Month: September 2017

Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis as a Teacher? Yes, Please!

source: Masterclass.co.uk

Damian Lewis taught a free masterclass this spring for young actors aged 16 – 30, as part of the Masterclass, the brilliant in-house charity of the Royal Theatre Haymarket for the last 19 years.

Social media was our eyes and ears for the masterclass, and here is a selection of pictures as well as tweets attesting to young actors genuinely enjoying Damian’s class. The adjectives they use for it include “awesome”, “enlightening”, “brilliant”, “inspiring”, “insightful” and “motivating.” Continue reading “Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis as a Teacher? Yes, Please!”

Brody in Homeland S6

When Brody died on Homeland, I was one of those fans who searched high and low, scrambling to find somewhere to talk about him and about the show. At one point I ended up on the Facebook page for Homeland and tried fruitlessly to sift thru all the flat “No Brody No Homeland” pointlessness to find someone who saw what I saw in the character and in the show. Brody will never die, I thought. So why rage into the void, begging for him to come back from the dead? Shows do listen to such things, I suppose. But, even if they did listen to all the pleas from fans, what would Brody come back for? To be a dad to his new daughter? To live happily ever after with Carrie? Really, fans?

No. Brody was dead. In fact, he was dead from the minute he got off the plane and saw Jess for the first time. I spoke at length of this aspect of the character before, here and here and here. The remarkable thing about the character was this very thing, that he was a dead man walking. A cipher, a mystery, an empty vessel filled with nothing except what various people put in his head. The fact that Damian played that emptiness so FULLY is the remarkable thing, the memorable thing, the thing that compels us to never let go of the character. Characters written so completely and played so fully never die, do they? The truth and the reality of Brody lives on and will never die.

Continue reading “Brody in Homeland S6”

Falling for The Man Who Hardly Breathes: Tsvetanka’s Story

Hi everyone! Damianista welcomes you to a NEW Fan Story Tuesday!

Tsvetanka and I met on Fan Fun Facebook page. And it may be thanks to being from the same part of the world, she grew up in Bulgaria and I grew up in Turkey, that we clicked almost immediately. The two of us have much in common but we have our differences, too: For example, I am way shameless when it comes to asking Damian Lewis for a selfie where as Tsvetanka is extremely thoughtful about not taking his precious time and occupying his personal space… until a certain “enabler” starts to work on her…  I am happy to report Tsvetanka finally took her chance on the last day of The Goat! She was still too shy to ask for a photo but got a lovely autograph! 🙂

source: Tsvetanka

My dear Tsvetanka: I make a personal promise here to take you to stage door myself for a photo with Damian next time he does a play in London. You are a wonderful fan and a wonderful human being that I am extremely happy to call a friend. Thanks so much for sharing your lovely fan story with us. Cheers.  Continue reading “Falling for The Man Who Hardly Breathes: Tsvetanka’s Story”

Bobby Axelrod: The Boy Whose Dad
Never Came Back, Part III

source: Showtime

While Billions Season 3 shoot started in New York last week, we still have so much to talk about Season 2. So please stay tuned for our Billions posts discussing different aspects of our favorite show in the coming weeks and months as we follow the new season shoot as closely as possible!

Now, it is no secret I am fascinated by Bobby Axelrod’s backstory in Billions, in particular his family background. A few glimpses we had into the life of young Bobby in Season 1 made me think hard and deep about his past and write a two-part post here and here asking a number of questions I hoped to get answers for in Season 2. And one question I was dying to know the answer for was as follows — I copy and paste from my earlier post: Continue reading “Bobby Axelrod: The Boy Whose Dad
Never Came Back, Part III”

Damian Lewis and Cricket

The thing about following an autodidact, a renaissance man, a man for all seasons, is that you tend to become a bit of those things yourself (if you weren’t already). If Damian were just an actor and did nothing else between acting gigs except hide out with the family somewhere far away from cameras and people and prying eyes, we’d have a pretty easy (and boring) time of it, wouldn’t we. But, no, this guy has to do lots of other things, namely a lot of other sporty things, pretty much the entire time he’s not working on the sport of his profession.

Damianista’s done a fine job telling us about Damian’s summer. And here, I’ll touch a bit more on one of those summerly interests, the one that may be, arguably, the most foreign to us Yanks: the game of cricket.

Damian was slated to play at Authors v Entertainers on September 12 to benefit Chance to Shine, an organization geared towards “spreading the power of cricket.” Whether he did in fact play or not, we can’t confirm. Nonetheless, here are some ponderings on some ins-and-outs and themes of this strange-to-us game, bits from his attendance at other cricket matches this summer, and some glorious shots of the Authors v Entertainers event at Wormsley.

Spoiler alert: Authors won over Entertainers in this match so chances are that Damian may not have been there afterall. 😀

Continue reading “Damian Lewis and Cricket”