We Get a Shout Out! From Damian! Lewis? Yes!! Shout Out from Damian Lewis!

Hi Everyone!

First of all, apologies to those of you that have been expecting a new post in our “Life with Charlie Crews” series… We need to skip a week to share some important news with you! Thank you for your understanding!

We are thrilled to report, as of today, our blog has been LIVE for 18 months! And we are psyched to celebrate with a little shout out from a certain Damian Lewis! Yes, you read it right! 😀

So… You know we recently shared our little interview with Damian Lewis on the blog. After the interview, Damian offered to do a little clip to share with us and all fans what he thinks about this blog and the work we do. And we are extremely honored to share his words here with you!

Thank you, Damian! Thank you for your kindness and generosity. Thank you for your trust in us. And, above all, thank you for the inspiration you are constantly providing us with. WE WILL KEEP DOING IT…

…which brings us to our little celebration today, with each of us choosing a favorite post, from the last eighteen months — it’s not an easy task, it turns out we had 381 posts since day one — that she thinks reflects the BEST about this blog.

Before getting there, we owe a big thank you to each and every one of you for reading us, leaving feedback, sharing our posts and following us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. As we are collectively sharing Damian Lewis FUN, you are making our dream come true! Damian Lewis continues to inspire us in so many different ways and we LOVE turning the inspiration into words… Hope you are enjoying the blog as much as we love writing it!

Please don’t be a stranger, write to us, leave comments; we particularly love it when you make requests about topics you want us to write about — keep them coming!

With Love,

Fan Fun Team

Damianista 

I am a calm person… well, generally. And I was totally relaxed when I interviewed Damian after his Times Talks. But then I was about to faint as I filmed his shout out message. It was the words Damian used for our work that made my knees go weak: “Amazing.” “Involved.” “Intricate.” “Sophisticated.” “Makes fascinating reading.” “Keep doing it.”

Well, I am totally over the moon and will let everyone know when I am back on planet earth!

I met Joyce, a great fan, at Times Talks, who shared this fun story: She meets an 88 year old lady at Times Talks with Jude Law who attends all Jude Law events. The actor knows her and shouts out to her during the talk: “Hey Doris, how are you?” Sweet. And NOW I could not help fantasize being 88 years old and attending Times Talks with Damian. He says “Hey, how are you?” He is 89 (this is for you, JaniaJania!) and doing King Lear on Broadway! Then we blog about it 😀

As for a post that reflects the BEST on this blog… Damian Lewis is so many things: First and foremost, he is a brilliant actor. But then he is a sportsman. And he is a family man. He is intelligent. He is articulate. He is funny. He is stylish. He is kind. He is gracious with his fans. He does charity. He reads. He cooks. He sings. And yeah he is extremely easy on the eyes! And it is all these different sides to him we LOVE writing about here.

Having said that… I believe you write the BEST about what you know about the MOST. In that regard, one post that stands out for me is Bobby Axelrod: The Kid Whose Dad Never Came Back Part I and Part II: A post that emerged from my own life experiences so it is my story as much as it is Bobby’s.

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

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

This blog has brought so much love and laughter into my life thanks to my amazing teammates and all our readers! I can easily say this is one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had in life. And the guy who gives his name to our blog finding it “amazing” is the most delicious cherry on the cake. Here’s to Damian Lewis and his fantastic fandom!

Lady Trader

Hi everyone! Lady Trader here. I am so proud and humbled to be a part of this amazing group, and happy to be part of our 18 month anniversary. As you can see from his video, Damian appreciates our work, and I’ll second him!

This blog is thoughtful, insightful, and always making us think! A big thanks goes out to Damian for bringing such diverse characters to life. These characters and his portrayals of them are the basis of our analysis, discussions, and our overall appreciation of such a great actor. And, let’s not forget the FUN!!

Since I’m a freshman on the blog and only have 2 post (so far!), I’m picking my “In Defense of Bobby Axelrod” post to showcase.

In Defense of Bobby Axelrod

Being a trader and working on Wall Street since 1988, Axe and “Billions” speaks to me on a different level than just entertainment. The revelation regarding Axe and 9/11 touched something inside me that made me want to write. My “defense” was my first ever blog post; but it was also the first time I ever put my feelings and experiences of 9/11 into words or shared them with anyone. It was a very emotional and personal post, but very liberating also. I want to thank everyone for being encouraging through that process.

Damianista and the rest of the group have been so welcoming and amazing, and I feel like we have formed a great little family. I look forward to reading more “involved, intricate, sophisticated” posts over the next 18 months!

Happy Anniversary Fan Fun!!

JaniaJania

Here we are at 18 months and what a ride it’s been so far. The experience of meeting these women, our daily chats, the exercise of writing, the discipline needed to create something reasonably readable to publish once a week has been an incredible learning and growing experience.

My process as a writer for my weekly Wednesday posts has usually been this: 1) jot down a general topic as one comes to mind during our team chatting, 2) ask Damianista a couple days is advance to remind me of what I had decided to write about :), 3) gather the artifact: screencap images, create gifs, links, and 4) sit down to churn out the words. Sometimes I manage to put something together in advance, but most of the time my words have been stream-of-consciousness musing, usually wine-fueled and coming late at night after I’ve put my daughter to bed. Majority of my posts are me letting the images and whatever we’ve just seen on screen be the skeleton over which to drape one thought after another without much (or any!) plan for where it’ll all end up. If I’m lucky and it’s not 3am by the time it all comes out, I’ll turn back and clean it up, make the language tighter where I can. What a beautiful feeling to see that 94 posts later (not all unique, but, still, 94!) I still have so much left to say about this incredibly talented actor, our Muse, Damian Lewis.

Of recent posts, I’d have to say one of my favorites to write was Damian and Shakespeare:

Damian Lewis and Shakespeare

It was a full week where we saw more than usual of Damian. The SAG-AFTRA interview, which I wrote about the day before, lead nicely into the Shakespeare solos. In one we got his ever erudite exposition on his career, the other we got some vivid proof of concept, concentrated in a stunning 2 minute speech.

Someone, a teacher most likely, tweeted that Damian’s Antony speech forever has changed the way he will now teach that part to his students. That tweet cuts to the crux of what I find so compelling about following this actor. Damian Lewis takes us all back to school, doesn’t he? To those heady days where you’re seeing, hearing and experiencing new things every single day. Nerdy and boring, maybe, but, watching Damian makes me feel like that again, like I’m learning and still capable of growing. Such a rare thing to find in “entertainment” and the very best outcome of blogging for FanFun.

Here’s to many more years!

TBkWrm

Life and work conspire with one another to ensure that in life and work you can be running constantly at the last minute regardless of how well you planned. Priorities change continuously.

So it is that this blog has joined that cycle of life and work, but the blog is undoubtedly my stress reliever and being able to chat with the other ladies about the good (mostly Damian, but not limited) and the bad is a great help as well.

A particular day last week fell into the ‘bad camp’. Damian Lewis is but human and he therefore cannot solve every problem. However, he can conspire with my blog mates to put a smile on my face (planned or not!) and so it was later on that bad day I switched on to messages from Damianista telling us about her interview with Damian and the message he left for us… I had to read that a few times before I was convinced my bad day had not knocked my vision silly and I was reading what I thought I was reading. If it is possible to convey hyperventilating by instant message then let me assure you all that JaniaJania managed it quite well. I proceeded to watch both and while the bad day could not be completely washed way, a smile cracked my grumpy and angry coupon for the first time that day. I love this blog.

VIA twitter I managed to ask Damian a difficult question at Times Talks about who he is supporting at Euro 2016, England or Wales. He settled for diplomacy, but later on Island were very nice to him and removed the difficulty of that question…

At Times Talks, Damian also spoke about Band of Brothers and, in particular, the scene from episode 9 when they find the Nazi concentration camp. I found it moving listening to him talk about it. So, as it seems that people are ever more determined to divide and fracture all around them, I look back at my post about episode 9 of Band of Brothers.

Band of Humanity

It does not seem 6 months since the one year anniversary, but here I am writing another anniversary blog with the good ladies I now call friends and with the motivation from the kindness of the man himself to ensure there are many more.

Holliedazzle

Well, I’m the new girl here, but I want to say that I certainly don’t feel like it. The women who write for the blog are amazing. Smart, clever, funny, and so diverse. I can easily see why “the tall one” is also a fan of us. And as an entertainer, myself, I know how flattering feedback from fans can be, and this blog is sort of the ultimate dream come true for any entertainer. To have everything you do, both professionally and personally, reviewed and written about with such care and eloquence? What an honor it would be. And you can see that in his video message to us. His gracious and kind nature to his fans is one of the things I love most about Damian. It’s why my favorite “not written by Holliedazzle” post is the one about him wearing a gifted scarf. I hope our kind words keep him just as warm as that long length of gifted fabric that he draped around his neck. It really is lovely when the man you admire and look up to is just genuinely a good person.

Damian Lewis’ New Scarf is the New Roaming Gnome 🙂

And speaking about good people, I again return to my thoughts about the women who write for this blog. They are incredible, and they opened their arms and swept me right into them. I made some off-hand comments about Damian’s acting styles between characters, and how his talents allowed for him to create completely different yet believable characters with each role, and suddenly I was corresponding with Damianista and planning some posts of my own. Since I love to celebrate Damian’s acting strengths, my favorite post I’ve written was probably the first one I did.

The Many Faces of Damian Lewis: Part I

It was thrilling to create it, and then see it so well received.  Even my Delsarte teacher and peers enjoyed it! I really look forward to creating more content and finding new ways to celebrate this sisterhood and our Fan Fun “tribe”!

Author: Damianista

Academic, Traveler, Blogger, Runner, Theatre Lover, Wine Snob, Part-time New Yorker, and Walking Damian Lewis Encyclopedia :D Procrastinated about a fan's diary on Damian Lewis for a while and the rest is history! View all posts by Damianista