Categories Appearances Events Helen Poetry Readings

Voices of London – Oct 8, 2019

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A Night of Poems and Poets Inspired by the Great City of London

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | October 8, 2019

The Lord Mayor’s Appeal will be hosting their first ever poetry night called Voices of London on Tuesday, November 26, 2019  from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Join the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress for a night of inspirational poetry in the magnificent setting of the Mansion House in London.

The event is curated by Allie Esiri, Helen McCrory, and Kate Birch with a line-up of other celebrated (and secret) actors and vibrant contemporary poets performing work inspired by the great city of London, all in the effort to raise money to help support their charity partners OnSide Youth Zones, Place2Be, Samaritans, and Sir Hubert von Herkomer Arts Foundation.

Let’s hope one of those secret actors is Damian since Helen will be in attendance and the fact that both Damian and Helen are patrons/ambassadors of the Sir HvH Arts Foundation.

Plus, Damian should be in town from filming Billions in New York City only two days prior to this event – specifically, on November 24 he will be co-hosting the Evening Standard Theatre Awards in London with Helen. Crossing our fingers!

To book tickets and for more information about Voices of London, please visit Lord Mayor’s Appeal.org here. For questions about the event, please email events@thelordmayorsappeal.org or call 020 7332 1582. Standard tickets are £100 and under 26-year-old tickets are £50. Tickets include a champagne and canapé reception, poetry readings and fundraising raffle. Dress code: smart casual.

Categories Announcement Awards Helen

Damian and Helen to Co-Host the Evening Standard Theatre Awards – Oct 7, 2019

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The 65th Annual Evening Standard Theatre Awards

by Robert Dex | Evening Standard | October 7, 2019

The Good Fight star Cush Jumbo will present this year’s opening ceremony of the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

She will join the newspaper’s proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev, and his regular co-host, American Vogue editor-in-chief Dame Anna Wintour, at West End’s London Coliseum on November 24. Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory will join Jumbo as co-hosts in recognizing some of the most exciting talents currently working in theatre.

Husband-and-wife acting stars Lewis and McCrory, who met when cast in a play together at the Almeida, are mainstays of the London stage. They are also known for hit TV shows Billions and Peaky Blinders.

Mr. Lebedev said: “For its 65th year, the Evening Standard Theatre Awards continues to recognize and celebrate London’s extraordinary talent from playwrights, directors and actors to everyone who works so hard behind the scenes.

“With the London Coliseum providing the new backdrop for the ceremony, it is a great pleasure that I will be hosting the event with Anna, Cush, Damian and Helen.”

Dame Anna said: “London’s theatre scene continues to thrive, and I am so thrilled to be co-hosting the Evening Standard Theatre Awards again with Evgeny, Cush, Damian and Helen celebrating the talent for their outstanding achievements in London theatre”.

The 65th Evening Standard Theatre Awards, sponsored by Michael Kors, take place on November 24. For more information, visit standard.co.uk/theatreawards #ESTheatreAwards

Read the rest of the original article at Evening Standard
Secondary Source: Vogue

Categories Print Media Spy Wars

Boarding School Creates a Mild Sociopathy That’s Helpful to the Life of Espionage – Oct 4, 2019

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Damian Makes His First Documentary Spy Wars With His Brother

by Lisa Campbell | iNews | October 4, 2019

Few British actors have set foot inside Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but as the star of the American spy thriller, Homeland, Damian Lewis was granted unprecedented access as part of his research.

While he jokes that his meeting with the director of the CIA, John Brennan, is “classified”, the story demonstrates his ability to get under the skin of characters through keen observation of the tiniest details. He describes the “incredibly poker-faced field operatives who had revealed only the smallest increments of expression and emotion, until Brennan walked in and the temperature in the room rose instantaneously.”

It’s an experience that stood him in good stead for his latest project, Damian Lewis: Spy Wars, which also marks his first foray into factual television.

The eight-part series – the first to come out of Lewis’ newly-launched Rookery Productions – airs on History from Monday in the UK and showcases the true stories and remarkable characters behind some of the most important international spy operations of recent years.

“I’ve done a lot of research over my career for Homeland and a movie I made, Our Kind of Traitor, and have read my John le Carre like everyone else. I enjoy the genre and thought it was an opportunity to look behind these popular stories and find out something a bit more intimate and personal about the people themselves, their decisions and the ramifications on global politics,” he says.

Continue reading Boarding School Creates a Mild Sociopathy That’s Helpful to the Life of Espionage – Oct 4, 2019

Categories Interviews Print Media Spy Wars

Spy Wars: TV Real Interview – Oct 3, 2019

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Spies Next Door

by Mansha Daswani | TV Real, World Screen | October 3, 2019

Damian Lewis already knew a fair bit about espionage before signing on to executive produce and present the A+E Networks U.K.-commissioned series Spy Wars. He did, after all, play an MI6 agent in Our Kind of Traitor, based on the John le Carre novel, and a U.S. prisoner of war who returns home and is hailed as a hero as he secretly plots a terrorist attach in Showtime’s Homeland. Damian Lewis: Spy Wars sees the British actor recounting notable stories of espionage from the last four decades, spanning from the Cold War all the way through to the contemporary war on terror. The eight-part series produced by Alaska TV in association with Lewis’s own Rookery Productions sees him speaking directly to camera and features expert interviews and dramatic reenactments. Lewis tells TV Real about what appealed to him about the docudrama, which A+E Networks is rolling out this MIPCOM.

TV REAL: Tell us about the genesis of Spy Wars. How did you come to be involved in the show?

LEWIS: My brother [executive producer Gareth Lewis] was already involved, he was going  to be directing parts of it. He said, Do you want to do this? I said, I don’t really do factual, I’m not a presenter. But I got sucked into these eight spy stories. I came on as a co-producer and tried to get to the bottom of what makes a man or woman do heroic or traitorous things on behalf of their country. That was it really. It came to me by invitation and my curiosity was tickled.

TV REAL: As you got into the details of these stories, what were some of the things that surprised you?

LEWIS: To be honest, a lot of what happens in the spy world is pretty unscientific. There’s still quite a lot of buccaneering and derring-do, if you like. It’s not risk-averse. It’s pro-risk, and often it can seem a bit chaotic, a bit ramshackle, and even at times a bit amateurish. Exotic words like “dead-drop” and “brush past” and things like that can simply be someone walking into a supermarket with the same plastic bag and putting it down and then each leaving with each other’s bag. It’s not exactly high-tech. While you’re looking for a slightly more sci-fi, James Bond aspect to these stories, they don’t exist. So the challenge for us was how to make the stories gripping and suspenseful. We tried to get into the minds of the individuals and what was at stake for them. What are the documents in that bag? What happens if that individual is caught? Why is the individual doing it? If the individual is a KGB officer and he’s caught, he’s going to be executed. If he’s a Western intelligence officer, he’s going to be imprisoned for life. We were trying to find out why these men and women are motivated to do these things. The motivation is often grubby and personal. It can be for simple revenge, a need to be heard, a need to belong to something, to be loved. People turn traitor for all these different reasons. So the surprise was constantly the grubbiness! And the desperation that’s there. And the extreme risk that these people are prepared to take in order to keep going.

Continue reading Spy Wars: TV Real Interview – Oct 3, 2019

Categories Helen Interviews Magazine Print Media Spy Wars

Radio Times Magazine Interview – Oct 2, 2019

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Could the Next James Bond Be Ginger? The Famous Redhead Rules Himself Out

by Kristy Lang | Radio Times Magazine | Issue: October 5-11, 2019

In a five-star hotel suite high above the City of London, Damian Lewis and I have a ginger bonding moment. As a fellow redhead, I’ve long admired his rise through the acting world. Not many gingers get leading-man status, but after starring in series such as Band of Brothers, Homeland and Billions, Lewis is big in American.

We’re meeting to discuss his first venture into the world of documentaries, fronting and producing a series about spies on the History channel.

Lewis, now 48, was born in London but was sent to boarding school at a young age, which, he thinks, would make him a very good spy.

“If you are sent away from your family at the age of eight, it gives you a rigor, a dissociative quality that is extremely useful for spies because they have to be able to shut down parts of their emotional life. That’s why the British secret services actively recruited public schoolboys. Guy Burgess is the most extreme example of that. He was flamboyant, charming and mostly drunk – how he didn’t reveal what he was doing is a mystery to me.”

Continue reading Radio Times Magazine Interview – Oct 2, 2019