musings about the actor and the characters he brings to life
This one is for everyone who’s missing Bobby Axelrod!
Cheers to six years of Bobby Axelrod on Billions! What an indelible character Damian has etched in our pop culture forever. Although Damian left the show after five seasons there was always an opportunity for him to return – never say never, right? We even felt his character’s constant presence in season six. Fast forward to the upcoming season seven and that’s exactly what has happened…the Axe returned.
This review was originally published on October 7, 2024, and updated on October 18, 2024, for the UK viewers.
“The comedic premise of the film is that this family is living this dull, suburban life, and they’ve got a big secret, and no one knows what it is until this event happens in the film. And then the shit hits the fan, all hell breaks loose.” – Damian Lewis.
I finally met The Radleys at Cinema Village in NYC. And I met them in style, too… with my fangs on! Continue reading “‘The Radleys’ Review: Love, Addiction and Choices”
Damianista’s note: As he was talking about his early TV work on The Chris Moyles Show the other day, Damian mentioned wearing a speedo on an episode Touch of Frost and inspired me to re-share this post for this week’s Throwback Thursday. Here is JaniaJania taking you back to a 25 year old Damian Lewis on TV!
Before he hit the big time in cable TV, Damian did some smaller, lesser known roles in British television. The role of Adam Weston in a feature-length episode of mystery drama Touch of Frost may not be a role that Damian is particularly proud of, given how disdainfully he spoke of it at the NY Times Talk in May 2014.
Nonetheless, I’d say the role begs remembering, if, for nothing else, to give us a picture of Damian at 25. According to Damian, roles such as this one were the few available to British actors in television in 1996. It was either Merchant-Ivory-esque period drama or stories of the struggles of the underclass left in the wake of Thatcherism, both “classes” of roles Damian would have been uniquely qualified to play, but only later. First, he had to build up a resume with things like A Touch of Frost. So here’s Damian at 25, a Shakespearean trained thespian and, they ask him to get down to his skivvies. Okay, he’s still doing parts that get him into his skivvies some 20 years later, but, hey, who’s counting. As Bobby Axelrod would say:
Those who can, do.
Continue reading “Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in A Touch of Frost”
10 years?!?! Whaaaat? It feels like yesterday.
I was very lucky to be there in the room when Damian and Helen read love poems to each other from The Love Book, a brilliant collection of classic and contemporary love poems that vary from Shakespeare to E.E. Cummings to Maya Angelou coming together in a book as well as in an app. It was a moving and intimate hour with a powerhouse husband and wife team reading poems, teasing each other, and sharing their dynamic chemistry with the audience.
It turns out that when the festival inquired about a possible video recording of the reading in 2014, Helen and Damian said no. Damian tells The Sunday Times:
Damian Lewis is returning to theater stage for a one-night-only charity gala performance in “A Marvellous Party” on November 17 at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. The gala performance is to celebrate the legacy of British playwright and composer Noël Coward and support three charities; namely, The Queen’s Reading Room, the Noël Coward Foundation and Acting For Others, all united in Noël Coward’s belief that the arts belong to everyone.
The Noel Coward Foundation launched Coward 125, a two-year long celebrations of the life and work of Noël Coward, will now culminate in the star-studded “A Marvellous Party” in 2024, Coward’s 125th birth year. Tickets are selling fast!
And for today’s Throwback Thursday, I would like to revisit a Noël Coward celebration that I was very lucky to see in London last fall. Continue reading “Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Noël Coward’s London Calling! – A Centenary Celebration”