It’s been a truly amazing six months for Damian Lewis… And, for us, too!
Let’s start with the guy that gives his name to our blog!
It’s quite a job to keep up with Damian Lewis. Our guy is a busy bee! 2015, in particular, is an extraordinary year with many of his projects coming to life on small and big screen as well as on stage!
The year started with an extremely successful Wolf Hall run on BBC2 — the first episode being literally my birthday gift, no less! — making the mini-series BBC2’s most popular drama since modern ratings began in 2002. Wolf Hall also received rave reviews from any serious media outlet you can imagine during its PBS run in the US with the Atlantic delivering the best headline: “With Wolf Hall, PBS Finds a Drama Worthy of the Word ‘Masterpiece’.”
UPDATE 07/17/2015: When I wrote this post, Wolf Hall seemed to be a strong contender in the Outstanding Mini-Series/Movie category. And, now, it has received eight nominations including Outstanding Limited Series, Lead Actor (Mark Rylance), Supporting Actor (Damian Lewis), Costume Design (Joanna Eatwell), Directing (Peter Kosminsky) and Writing (Peter Straughan). Congratulations to everyone involved in making this masterpiece and best of luck at the Emmys!
Then came Damian Lewis’ wonderful comeback to stage on West End in David Mamet’s modern classic American Buffalo. The production as well as the performances by Damian Lewis, John Goodman and Tom Sturridge got great reviews with my most favorite commentary being “Damian Lewis is right on the money in Mamet Classic” by the Guardian critic Michael Billington!
And, now… Our Englishman is in New York ready to tackle the next job: Bringing to life a “brilliant, ambitious, hedge-fund king” Bobby “Axe” Axelrod in new Showtime drama series Billions. The first series teaser is already out and makes your imagination work! Season 1 shoot that is about to start in NYC will last about six months with a premiere on Showtime hopefully in early 2016. As much as I am still mourning Nicholas Brody like many fans do, I just cannot wait to meet Mr. Bobby Axelrod and have Damian on my TV weekly soon!
Finally, Damian Lewis has three movies coming to a theater near us this fall/winter season: The Silent Storm that had its premiere at BFI London Film Festival last October, Queen of the Desert that had its premiere at Berlin Film Festival in February, and Our Kind of Traitor — coming to a theatre near us this fall/winter season.
Just take a quick look at the six characters Damian is bringing to us this very year…
Henry VIII in Wolf Hall: a god-like king. Bobby Axelrod in Billions: a 21st Century Wall Street hedge-fund king. Walter “Teach” Cole in American Buffalo: a lower class, vulgar American in 1970s. Balor McNeil in The Silent Storm: a righteous minister in on a remote island in Scotland in mid 20th century. Charles Doughty-Wylie in Queen of the Desert: an Edwardian era soldier. Hector Meredith in Our Kind of Traitor: a high up in the British Secret Service. All different. Both physically and psychologically. AMAZING.
These six months have been as exciting for us, the bloggers at Fan Fun with Damian Lewis, as for Damian Lewis himself. As of July 5, our blog has been LIVE for six months!
Six months may not be a very long time in a blog’s life, but it is still a milestone in its own right — at least a very good excuse to thank YOU, our readers, for the overwhelming support and feedback you have given us over the months!
As we are collectively sharing Damian Lewis FUN, you all are making our dream come true! A BIG thank you to each and every one of you for reading us, giving us feedback, and following us on Facebook, Twitter and Tmblr. Damian Lewis inspires us in so many different ways that we just love turning the inspiration into words… Hope you are enjoying the blog as much as we love writing it!
Last but definitely not the least, a BIG thank you goes to Damian Lewis for the inspiration and for his very kind “thank you” for the work we have been doing! Damian is here to stay, so are we and we will keep doing the best we can to showcase our favorite actor and his brilliant work!
…which brings me to our little celebration with each of us choosing a post from the last six months — and it’s not an easy task, believe me, it turns out we have had 154 blog posts since day one — that she thinks reflects the best about our work.
Here comes our Bookworm, one-half of our Fan Fiction department:
“It was quite hard to whittle this down to one. How do you pick one favourite out of everything done on here in the last 6 months? Favourite is after all subjective. I could have perhaps picked one of the Wolf Hall reviews given that I stumbled across Damianista during the UK run of the show, as I tweeted like mad, gushing about Mr Lewis and Mr Rylance and all that chemistry. I could have picked one of JaniaJania’s detailed and informative posts (I’m looking at the Brody one specifically, quelle surprise), or one of LilMisfit’s fiction posts…the girl has talent.
However, I have chosen “Damian Lewis loves Don Draper” where we share Damian’s love of all things Don Draper. It is more than that though. Watching episodes of your favourite TV show when you should be working… dare I say it… obsessively? Damian does that? Just like me? We tend to put our favourite actors on a pedestal where they are out of our reach and somehow very different and superhuman to us all, but actually they like a good TV show to get caught up in like the rest of us, so of course Damian does what we do and I take great comfort in that fact. Happy 6th Month anniversary everyone.”
Our “forensic fan” JaniaJania follows:
“Such a daunting task to pick just one post! Not many blogs can boast of new content daily. And new interesting content at that! I came on a short while after the blog was started by Damianista, and, she, by far, delivers the major portion of the content here. So odds are in her favor when choosing a post to wish the blog a Happy 6 month Anniversary.
Many posts, including my own, speak from a place of critical distance. We look at Damian and all he does with a certain rarified awe, through a cloudy film of fanatical fantasy. So, it’s rare and special when a post gets closer than fantasy and gives us a first hand account of seeing him on stage and in person. One such post is Damianista’s “A Look Back to 10 weeks of American Buffalo with Damian Lewis, Part I.” I so loved hearing about her experience seeing Damian on stage in American Buffalo (and before he got on stage :)). I also absolutely loved the collage she compiled of fan pics that would come through Twitter nearly every night of the performance. It showed this blog as a true interactive space for sharing love of all things Damian. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet the guy in person, and I’m not sure I ever really want to burst the bubble of the fantasy. But, I sure would love to see him on stage! And I loved hearing from folks who did see him on stage. Damianista’s post summarized the experience beautifully. Happy 6th Month Anniversary to the entire team here. Hope to spend many more months (years!) sharing this big fantastical love with you all and our readers!”
Damianista, yours truly, is a spoiled brat and she cheats hehe.
“I am not choosing one post, but I am choosing a series of posts that I think reflect two things that I personally find central to our blog. First, yes, we love all things Damian but we also love writing! We do our best to be original and creative with a dash of spontaneity in our writing — you can’t believe how many posts come out of casual conversation in an email or on Twitter — and above all, we do our best to be FUN. Second, the four of us are so different and so similar at the same time. We span different generations, time zones, cultural backgrounds and life experiences. Then again we are all strongly opinionated women that do not shy away from expressing ourselves openly. And, in this fantastic mix of differences and similarities, each of us has her own perspective and voice to bring to the blog – making it a more exciting and colorful place to think, write and talk about Damian Lewis and his work!
In this regard, I believe that the “Desert Island Discs” series that we did in May is a great example! We are all inspired by Damian Lewis and the characters he brings to life; and when it comes to music that reminds us of Damian, we all take different approaches. Besides, music is FUN and very proper for a celebration!
Desert Island Discs with Damianista: It’s the music itself, not the lyrics, that I identify with Damian or one of the characters he plays — it’s probably because I’m not a native speaker. But then again I associate my memories with particular music so much so that I, in fact, believe we all should have a life soundtrack 🙂
Lyrics take center stage in all my teammates’ selections and for a very good reason!
Desert Island Discs with Bookworm: Bookworm takes us on a grand tour of Damian Lewis characters varying from Brody to Henry VIII to Charlie Crews to Paul Reynolds to Mark Rose to Milo Shakespeare 🙂
Desert Island Discs with LilMisFit: For LilMisFit, it is all about Brody and Carrie, and oh those music videos that she made are just to die for!
Desert Island Discs with JaniaJania: It’s not just the lyrics but also the mood at the heart of her “mix tape” — sad and happy and peaceful and angry —exactly the way she likes her art 🙂
Happy 6 months to everyone – it’s just so much fun to share this journey with all of you, my teammates and all our readers! Cheers!
