to win,” he says.

Over the past two seasons, audiences have watched his Billions alter ego, the corrupt hedge-fund owner Bobby ‘Axe’ Axelrod, regularly dabble in bribery, bullying, insider trading and more to achieve his own dubious ends. But season two ended with the sheriff/FBI agent, Axelrod’s nemesis, US Attorney Chuck Rhoades, outwitting him after a high-risk game of cat-and-mouse, albeit at considerable personal cost.

“There is a pending prosecution, Bobby’s assets have been frozen – he is a sort of Harry Lime character (the con-artist in The Third Man), living in the shadows,” says Lewis.

Continue reading Billions: Confusion and Conflict in the World of Finance and Politics – March 18, 2018

Categories Media Print Media Review The Goat or Who is Sylvia?

Reviews are In and Damian Lewis Shines in The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? – April 6, 2017

Reviews are in and ‘The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?’ shines!

by Damianista – Fan Fun with Damian Lewis – April 6, 2017

“Damian Lewis gives the performance of his life.” — Paul Taylor, The Independent

Source: The Goat Play and The Independent

Damian Lewis has made a wonderful comeback to stage in Edward Albee’s late modern masterpiece The Goat or Who is Sylvia? at Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Read the rest of the original story at Fan Fun with Damian Lewis

Categories Media Print Media Review The Goat or Who is Sylvia? Theatre

West End Review: ‘The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?’ With Damian Lewis, Sophie Okonedo – April 6, 2017

West End Review: ‘The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?’ With Damian Lewis, Sophie Okonedo

by Matt Trueman – Variety – April 6, 2017

THE GOAT by Edward Albee, Directed by Ian Rickson, Designed by Rae Smith. The Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, UK – 2 March 2017 – Credit: Johan Persson

A married, middle-aged man falls in love with a goat. Edward Albee’s set-up might be simple, but it’s perfectly positioned – silly and shocking and, at its best, achingly sad. “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” deserves far better than Ian Rickson’s stagey production starring Damian Lewis and Sophie Okonedo, which plays the joke ahead of the emotional truth. As such, a play that should feel like a brain glitch, one that tap dances over all manner of taboos, emerges instead on an even keel, too level-headed by half. Albee’s tragicomedy throws every convention into question. Rickson and his cast cling to them for dear life.

At a moment of crumbling liberal consensus, uncertainty raging like a wildfire, “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” is all too pertinent. Martin (Lewis) is a world-renowned architect, long happily married to a bright, breezy woman (Okonedo). They’re perfect bourgeois liberals, an interracial couple with a gay teenage son (newcomer Archie Madekwe). Their brownstone, in Rae Smith’s design, is a bastion of good taste — Eames chairs and exposed brickwork, a Bauhaus book on the floor. Martin’s just turned 50. He’s a bit out of sorts. And he’s taken up with a goat named Sylvia. They’re in love.

Lewis makes abundantly clear that Martin means no malice and poses no threat. He’s an unworldly, sweet-hearted soul, as helpless as he is harmless. He’s almost too soft for society, an intellectual naïf whose wife steers him through life. Right now, he’s unable to recall simple names or dates, and greets his oldest friend (Jason Hughes) like a familiar face he can’t quite place. It’s as if his brain’s been rebooted. When Lewis pulls up a chair, it’s like he’s forgotten how to sit down. Everything, in other words, is up for grabs.

Continue reading West End Review: ‘The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?’ With Damian Lewis, Sophie Okonedo – April 6, 2017

Categories Hamlet Media Print Media Review Theatre

Prince Who’s Fit For a King: Paul Taylor Reviews Hamlet at the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park – June 15, 1994

Prince who’s fit for a king: Paul Taylor reviews Hamlet at the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park

by Paul Taylor – The Independent – 

There are some actors who approach the role of Hamlet via a rigorous apprenticeship in parts that have more than a smack of the Prince of Denmark: Konstantin in The Seagull, say, or Oswald in Ghosts. One such is Simon Russell Beale who is to play Hamlet, at long last, for Sam Mendes. At the opposite extreme are those actors who find themselves pitched in at the deep end early in their careers and prove that they can swim with precocious bravura.

At the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, there is now an egregious example of this latter type in Damian Lewis, who tackles the role in Tim Piggott-Smith’s otherwise patchy production. Lewis has all the stage presence and captivating instincts of a Michael Sheen. Long-limbed, in a black bum-freezer jacket, he reminds you a little of a Dickensian hero.

Continue reading Prince Who’s Fit For a King: Paul Taylor Reviews Hamlet at the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park – June 15, 1994