Categories Billions Media Print Media

Damian Lewis: “Hedgefund Billionaires are Misunderstood”, The Guardian, May 11, 2016

Damian Lewis: ‘Hedge-fund billionaires are misunderstood’

As Lewis brings his impeccable American accent back as gazillionaire Bobby Axelrod in new show Billions, he talks Tony Blair, megalomania and megabucks

Damian Lewis as Bobby Axelrod in Billions – a man with working class roots … and an $84m mansion in the Hamptons.

Damian Lewis as Bobby Axelrod in Billions – a man with working class roots … and an $84m mansion in the Hamptons.

Benji Wilson
Wednesday 11 May 2016, Last modified on Tuesday 5 September 2017 Continue reading Damian Lewis: “Hedgefund Billionaires are Misunderstood”, The Guardian, May 11, 2016

Categories Behind the Scenes Billions Media Print Media TV/Film Projects

Billions Season 1 Dining Guide: Eat Like a Billionaire Without Breaking the Bank – May 2, 2016

Billions Season 1 Dining Guide: Eat Like a Billionaire Without Breaking the Bank

by Damianista – Fan Fun With Damian Lewis – May 2, 2016

Source: Showtime

New York, in particular, has a fantastic dining scene. That is why NYC dining scene makes some memorable appearances in Billions, from some of its special occasion restaurants to yummy hole-in-the-walls, to cozy neighborhood joints, dining landmarks and take-out places. Here is our Billions dining guide and a thank you to the show for showcasing the dining capital of the world in the best way possible.  We describe each restaurant, provide picture of the scene as a refresher, a link to restaurant’s website, as well as its Yelp review when available. Bon Appetite!

Source: Showtime

Episode 1: The Pilot 

The one with our first meeting of Bobby:

Bruno’s pizza joint, Capparello’s was Axe’s go-to place when he was a kid and he is still a regular. Bruno seems to be a father figure to Axe. The secret? Pizza is made with San Marzano tomatoes!

Rosa’s Pizza: 7559 Metropolitan Ave, Middle Village, NY 11379 (Queens) Yelp Review

You know, pizza is serious business in New York and hats off to Damian for eating his NY slice so authentically!

“ya gotta fold it to keep the grease from dripping and envelope that cheesy goodness right into your gaping mouth, amiright or amiright?” – JaniaJania

Continue reading Billions Season 1 Dining Guide: Eat Like a Billionaire Without Breaking the Bank – May 2, 2016

Categories Behind the Scenes Billions Media Print Media TV/Film Projects

Billions Location Guide Season 1: The Grand Tour of New York and Beyond – April 25, 2016

Billions on Showtime, Season 1 Locations: The Grand Tour of New York and Beyond

by Damianista – Fan Fun With Damian Lewis – April 25, 2016

Billions is a dream come true  since it brings two of our favorite things in the world together: Damian Lewis and New York. We particularly love the fact that the show is taking over New York, the big film studio that it is, and shooting all over the place, from Manhattan and Queens to Brooklyn and The Bronx, and from Long Island to the northern suburbs. As promised, here is a comprehensive location guide of Billions Season 1. Let’s start the tour.

Source: Showtime

Episode 1: The Pilot

The Times Center, Midtown Manhattan

The first time we see Axe and Chuck in a scene together is at the Delivering Alpha conference at The Times Center.

Source: Showtime

 

Billions takes advantage of downstairs, too, for the very popular “Fuck You money” scene! Damian’s character Axe asks, “Then again, what’s the point of having Fuck You money, if you never say, Fuck You?”

 

 

 

Continue reading Billions Location Guide Season 1: The Grand Tour of New York and Beyond – April 25, 2016

Categories Band of Brothers Billions Homeland Media Personal and Family Life Print Media Theatre

Blue Blood, Blue Collar: Damian Lewis’ Transformations, The New Yorker, January 18, 2016

The actor probes his characters, but his method isn’t Method. “I’m Damian Lewis, not Daniel Day-Lewis.”

 Photograph by Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker

At a corner table in the dining room of Marea, a restaurant on Central Park South, the conversation was smooth but disputatious. Three men in suits were drinking red wine and eating pasta that cost thirty-four dollars a serving. One of them was a hedge-fund manager, a famous short seller. Another was the financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. The third man, in from London, was the actor Damian Lewis.

Sorkin had made the introduction. The hedge-fund manager and Lewis were doing most of the talking. “Does your business have a societal benefit?” Lewis asked. He wanted to know what made a hedge-fund manager more than “a paper shuffler.”

The hedge-fund manager said that he and his peers basically function as market-based regulators—that they have a financial incentive to expose wrongdoing. Sorkin had set up other audiences for Lewis with financial machers. One of them urged Lewis to consider an underperforming company with entrenched management or a sclerotic board: an activist investor, even if he came in and cut things and fired people—well, that’s capitalism.

Continue reading Blue Blood, Blue Collar: Damian Lewis’ Transformations, The New Yorker, January 18, 2016

Categories Billions Media Print Media

‘Billions’: Can Showtime’s Big Bet Be TV’s First Wall Street-Based Hit?, Variety, January 13, 2016

‘Billions’: Can Showtime’s Big Bet Be TV’s First Wall Street-Based Hit?

Categories Billions Media Print Media

The New Showtime Drama ‘Billions’ Shows Us Two Different Kinds of Power – Jan 13, 2016

The New Showtime Drama ‘Billions’ Shows Us Two Different Kinds of Power

Paths to Power – Wall Street vs. The Justice System

Business Insider – January 13, 2016

“Billions,” the new original drama from SHOWTIME®, stars Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis as two opposing forces in the very different worlds of the Justice System and Wall Street. See the infographic below to find out more about the power that each side brings to the table.

Photo: BI Studios – Sponsored by Showtime®

Read the original article at Business Insider

 

Categories Billions Media Print Media

‘Billions’ on Showtime Profits Off Our Fixation on Money – Jan 8, 2016

‘Billions’ on Showtime Profits Off Our Fixation on Money

by David Zurawik – The Baltimore Sun – January 8, 2016

Great TV always scratches some deeper itch in the culture. And, in the last three decades at least, that itch has often been connected to money.

“The Sopranos” explored the gangster soul of capitalism and the profound emptiness even in its winner’s circle. “The Wire” showed how the drug trade in Baltimore was not that different from the business done on Wall Street. “Breaking Bad” started from the premise of a middle-class teacher who turned to making illegal drugs to provide for his family after being diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Given that history and the six hours I have seen of Showtime’s new Sunday-night series “Billions,” which premieres Jan. 17, I’m feeling like we might be looking at greatness here.

The drama about a ferociously ambitious U.S. attorney and a high-flying, regulation-breaking hedge fund king features two great actors in Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis. Giamatti plays the attorney, Chuck Rhoades, who sees the prosecution of Lewis’ character, Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, as his ticket to higher office.

As the chief federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, which includes Manhattan, Rhoades has enormous power over the great financial institutions of American life. And while he speaks in the high-minded rhetoric of civic reform and “servant of the people,” he comes from a world of privilege and lives a life of compromises, contradictions and look-the-other-way lies.

His arrogance in the workplace is unbounded. If he’s the good guy here, he’s not a very likable one.

“When I bring an action, it’s not some county or even state,” he warns. “It’s the United States versus. Don’t give me a reason.”

Or how about this lovely quote: “My father always taught me ‘mercy’ was a word p—— used when they couldn’t take the pain.”

He revels in his power, except in the bedroom, where he’s the “M” partner in an S&M marriage.

The series opens on one of the most intense and graphic S&M scenes I’ve ever seen on mainstream TV — even premium cable. But in its exploration of sex as power, it is artistically righteous. I was rooting for “Billions” from the opening bell for going there so fearlessly.

Rhoades’ wife, Wendy (Maggie Siff), is just as complex a character. She works as an in-house performance coach at Axelrod’s Axe Capital firm. She goes way back with Axelrod and is one of the few people in his uber-competitive boiler room in whom he seems able to confide.

Siff is superb as an ambitious professional using her psychological training to carve out her own territory of control as she navigates between these two male combatants. You might remember her as Rachel Menken, the department store heiress and Don Draper love interest in “Mad Men,” another great drama that was all about money, power and desire.

“Knowing isn’t enough,” Wendy Rhoades says. “You’ve got to exercise control.”

And she does.

In the hands of lesser dramatists, the obvious conflicts of interests involving this marriage might derail the series.

I can imagine someone reading this and saying, “Wouldn’t she have to quit her job?” Or, perhaps, “Given her job, wouldn’t Rhoades have to recuse himself from the case his office is trying to build against Axelrod?”

Both questions are valid. There are wisely scripted and convincingly played scenes in which those questions are raised, debated, worried over, and raged against at work and home. This being a very, very contemporary marriage, Mr. and Ms. Rhoades throw the conflict in each other’s face when it suits them.

It’s great stuff. But Bobby Axelrod is the character you can’t take your eyes off of.

“Axe is no ordinary billionaire,” Rhoades says. “He’s an icon of the wealth of our age. And he’s a fraud. So when he falls, he’ll hit the ground hard.”

Given the anger that remains over how few of the men and women who drove the economy off the cliff in 2008 were ever prosecuted, it would have been easy for the producers to make Axelrod the target of all that enmity.

But that would make for a polemic, not drama.

Continue reading ‘Billions’ on Showtime Profits Off Our Fixation on Money – Jan 8, 2016

Categories Billions Media Print Media

Wall Street Gets Its First TV Show with ‘Billions’ – Dec 31, 2015

Wall Street Gets Its First TV Show with ‘Billions’

by Serena Elavia –  FOXBusiness – December 31, 2015 

In an age where political shows like ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Madame Secretary’ dominate television, it seems that a Wall Street plot has been ignored by the small screen. On January 1, 2016, Showtime Networks (CBS) aired an early showing of ‘Billions’ starring ‘Homeland’s’ Damian Lewis playing hedge fund manager Bobby “Axe” Axelrod and Oscar nominated superstar Paul Giamatti playing the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Chuck Rhoades.

Viewers can guarantee that the show will have plenty of insight into the financial world as the series is produced and written by Andrew Ross Sorkin, the leading financial reporter for The New York Times (NYT) and Brian Koppelman and David Levien, co-writers of ‘Ocean’s Thirteen.’

Continue reading Wall Street Gets Its First TV Show with ‘Billions’ – Dec 31, 2015

Categories Appearances Billions Media Print Media

Damian Lewis Talks Billions at New Yorker Festival, Fan Fun with Damian Lewis, October 12, 2015

Damian Lewis Talks Billions at New Yorker Festival

by Damianista
October 12, 2015

It’s quite fun playing a billionaire! I have been on more yachts, private jets, and helicopters than in my entire life in the space of the last two months.” – Damian Lewis

source: Getty Images
source: Getty Images

I know… I know! It’s already been a week but we just can’t stop talking about the weekend with Damian Lewis at New Yorker Festival! In case you missed it,  we already covered both Damian Lewis in Conversation with Lauren Collins as well as Damian Lewis reading Lawrence Wright’s new play Cleo on the blog; however, there is still too much to talk about… And since we cannot wait for Damian’s new Showtime drama Billions hit our TV screens in a couple of months now, it’s appropriate to start with what Damian talks about when he talks about Billions!

Read the rest of the story here