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It took ‘Billions’ to lure Damian Lewis back to TV, The Inquirer, January 13, 2016

It took ‘Billions’ to lure Damian Lewis back to TV

In his new Showtime series, “Billions,” he plays a hedge-fund mogul whose choices move the markets, but Damian Lewis is a bit of a ditherer.

So the decision to return to Showtime, where he’d won an Emmy for playing Marine-turned-terrorist Nicholas Brody in “Homeland” didn’t come easily.

“I do make plans. I try to make plans because I desperately try to create some sort of structure. But, of course, that’s a fool’s game,” the British actor said in an interview last summer in Beverly Hills.

“TV’s a big commitment, and it’s always hard to say yes to. It’s the truth of it. Especially if you live in a different country, like I do,” Lewis said.

“I take a long time making the decision, I drive everybody mad by waiting and dithering and just working out whether I want to do it or not. And the one thing that always makes me do it, or has in the big American things I’ve done – I put ‘Band of Brothers’ to one side because that was a limited series – ‘Life,’ ‘Homeland’ and this thing, is the writing.”

What also ties “this thing” to “Life,” in which he played a police detective returning to the force after spending 12 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, “Homeland,” and even “Wolf Hall,” where he played Henry VIII, is that Lewis is playing a character with heroic qualities whose heroism remains in doubt.

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