A casting call tweet from @CastingAbout the other day is a clear call to action. We’d better start buzzing about NEW Showtime Wall Street Drama Billions!
So, Billions is currently casting for Season 1. If you happen to be in New York, and want to contribute a small part… well, why not?
We talked earlier here about the two major characters Damian Lewis is bringing to life this year; one on stage, and the other one on TV, that represent the opposite sides of the American Dream! 
Damian is currently playing Walter “Teach” Cole, a man that cannot be further away from the American Dream, in American Buffalo on London stage, and he will be playing Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, a man that is the “American Dream” itself, soon in the new Showtime Wall Street drama Billions.
Well, I got to meet Mr. Walter “Teach” Cole last week on stage… Oh, what an unforgettable night at the theater! Damian Lewis makes you gasp as you follow him on stage. The energy he emits on stage captures you completely — so much so that it is quite difficult to take your eyes off him even when “Teach” is just sitting quietly — eating his bacon and eavesdropping a conversation between Don and Bob. It is most probably because, with that high energy you feel in him, you just KNOW anything can happen with him anytime that you are at the edge of your seat… waiting. Damian Lewis’ performance is a tour de force that it leaves you in awe… for days! In case you missed it, I have reviewed American Buffalo in two parts, Act I and Act II — well, I had so much to tell 🙂
Now that I have met Mr. Walter “Teach” Cole, I cannot wait to meet Mr. Bobby “Axe” Axelrod in early 2016. Damian Lewis recently gave a great interview to Gold Derby in which he briefly talked about Billions — see it here.
Intriguing, huh? Ah, we had the BEST “cat and mouse” ever with Carrie and Brody on Homeland that some of us (me! me! me!) still cannot let go, but I am so looking forward to this very different “cat and mouse” with US Attorney Rhoades and Hedge-Fund King Axelrod, too! And, I assure you, Damian, we will ENJOY it 🙂
So… They are shooting Billions in the second half of the year — which means as early as July. OMG, this guy will be done with American Buffalo on June 27, and he has such a physical role on stage that he should be knackered by the end of the run — may the force be with him the rest of American Buffalo run and I really REALLY hope he has sometime to chill before he starts with Billions.
And, it seems Damian will collect quite a lot of frequent flier miles during the shoot. He does not plan to stay in New York over the weekends — the city in which he once said he “worked hard and played hard” in 1990s. Family makes a difference and the hopeless romantic in me LOVES it! Damian tells Daily Mail: “When Billions starts shooting later this year, I’ll just come home from New York on the weekends — it’s amazing how many men I meet going in and out of JFK Airport who spend the week in New York, fly home to London on a Friday night, then back to New York on Sunday night in order to have the weekends with their kids, and I guess I’ll be doing the same thing.”
Speaking of family, Damian Lewis will of course have a “screen family” on Billions. We had talked earlier about Damian hinting to the Evening Standard about his character that Bobby is a “self-made man – though he does work his way up to be a hedge fund manager.” Now, his “screen better half” Malin Akerman also gives a hint or two to Glamour Magazine about her character, Lara Axelrod… “I’ll be relocating to New York from June to December for a new Showtime series that just got picked up called Billions. I play Damian Lewis’ wife, and it’s incredible. It also stars Paul Giamatti. I like to call it a mix of House of Cards meets Wolf of Wall Street. It’s amazing. My character is a self-made woman, and her husband is a billionaire and has tons of money. She comes from quite the background, and she’s a tough cookie. You don’t mess with her. She has built quite a life [with her husband], and she’s not afraid to threaten you if she needs to. She’s also really lovely and a strong female character.”
A self-made man and a self-made woman in holy matrimony 🙂 Well, it seems we have, not one, but TWO tough cookies in the Axelrod Family that give endless twist and turn possibilities to Billions storyline — go, Team Axelrod!
If you want to go beyond the Axelrods and want to find out about more about the show, its creators as well as the cast, you may want to take a look at our earlier blog post here. And, pay a visit to the Showtime Billions page, too!
In closing, for American fans, if you don’t have cable and are considering buying cable for Billions in early 2016, I have some good news for you. Showtime has just announced that “its new Internet streaming service will make its debut in early July on Apple devices for a monthly fee of $11. The service, which does not require a traditional television subscription, will include unlimited on-demand access to Showtime original series as well as hundreds of hours of movies, documentaries and sports programming. It also will include a live feed of the network’s East and West Coast broadcasts.”
Woot! Woot! 🙂
