– Damian the Director? –
by Ben O’Shea | PLAY Magazine West Australian | February 28, 2026
Damian Lewis is no stranger to prestige drama, whether it was his breakout role in the Tom Hanks-Steven Spielberg epic miniseries, Band of Brothers, or the nail biting espionage series, Homeland.
As with so many classically trained British actors before him, Lewis has also dabbled in his fair share of period work, with one notable example being his leading role in The Forsyte Saga.
We’ve even seen him play an unscrupulous hedge fund manager in the hit series Billions.
What we haven’t seen though, is Lewis starring in anything quite like Fackham Hall.
“I think it feels like Downton Abbey meets Naked Gun, doesn’t it?” Lewis suggests over Zoom call with PLAY. “Or Gosford Park meets Flying High! Or something.”
In the pantheon of British humor, which includes the razor-sharp wit of Blackladder and the absurdity of Monty Python, Fackham Hall is an oddity.
Co-written by beloved British-Irish comic Jimmy Carr, the Downton spoof is decidedly un-English, with an avalanche of sight and wordplay gags reminiscent of the aforementioned American comedy classics.
“You know, I grew up watching those movies as well. Those spoof movies were a different kind of comedy,” Lewis explains.
“The jokes are happening all around you all the time, and I enjoy that world, that silliness; the silliness of incidental humor.”
The 55-year-old readily admits it’s a change of speed.
“I’m better known for these dramatic roles, and have been very lucky to be asked to be in some nice things that have landed big,” he agrees.
“But weirdly, I feel like there’s always awkwardness and uncertainty in what you do, there’s always bits of comedy that I feel I’m bringing to characters, because I find it funny, or find them absurd or ludicrous, although I know we’re never supposed to judge our own characters as actors.”
“But to be asked to be in something which was overtly comic like this was a nice surprise.”
Fackham Hall sees Lewis play Lord Davenport, the rather dimwitted patriarch of an aristocratic family in the early 1930s, who have more money than sense.
Davenport has no male heirs to leave the family home to, so his wife, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston), comes up with a plan to marry their daughter Poppy (Thomasin McKenzie), off to her cousin (Tom Felton).
There’s just one problem – Poppy falls in love with a petty crook who has just started working for the Davenports, Eric (Ben Radcliffe).
One might argue an even bigger problem is the apparent murder of Lord Davenport, which turns into a full-blown criminal investigation in which every person at Fackham Hall is a suspect.
Yes, the film also doubles as a Poirot parody.
As Lewis sees it, these kinds of period dramas and the British class system are prime targets for a gentle lampooning.
“I think being able to sort of prick the pomposity of the genre is quite easy to do, but, at the same time, I think this film does it very lovingly, because actually, we all really love watching those films,” the actor says.
“It isn’t a caustic, acerbic, cynical kind of humor. There’s an innocence, I think, that exists in this film. So, if you’re looking for something which is cutting and biting and, you know, something that has a bit more cruelty in it, which a lot of humor does, obviously, then you’re probably going to check out of this film after 10 minutes.”
“It’s no that kind of film, and I love it for that.”
Looking back at his career, Lewis acknowledges that being case as US Army Major Dick Winters in 2001’s Band of Brothers was a pivotal moment.
“Oh God, I think it changed everything,” he admits.
“It was right at the beginning of that sort of golden age of TV, when people weren’t yet used to this kind of epic TV-making that was like filmmaking; Band of Brothers was right at the vanguard of that.”
“I auditioned for that five times…and they just kept asking me back and kept asking me back. And then it became clear that they were asking me to read for what was essentially the principal character in the show, he was the narrator, he was the commander of these guys.”
“Then I got flown to LA and I met Steven, I met Tom, and that was the Hollywood moment in my career, being flown out first class, you know, some imply little punk from London.”
“And boom, I was staying down in Santa Monica, in the Californian sunshine, and they were looking after me like I was a rock star.”
As exciting as that moment was, it pales in comparison to the pop cultural ubiquity that came a decade later with Homeland, which was, at its height, one of the most popular TV shows on the planet.
In that show, Lewis wowed fans and critics alike as decorated Marine Corps scout sniper Nicholas Brody, who was believed to have been turned by al-Qaeda and under investigation by a CIA officer played by Claire Danes.
The role won Lewis an Emmy.
“I was lucky to get Homeland,” he says with a laugh.
It turns out the show’s creator Alex Gansa, was struggling to find a suitable actor to play Brody when he stumbled across Keane, a low-budget, 2004 indie film in which Lewis played a mentally ill man dealing with this daughter being abducted.
“He watched it for an hour-and-a-half, and then called up the studio and said, ‘We’ve got Brody. I want this guy’,” Lewis says.
“So, maybe this is naive, but you like to think that good work brings good work.”
Good work comes in many forms, and Lewis confides to PLAY that he has been working on a film he intends to direct and has been “touting around” to find funding.
Then there’s his other passion, music, which saw him release a debut album, Mission Creep, in 2023.
The actor hopes to have the follow-up out before the middle of the year.
“If I spent six months just playing to clubs with 400 people in them, I’d be happy,” he says.
“I love getting in front of people and playing the music and going about with my band.”
Until then, he seems perfectly content helping the rest of us have a laugh at the British upper class, which Lewis clearly sees as a victimless crime.
“They’re all cash poor, so they’ve all turned their great stately homes and their 3,000-acre estates into gardens for the public to come and follow butterflies on some butterfly trail in order to pay for the roof,” he says.
“But, mostly, I think they’re having a pretty good time, and essentially getting away with it.”