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Axe and Wendy’s Relationship on Billions – May 4, 2018

Lawyers, Kink and Money: Maggie Siff Finds Her Richest Role Yet 

by Greg Braxton | LA Times | May 4, 2018

Source: Showtime

Ask Billions star Maggie Siff how she would feel if she all of a sudden became a billionaire, and you’ll likely hear a laugh tinged with a bit of discomfort. Wendy Rhoades, the sensitive but stern corporate therapist and performance coach Siff plays in the Showtime drama Billions, might have some other answers to that question. She operates in a world of massive wealth, working for Axe Capital, the hedge fund headed by cocky billionaire Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis).

That professional association has proved to be repeatedly problematic for Rhoades, who is married to bulldog U.S. Atty. Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), an enemy of financial corruption who has a singular objective — putting Axelrod behind bars.

Her loyalties are constantly at odds, and the blood feud puts Wendy in the middle of a vicious triangle where it appears only one of the men in her life will survive. In the latest episodes of the drama, she has increasingly found herself edging toward legal peril.

Is there a secret part of Wendy that’s in love with Axe? It seems that the combination of the two men in her life could add up to the perfect partner.

That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Initially, in the first season I thought there might be some unconscious romantic love. As I’ve come to understand it, I see it as more of a platonic love. There are things about Axe’s brilliance and his aggression that are attractive to her, but only in terms of exciting her as a friend, as a therapist, someone to work on.

Source: Showtime

You play a character on “Billions” torn between two men who want to destroy each other. But you’re the one constant in their lives they can’t live without.

Our writers have been so smart in sustaining that dynamic. That was one of my biggest questions going in — how do you sustain that kind of triangle over time? The reckoning that Wendy has had over the past two seasons positions her to be back in partnership with both of them, but on her own terms. The thing I really appreciate about our writers and how they explore this triangle thing is that it’s not typical, not about cheating on anybody else. The way they come together and bend and grapple is unconventional.

But still, her loyalties are so deeply divided.

Something I’ve learned about Wendy is that she’s deeply compartmentalized. It’s her strength, and also her greatest weakness. She has blinders on to certain things, but I think what you see now is that things are starting to crack for her, physically. She now has her own struggle for survival, which leads her down a road of … well, let’s just say she doesn’t exactly have the moral high ground when we get to the middle of the season.

Read the rest of the original article at LA Times