Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Damian Lewis

Episode Date: April 22, 2018

Damian Lewis is the British actor you usually hear using an American accent on television. The star of the hit show “Billions” first made a name for himself playing an American soldier on HBO’s “Band of Brothers,” before he went on to shake up television with his Emmy and Golden Globe winning performance as Sergeant Nick Brody on “Homeland.” In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” the actor talks to Willie Geist about his in-depth preparation for his current role as ruthless hedge fund manager Bobby Axelrod, including studying real-life Wall Street titans. It turns out Lewis has also learned a mean game of ping pong in his downtime on the set, so he challenged Willie to a friendly match. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here. You're listening to another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. I have to thank you so much for the response. We put it out last week. Five episodes beginning with Bill Murray on the two-year anniversary of my show Sunday today on NBC. Didn't know what was going to happen. Lobbed it out there. Get the full conversation of our interviews that you see on TV or seven or eight minutes. We give you the full sit-down interview, not the edited version. It comes out to be 30 minutes, 45, whatever. it is. And this week, I say, let me check out Apple Podcasts and see how we did. And I scroll down, maybe we're in the top 100. I scroll, I scroll, I don't see it. I go, man, well, that sucks.

We're not in the top 100. So I go back to the top. We were number one. We were number one. The Sunday Sit Down podcast on Apple for three days was the number one podcast. So I wanted to thank you guys for subscribing. Thank you for downloading. Thank you for telling your friends. Thank you for listening. If you got through them all, my God, I'm impressed. Bill Murray was there, John Goodman, Emily Blunt, Drew Barrymore, Chadwick Bozeman, the star of the Black Panther. And this week, we come at you with Damien Lewis,

the star of what a lot of people think is the best show on television right now, billions on Showtime. He, of course, was Nicholas Brody on Homeland, which is a breakout role. And long before that, he was in Band of Brothers. So those are three roles that a British actor, had an American accent. So a lot of people when they hear Damien Lewis speak in real life, they go, wait a minute, why do you have a British accent in this interview? Well, it's because

he's British, born and raised in London. And his big break was Band of Brothers. There's a great story in this podcast you're going to want to hear where he talks about auditioning for Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg and doing so well in the audition with Tom Hanks. He felt like he nailed it, went out to celebrate, got a little bit liquored up. and then got a call that Spielberg wanted to see him right away. Oh, boy. That got interesting real fast. So he'll tell us that story.

Apparently on the set of billions, there's a ping pong table that everybody plays on. They're all like crazy good ping pong players. So we did our interview at Spin, which is the famous table tennis club, owned in part by Susan Sarandon here in New York City. So you'll hear a lot of ping pong talk. We did some ping pong playing. I thought I was pretty good as a master of basement sports, but I wasn't Damien Lewis who learned his craft on the set of Billions Good.

So here it is our Sunday sit-down this week with Billion Star, Damien Lewis. Well, let's make this quick so we can get down to business and play some ping-pong, which is why I think we're both here. The showdown. Yeah, it's, yeah. Have you done your stretches this morning? I did an hour at home. You really?

Yeah, on the hamstrings. Wow. We've got to be nimble out there. As you say, you sweat a little bit when you play ping-pong. You do sweat, actually. I was, I joined this, I went down to this club. I found this little local club in Brooklyn where I'm staying. And it is not like this.

They're not serving cocktails at a fully operated bar and with beautiful artwork everywhere. It's like a little hole in the wall place. And people down there just drinking, you know, beers out of cans, you know, pulled out of a little fridge from my, but the guys are down there just, you know, pounding it. And, you know, just. all with little ticks. You know, just sort of, it's really nice you came down, Damien. Come down next Thursday, it's open club.

And just pounding, talking and hitting the ball really hard at the same time. I take it you, you haven't been back then. I went once. I went once. I had a spare couple of hours. But it was fun. It was really fun to play. But ping pong is one of those games.

It feels like it's the ultimate amateur game. And he's like, yeah, I play good ping pong, you know. And then you go down in one of these clubs and you realize, You realize just how seriously some of these guys are playing it. And they're incredible. There's basement good and then there's Olympic good. Oh, yeah. They're 20 feet behind the table.

Well, just club good. Just club nerd good. Right. You know, club nerd ping pong is really good. Right. They don't feel there's a basement sport either. This is dead serious. No, no, it's good.

And it's fantastic playing it in Brooklyn because there's a slightly sort of countercultural sort of nerdy arts. student feel about it as well. The guys who are playing, I like two foot taller than they should be and really skinny, you know, with really fashionable haircuts and, you know, fashionable t-shirts, just sort of going and drinking beer. I'm just hitting them all like a hundred miles an hour. Sounds amazing. It's like, it's, I mean, this feels a bit like an art installation, living art. Doesn't really feel like a sport. You just walk out confused for the, they're all the guys who can't play sport, but they're genius, genius. They've found their things. saying yeah yeah all right so we'll do ping pong in a minute maybe they can't play sport who am I a judge yeah why would you say something like that why would I be like that about ping pong people uh let's talk about billions season three pick us up a little bit where we are right now

as season two left off where is axe where is axe uh um just before I say that I could I could offer a teaser that ping pong features in season three of billions. It all ties together. Isn't this a beautiful coincidence? How things work out? I can't quite see how that's going to happen, but I can't wait to see. And I'm not going to tell you.

Darn it. I thought you might say it. But it's there. Where's Axe? So Axe has been, he's been hoodwinked at the end of season two. He's really taken a big sucker punch from Chuck. And season three really opens up with Axe trying to find the relevant evidence that can keep him out of jail.

So he has to just do a little bit of backtracking, working out where this ingredient went, this poison that he used. And so there's a lot of backtracking and trying to track that down. We see our doctor friend again. And in the meantime, Chuck is through Brian Connery, is pushing forward the agenda to prosecute. and stick acts in jail for a long time.

Billions being billions. The more that any, really, the more that any person wants or needs something in the world of billions, the more lines they have to ask themselves, will they be prepared to cross? And in billions, line after line gets crossed. That's all the show is. And that's the fantastic thing about it.

And with each line, each red line, that is crossed, you are only implicating yourself and compromising yourself more and more. So that starts to be a problem for Chuck. And I think that is going to be my tease for season three. So the closer we get to prosecuting, to successfully prosecuting Bobby, the closer chuck gets to landing himself in deep water.

And that's really where Billions has ended up settling so perfectly, so beautifully. We live in a world where need, ambition, competition, success, and victory is everything to these people, the game, which is such a perfect metaphor for people in the, certainly in the world that acts is in. the hedge fund industry. The game is everything. I'm winning the game. The numbers kind of become irrelevant after a while. You want to be able to go to your shareholders and say, these are the numbers and they're damn good. But personally, just the winning of the game, each little victory, I think, is what drives them forward. And so, but it becomes clear

that that's also true for the attorney's office. And to prosecute the number of prosecutions, the number of successful prosecutions becomes a badge of honor. And it's like you're batting average. And then and so this season we descend even further through the circles of hell as as each, not only I have to

say Chuck and Bobby, but other characters are all sucked in to the dark, dark world of power and money and as each soul, each personal individual soul blackens and darkens because of the corrupting influence of

power and money, we we see the stakes just rise higher and higher. And what's so great? What they've done brilliantly this season is this isn't just about Chuck and Bobby just budding heads endlessly, because I think that would run the risk of becoming repetitive. So they're having to deal with mutinies in their own worlds as well. So the story has grown.

It looks from the outside, and you can tell me if it's true from the inside, that it's just a blast to play somebody like Bobby, somebody who you would never aspire to be personally in your real life to have those ambitions and those goals, hopefully. Yeah. What's it like to get inside his head when you step on the set?

Well, it's really good fun. You know, this is a show about as well being a-ha-ha-ha. Can we say that? Yes. It's a show about asses being asses, and there's nothing more fun to watch than that. But they do have redeeming, they have redeeming qualities.

You know, they're by turns charming, daring. They live life. They're slightly smarter than the rest of us. They live a slightly more glamorous life than the rest of us. Certainly Bobby does. And that's why he's fun to play. He's a predator. He prowls.

He's looking for prey. Again, as a metaphor, that's a good metaphor for hedge fund guys who are looking for, you know, the injured wildebeest off the back of the pack, you know, that's underperforming, you know. And, you know, or is being told that it's still, you know, the market is being told that it's still performing well, but they know it's not. And so I think he's got a swagger about him. He's, he's an alley cat. He's, that's what's fun for me. I, I, I, I, Damien, I come from a, you know, pretty tony privileged, privately educated British background.

And I, in America, I get asked to play blue-collar fighters. And it's really good fun. He's a guy who comes from, I think, a blue-collar background. I think his background would very much have been firemen and policemen and doctors and nurses and the professions, you know, people who are, but not. not the privileged, moneyed world of high finance. And he goes to Hofstra. We make a thing of that.

I know that's a very end joke for this with the East Coast, that he's a Hofstra guy, but he's not an Ivy League guy. And that's an important distinction between him and Chuck. And he's a scrapper. He's that boxer who lives on his wits, and whose wits are just a little bit quicker than everybody else's. So he can roll, and he's got quick feet. And he's, there's one of these guys who's,

who's innately good with numbers and people. So that's why he's a multi-billionaire, you know. And he's got a little chip on his shoulder about having those roots and coming into the world of finance, but showing that to me that the instincts he learned growing up the way he did can be overlaid and applied to what he does that. And I think that's a fascinating little insight into the culture here, the socio-cultural life of certainly the East Coast,

but maybe of America at large. And I say this as a, you know, as a Brit, where, you know, people never stop talking about how the fact our class system never really dies. And we're still somehow defined by it. People want to keep smashing it down. But I think it's entrenched. I don't see it ever going away.

And it's about breeding and family and money is secondary because most of our aristocrats are all broke anyway. You know, so they just have the big houses and the thousands of acres in Scotland or wherever it happens to be. So that weird class system still exists. But they speak to that a little bit in this show here about how there is a class system here. And it's not about money. As much as people want to think, you know, that's what defines class. here. Bobby runs straight into a wall of snobbery and old European money and people who do come from the old families and who are part of the old clubs and have belonged, you know, here for a long

time. Pre the industrial captains of the earlier 20th century, they were here in the 19th century and even before that. And he can't buy his way in. He can't just go buy a football team. He's not the right, he's not from the right side of the tracks. And he's made to feel that strongly. Money doesn't just buy you into the upper echelons. It just doesn't. You've got to be from the right people. And he's not quite.

So that also drives him. And I think that makes him appealing to people. It's like, and you know, this idea, you know, you can make anything of yourself here. I mean, that's, you know, central to the American story, isn't it? Come here, make something of yourself. You two can be present one day. my son, it's true, it's true. And that's the amazing truth in the story here.

And I think Bobby's attracted for that reason. And I think that's why people will continue to root for him, even though he constantly strays across the line, the ethical line. I was going to ask you that. Why do I still root for him when he's... Because I think there's still this idea that, All right, you bent the rules a little bit, but dude, you want it.

And this is where you can have it. It's America, baby. You can have it. And if you're smart enough and if you're brave enough and bullse enough and make enough smart right moves and have it, man, just have it because you deserve it. And they like the guy who walks into the old country club flips over the tables a little bit and says, actually I'm the biggest guy in this room. So, especially now, and this is a global thing that's going on now.

It's, you know, look at Brexit. God, let's talk about Brexit. No, let's not talk about Brexit. It's globalization that didn't work for the majority of both our electorates. So we've made populist votes. In our case, let's leave Europe, dumb idea. Let's vote, you know, Donald Trump into the world. White House, another dumb idea. So, you know, but it's the populist, it's the populist uprising.

And it's a reaction to the promise that globalization would make everybody wealthier, and it just, it didn't. It made some people very wealthy, and other people didn't move. And by the way, to take your comparison a step further, as you were describing Bobby, I was thinking of Donald Trump because it's almost his story, which is that he's a Queens guy, He's an Outerboro guy. The New York Times never accepted him. He was never allowed in the clubs. He wasn't one of the blue bloods.

And he carries that same chip on his shoulder. I don't know if you've considered that, but there's obviously very different people, but he's got that same chip that I'm going to prove to you. I'm going to become President of the United States to prove that I belonged all along. And actually, I'm going to beat you at your own game. There's some of that to him, too. But we don't have to get on that road.

No, God, I'm happy to, we can make this as political as you dare. But, you know, I think people will start switching over channel right about now. But of course the comparisons are, of course the comparisons are there. We want those comparisons to be there. You'll see in this season that, well, I'll say this first. The guys, first and foremost, wanted this to be an entertainment, and they wanted to be a smart show so people can draw their own parallels. But I think this season, and I think it's delicious, there have just been one or two more obvious parallels that we make.

One of them, two, appointments which are made within the show, both political and otherwise, who seem to come straight from a contemporary Trump manual. So that's fun, I think. And I think there are some things you want to think about and congratulate your something. for being smart that you spotted in a TV show. Homeland did something similar, but also you just want to go, that's just really funny because that's that person, and here they are in this show.

This is contemporary New York, here we are. I get it, and it's so much fun to be in this world dovetailing in and out of the hard news, just borrowing directly from what's going on around us and having it in our TV show because we can, because it is a contemporary show about high-fi in New York today. So when you were developing the show, developing the character, you met with a bunch

of New York hedge fund guys. What did you want to know from them? What were the questions you asked those guys that you sat at lunch or dinner with them and said, what makes you guys tick? What drives you? What were the questions you had? I met a handful of three or four of the most notorious hedge fungi. I'm not at liberty to give you their names.

I'm sorry about that. I will say that Stevie Cohen did not want to meet with us. Didn't. But I did meet other people who are regularly in the news. And I just wanted, I wanted to get a... Hilariously, the thing that they mostly said was, we're risk averse. This is not Wall Street of the 80s.

This is not Wall Street. not Gordon Gecko. This is not the Wolf of Wall Street, which was penny stocks. We're different. We're a hedge fund guys where the risk is huge. The money is that much greater in a lot of cases. And we're risk averse. It's not about Coke and whores. We're analytical. We're scientific. It's not very rock and roll. And we really won't make a bet until we're sure that pretty much we're going to get a good outcome as far as we can tell. What I now know that means is that I'll be careful what I say here, but they will do whatever they can, and we talk about this in the show, to have the edge. And having the edge is that little extra piece of information

that will give them a greater guarantee of positive returns. Now, Of course, the great question is, how does one go about getting that edge? And how do you do it legally? So that's the fascination for me in the whole hedge fund world. And, you know, I would speak to guys, because that's really what I wanted to know. So how are you, how do you, you're beholden to your shareholders, you have a responsibility to them, how do you go and gather information to make sure that you can go to them at the end of every quarter and say your money's doing well and this is why so when you go for your quarterly lunches

let's say you're an investor in european companies european pension funds whatever it is you got to do Zurich geneva and dussledorf and then come back three days later you're sitting down with the CEOs what what do you say over lunch because you must just as part of the casual conversation you must need to ask so that was a pretty good quarter um Any plans for the next six months? But as soon as you've asked that question, you're technically being offered inside information. So I've become a little agnostic about this whole thing,

having played Bobby Axelrod for three months, because I feel for my shareholders. And it's like, you want to massage these conversations in any way you can in order to get the information that you need in order to make the best investments. So, but they were all very, very, very, very clear to say that, and one guy said to me, I'd get up and walk out of the room if somebody started,

I said, what, you just leave the lunch? Said, yeah, I'd leave the lunch. If he started just talking about the next quarter in any shape or form, I'd leave the lunch. I'm, really? He said yes. They thought we'll fool this actor guy. You were a little too smart for them, I think.

So he said, yes. Anyway, so that was one thing. And then I just wanted to, they were all incredible listeners, but I think they were, they all kind of wanted to be part of this thing that was about to take off billions, because they knew it was about their world. And at the same time, they were a bit wary of it. But I'm sure this is how they are anyway.

They were very still and they were forensic in just listening. They just listened and listened and watched and listened. And their responses were very considered. And it was just an interesting insight into the predator, actually. Now that you know some of them, you've spoken to them, you understand their world. Do you look at hedge funders with admiration, contempt? How do you view their place in society? I'm afraid I take both views.

It's a bit of a fudge dancer. But there are, you know, Jim Chanos publicly, you know, he teaches up at Yale. He's very committed to this idea, and he teaches all his students this, you know, hedge fund guys are a kind of market Dyson. You know, it's actually your responsibility to go around and vacuum up the underperforming company. The companies who say they're performing well, but they're not. They're inefficient. They're bad for the economy. You need to go in there.

You need to short the position. This is really about activism. You need to go in, make changes, turn the company around, and try to get it turning a profit. If that means laying people off, if that means wholesale changes in the board, removing CEOs, whatever it happens to be, then it's necessary.

That's his view. It's pretty cold. It's pretty calculated, but he said for a healthy functioning economy, that's what you do. Bobby is an activist, you know, like the acorns and the lobes and the Chanos's, etc. Jim Chanos, if you remember, was the guy who shorted Enron. Right. You know that. I'll have to tell you that, but for your viewers.

And he's very publicly short Elon Musk and almost anything Elon Musk does. So, and I, you know, I asked Jim about that. why do you want to short Elon Musk? He's basically a good guy. He's trying to do good things. It's not emotional. He's making a business decision. It's a business decision.

It's a business decision. It's totally, it's mathematical. And so the problem you have ethically at that point is the way in which you can manipulate media and press to write or put out negative stories. about companies that you are bulls deep in with your own money because you took a position that they were going to fail. And for the longer that they don't fail, the longer you're paying out money to hold your position in that short. That's a technical financial term, by the way, it falls deep.

Bulls, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's just to use the technical term exactly that I learned off. you know MSNBC there you go yeah

so so then you run into a whole delicious ethical conversation about how one should be able to use the press media in order to you know

make public information that is true or embellished in order to get you to help you with your position and that you've already taken. And there's the aspect of whether or not it's just moving paper around. It's paper pushing.

Are you creating something tangibly good for society, which is a question? I know some of those guys, and I think what they say is what you said, which is look at the amount of time and resources and money we give to charity. We started Robin Hood Foundation, all these things that make New York better. And that's their answer to that. No, I think, you know, endowment funds and charity funds, et cetera. foundations as you said that are set up you know you but i mean you i don't think you could look yourself in the mirror if you're managing you know billions of dollars of money and you and you weren't giving

something back but um they do and they do it in huge quantities and um and also by the way run successful businesses themselves so they are employing people and paying taxes sometimes uh and you know at some rates as long as they're paying taxes then that's another question yeah It's a lot to talk about it. It is. This is great. You want to do it all now? You want to do it?

But, you know, so the tax issue is obviously important. Whilst, uh, oh look at me, I forgot. I love how deep you are in it, though. This is what's happened. I mean, you're like... This is what's happened. So, and then do you, you know, you know, we have this problem back home. You know, everybody's, you know, so they're boycotting Google and Uber and who's paying their taxes, who isn't paying their taxes.

paying their taxes. Will people, you know, inward investment is important. And so do you maintain the inward investment if everyone has to pay the top rate of tax? And then do they pull the company out and then do 4,000 people not have their jobs and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think my position ultimately is whatever incentives you offer big institutions, you got to pay your taxes. Look at you. You don't just breeze in and say, where's my mark and read the lines.

You know. You know what you're talking about. You got to pay your taxes. So this is the third... I'm paying my taxes. You get that on the record. You're paying most of yours. Well, I pay what's...

Yeah. When I can. And... Yes. You've got to pay your taxes. No, I do. I pay my taxes. In case the IRS is watching.

And I'm paying them here as well. Every dollar I earn, New York State, is getting my tax. New York City, New York State. We could go on about the taxes here, but let's not do that. Do you... What I was saying to you before about your accent, you do the American accent so well and have through a series of shows. Do you have people come up to you on the street and say,

I didn't realize you were British until I heard you speak in an interview like this? Have you heard that? People say that's a long time. I do, yeah, yeah. It happens less. I think it's because I've been playing Americans for a long time. You know, Banner Brothers was 17 years ago. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Wow. I looked at a picture of myself in Banner Bros. Oh, who is that child? They asked to play that war hero. I said, oh yeah, they were all children. That was the boy. You were actually a little old probably for the role.

And actually Dick Winners was 26 years old when they jumped on D-Day. And that was older. That was six, seven years older than a lot of them. Well, those kids were 19. Absolutely. So, but anyway. Yeah, and I, yeah, I did Banner Brothers and went home and didn't really sort of stay around doing the circuit with a British accent and this, that, and the other,

and promoting and all that kind of stuff. And I think I remained an American for a long time for people. But I still get it occasionally, but mostly people know. And then I get the question about how do you do an American accent? Right. And then so to avoid that question, I say, no, I'm in America. And then I can avoid that question. when we move on.

So now people think I'm American again. Well, you've got the nuances, though. You've got a really bad English accent. You've got the nuances of Bobby's accent, which is obviously different than Brody's accent, right? Yeah. So what was the Yonkers, Hofstra, what was that accent? My, yeah, doing accents, and just finding the nuance between different accents is important, is important. And with Bobby, that yonkers, you know, Hofstra,

you know, upbringing is New Yorkers speak quick to begin with. So I just try to get a little bit of the butter, bing, butter boom. Everything's like rolling off the tonguey. It just keep going. It's like, you know, it's going, oh yeah, and digger-d-d-diggily, and you're in.

And then early on, I just found myself, I started to talk like Joe Pesci, and I was just so funny like it. And then I really wanted to go good fellas with the whole thing. And the guys were just saying, oh, my God, Damien, can you cut? Can you just pull this bag of it?

All right. All right. It was really going to have fun with that. But it's just a nuance. It's just a tinge that you need. In the same way that when I was playing Dick Winters, who came from Pennsylvania, was Dutch Mennonite and very reserved. So his vowel sounds just, I think, just needed to be a little bit, just a bit more clipped.

And it's almost as though he sounded Canadian at times. It was strange. Banner Brothers was a funny one, actually, because we were part Brit, part American, cost. But the American actors weren't, you know, who are now all my great pals, but they weren't playing

people from their own neighborhoods. So people who grew up in Seattle were playing Asian guys. People who grew up in L.A. were playing New Yorkers. And everybody was like going to town on their access. And then HBO, they got the first dailies in, they came in and they said,

I think we just need to settle on a generalizing. of what an American accent sounds like, because this is like, we can't really understand anybody. And everybody is like doing the whole thing. So we all just sort of regrouped a little bit, and people came back more to their own accents. But that's the important thing.

It's rhythm and cadence and rhythm. The rhythms are so important, because they infuse your body then. And then that influence. that influences your physicality for a role, which I'm very keen on always. I always have a spirit animal that I use before. Really? Any role that I use.

Yeah, I always start by actually adopting the characteristics almost entirely of an animal. And I choose an animal for a role. Really? And then I just, and then of course you have to get rid of that. Right. in case you're a dog. But you just retain the spirit of that animal in you. So what's Bobby?

Bobby is a cheater. That's right. Because that's the fastest cat. And it's a predator. And he's eyes forward. And he can be devious and cunning. and he's quick and ruthless once he's at the kill

so but also you know and and and because there's a play on the words as well right right but that's what I and then you just try to find

in the end in the end Bobby is not like any of the hedge fund guys I met the physicality and the sheer gangster cowboy nature of Bobby is from American mythology more than it is from Midtown. Right.

You know, that's much more the fictionalized element of this, you know, that he's just, he's, you know, he's Michael Corleone. He's, you know, he's Josie Wales. The guys borrow heavily from those traditions in the writing, and that's what makes him heightened and fun to play, as well as borrowing realistically from what's going on around us. There's just something a bit. You know, okay, here we go. This is the biggest name I'll drop. I've just picked that up.

I met President Obama for the... I was going to ask you about that. For the second time. And it was at the correspondence dinner at the White House. And he wasn't mingling. He just came and sat at his table. You've probably been to it. But, you know, so we're all in the main hall, in the bullroom,

and the rope cordons off. But I was at the table, CBS table, right. CBS table? CBS table. Get the right people. Sorry, it's not here. And we were right up against the rope, right at the front. And he waved to me.

because he we'd met during Homeland. He loved Homeland. And I said, Mr. President, hello. And I said, I hear you now enjoying billions. Are you enjoying it? He said, yep, I love billions. And there's only one problem. Hedge fund managers aren't that cool.

And that was it. And I said, it's great to see you again, Mr. President. And I'm going to leave on that. And go, he had you to a state dinner, though. He was such a huge fan of Homeland, right? Yeah, that was. And you sat at his table. I did.

I sat opposite him and Mr. Cameron. Right. Next to Mr. Buffett. Got myself involved in a three-way, three-way conversation about fracking. Is that right? Which was, was fascinating. And this fantastic anecdote about Warren Buffett told this amazing anecdote about how He was getting ready to go to visit the president.

Early on in President Obama's tenure, and it was clearly because he wanted to bring Buffett in, have him close, have him as an economic advisor. Obviously, who wouldn't want that? And so, and Warren was going for the first time, and his wife was saying, honey, you've got to wear a tie. You have to wear a tie. And Warren, what happened?

He got his put on his tie, and he said, And I don't want to wear a tie, I feel uncomfortable. I feel all constrained. And it says, okay, but I really think you should wear a tie. So he goes to meet President Obama, and he arrives, he knocks on the door, walks into the Oval Office. And the president looks at him and he says, Warren, when you come to visit the president in the United States, you really should wear a tie. Oh. And WarnerMov says, oh, I'm terrible.

So I'm sorry, Mr. President. I don't have a tie. And he says, stay there. And he goes into his closet and he ruffles through and he comes out with a tie. And he says, Warren, where am I tie? And so he puts on the president. He goes, thank you, Mr. President. And he puts on his tie.

And then they have to meet him. That's incredible. And President Obama. So Warren starts, Warren Buffett starts this anecdote and then Obama takes it over and then does the whole thing about how he's putting the tie on him. That's what a scene, right? It was great. It was an unforgettable night.

Called him right out. too. Walked in, Obama calls him right out. Yeah, when you come. Don't care who you are. You really should. You should wear a tie. It was great and that great. How did you first find out that President Obama was a fan of Homeland?

Did you hear through the great find? Did you read it somewhere? We read it somewhere, and then the unions were really, uh, the unions came and visited set one day and they had lots of box sets and saying, can you sign this for the president? And this, that, and the other. And I don't know what possessed me. But you remember he was being discredited, actually by the now current president,

about his birthplace and his nationality. And he was being called quite publicly on whether he was a true American and whether he was eligible for the White House. And he has a Muslim name. and I was playing a Muslim, but who was parading as a U.S. Marine and was a secret Muslim. And so I wrote on this, on this box set of Homeland, Dear President, from one Muslim to another. You did not.

From one Muslim to another, so glad you're enjoying the show I'm your biggest fan. I'd set it off. And as soon as I said it up, and as soon as I said it on, I'd hand it over, I think, I want to take that back as the Union guys. walked off with it anyway I had a chance to meet him later and I was I was a little bit in touch with the press secretary at the time Jay right Jay Carney yeah yeah and I I thought that's really funny he's gonna love that because he's gonna know that why upset it because I'm you know pretending not to be a Muslim and everyone's trying to make him out to be a non-American

so I and then I started really over processing it for about two weeks after so I emailed Jay and I just said um I hope the president liked my gift. Was it okay? And thank God he emailed back and he said he liked it. He laughed. I was stressing out. I was stressing out.

No, no, he liked it. He laughed. He thought it was totally funny. So that was all good. That's very cool. You mentioned, there's a fascinating part of your career, you mentioned after Band of Brothers. I think you would agree your breakthrough. Yeah.

Right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You sort of like left Hollywood. I mean, you, or you, you didn't do the thing that a lot of people might have done, which was hang around in Hollywood and audition and go for the movie star thing. You went back and went to London, you did theater, you did all the things you were raised on.

Was that a conscious decision or did that, did your career path just take you back that way? Do you know what, it was a conscious decision. And I, after Banner Brothers, there were, I became very serious about my career. Let me tell you about my career. I had a couple of sort of big movie office after Banner Brothers, and one of them was to work with Larry Kaston, whose movies I loved. And it was Dreamcatcher, and I decided I was going to go work with Larry. Do this thing.

Dreamcatcher in the end did not work out in terms of. of just being, I guess, a successful movie in terms of box office. And critically, I didn't do that well either. But working with Larry was one of the great experiences and his brother, Mark. But it was the first time I had stepped into the lead of a co-lead, the great cast of Tom Jane and Timothy Oliphant and Jason Lee and Donnie Wallberg and Morgan Freeman and Tom seismo. And

and and there's something there, but go ahead. Yeah, where did Tom go? And so it's this amazing costume, John Seal was shooting it

who was this great, one of the great D.P. cinematographers. And I was thinking, damn, and there was a Stephen King adaptation and I was really enjoying myself. But it took forever to shoot it.

And I was coming from British TV where you shoot six pages a day and it's all handheld and it's got a very sort of European indie feel. And I come from the theater and the Royal Shakespeare Company where you're just three hours on stage and you're just there with Shakespeare

doing your thing or Chekhov or Ibsen or whatever is happening. I was really used to acting being a creative, constantly creative, intellectual, muscular exercise. And Larry, I'll never forget him saying. He said, Damien,

being an actor on a big film is like being a hundred meter sprinter at the Olympics. You may have to sit around all day and come out and do one line. You got 10 seconds.

8.9 seconds, whatever it is, to do your line because we might be losing the light. And we just got to you then, and it might only be to a tennis ball on a C-stand. But you've got to be ready, like ready and primed. It's like being an athlete. And I thought, you're right.

It is like being an athlete. And it was the best metaphor I'd ever heard. And I'm back in my American accent now. But I didn't want to be sitting around for so much time on big, not then anyway. I can quite see the appeal of being in big movies, and telling big stories on a big canvas like that. But it's problematic from an acting point of view. You do have to wait around for so long, often,

while so many other things are happening. Because filming is really an industrial endeavor. You know, the mechanics and the industry, the industrial nature of a film, a big movie, of a $150 million movie. is you come on as the icing, the little creative icing on the top, you know. But there's a lot of magic going on before that. And I remember thinking, you're right, but maybe I just don't want to be doing the 100-meter sprint.

Maybe I want to be, maybe I don't want to run a marathon, but maybe I want to do, I want to be the 15,000 meter guy. I mean, the 1,500 meter guy. Right. I want to be Steve Kram and Sebco. You know, but just you're in it. and you're doing it. And so I suppose I felt it a creatively less satisfying experience, is all I can say, as much as I adored learning from working with Larry

and the people around me. And I did go back a little bit thinking, I'm not going to sit in L.A. I'm not going to sit in L.A. And not work for a year, just waiting and doing all the auditioning. And this Falsight Saga came up, and I went back, which played on Masterpiece Theater here, and it was adaptation of very famous Nobel Literary Prize winning novels, written by John Goldsworthy. And I went back and I did that, and I played the lead in that, and I did some more theater, and then I did a bit more TV, and then I did some small independent movies, which were shooting in that style,

which was all engrossing and totally involving. One of them was Kean, which was a movie shot on the streets right here in New York, totally guerrilla filmmaking and Port Authority bus terminal surrounded by commuters. By commuters. We had the budget for 10 background artists who would be strategically placed in every shot behind me. And every time that somebody would be looking at the camera who was a commuter, just say, did yell out to, Gary, move left!

And Gary would just move left in front of the commuter. And they were just sort of strategically placed all the way through. And we would shoot and poured authority for... We were allowed to shoot all day in there, apart from rush hour, just out with a camera. But you couldn't shut anything down. No, couldn't shut anything down. So that's why. And it wasn't the...

Don't get me wrong. You know, you know, it's... Every time I make a big movie, it's great fun. I love it. But I... Just right then, at that age, I know. knew for me. I just needed to be. I want to be working and working with great material and good writing.

And unbeknownst to me, the irony, the happy coincidence of it all was that, you know, at that time, we, I think probably, you know, entertainment historians might well go to that moment of Band of Brothers and the Sopranos was being filmed at the same time as the birth of maybe this new kind of TV, this new kind of grittier, more ambitious, more creatively expansive cable model that really landed. With HBO and Showtime, sort of pioneering it.

And, you know, then the wire arrived immediately after that and then Breaking Bad and Homeland and Mad Men. And we were just into a different thing suddenly. and I was in the middle of it totally by chance, but probably because I just wanted to work and do good work. And without knowing it, really, really good writing was coming up in TV, and I was getting offered it and just saying, yes, I'll do that because that's amazing. But I was at the beginning of something without knowing it.

That's really what I'm saying. Well, you got that cinematic quality, but it was on television. Yeah, and so I've been happily in the middle of that and working on all this great writing and it's continuing with billions and it's just great. But at the same time, getting the opportunity to go do crazy things like Keene and work with Werner Herzog and go to Morocco and work with Werner, who's beautiful, beautiful crazy man who I loved working with. And so, you know, things are good. In conclusion, things are good. Things are good. I want to ask you about how you landed the Band of Brothers gig.

True that Steven Spielberg saw you on stage and thought I want him in this series? No, apocryphal. He didn't see me on stage. Yeah, that never got corrected by the journalist who got his facts wrong. What? Who would do that? So Spielberg, how did you land that role then? Somebody saw you and said he'd be good for this series?

No. No. Nothing like that. What happened was, it's funnier than that, though, but actually, because they were going to shoot most of it in the UK, this is not very romantic, but the tax credits meant that they had to use British crew and they had to use some British actors and blah, blah. So they were always going to hire some British actors for those roles of easy company. I don't think they ever expected to find Dick Winners there, the commanding officer of Easy Company there. So I was just another, you know, Brit, you know, young goofball actor. I ain't, I bring my life down in some damp basement in Soho in the dark.

I was going to go and sit on a shelf in L.A. and gather dust somewhere. But I did an audition, and no one told us who we were auditioning for, what roles we were auditioning for. The majority of the series wasn't even written. They just had started playing around with scenes. But we had the book. And so people had started reading the book. And so we said, so you give me, man, man, anyway, they asked me back. And then they asked me back again.

Then they asked me back again. And this went on over about four months, because this really fantastic guy called Tony Toe, who was the producer of it, was working with Plotime, with Playtone and HBO. So with Playtone and was really producing an old thing. He was flying back and forth to L.A., like a crazy man. And so the whole thing took about four months, and I did about four different auditions, and then it finally became clear that I was auditioning for the guy.

Right. And I said, all right, this is getting quite exciting. And from about the fourth or fifth edition, after about four or five months, as I was saying, He just came up to me at the end of the audition. He said, Damien, how would you like to fly to L.A.? Meet Stephen and Tom. And I looked at him. You know, it's just green theater actors.

You mean Spielberg and Hanks? And he said, yep. And then he did the most brilliantly Hollywood thing that anyone's ever done. And he turned right around. He said, do you have your passport? Call L.A. now. Call B.A. now.

We're booking flights. Go. I said, what are you doing Tuesday? And I was going, I don't know, I'm having lunch with my grandmother. I, whatever. She can wait. And, and then I was in L.A. And being flown, business class, I was put in shutters on the beach in Santa Monica,

that beautiful hotel. And I'm thinking, oh, spending a bit of money on me. This is, this could, wow, I, really? This might actually happen. And then, so I'm getting all tense and nervous. and I go to the big casting suite, and I walk into the lobby and sitting outside... No, wrong.

I've jumped. So I go in, and Ron Livingston is sitting there with Tom Hacks, who's got this enormous beard because he's in the middle of filming Castaway. I can barely see him. And when he speaks, you can't see his mouth, so his beard just goes down like this, and his nose twitches a bit,

and it's quite disconcerting. And I'm going, hello, Tom, I think. Hi. And Ron's there. And we just do some scenes together. And Ron, of course, ends up being cast as Lewis Nixon. And then Tom is, Tom goes, this is my favorite part.

I get to play all the other roles. And so he plays all the other roles. We do the thing, blah, blah, blah. And I go away, and I think that went really well. It's great. And Meg Lieberman, the lovely casting director comes out. So Damien, well done. That was great. And I go out and I get absolutely hammered.

I'm so excited. I'm in LA. I did a really good audition for Tom Hanks. And I come back about three in the morning. I get a phone call at 8 o'clock from Meg's like, Damien, Stephen would like to meet you now. Can you be here by nine? And I went, what?

I didn't realize Stephen was going to be by the other. So anyway, I have three showers, 17 cups of coffee, and I go in shaking like this with a terrible hangover. And I think, oh, my God, they're really putting me through it, and I want to cry. I've got such a bad hangover. And I walk in, and all of this has happened, and sitting in the lobby, is where I got to earlier,

and outside the door, is this guy who, if Dick Winters had had a twin, this would be him. And I'm looking at him, I'm thinking, why have they done this to me? Why have they done all of this to me? And I've got a terrible hangover, and I feel awful. I'm tall and pale and red-headed, and I'm British. And this is his twin. They've just brought me all this way to say,

well done, did a really good job. But it's not going to work out. So he goes in first, and I sit down. He comes out and he says, good luck, man. You really like it. They're really nice. He's the nicest dude in the world. And then I go in.

And Stephen is there, and he's already got his video on his shoulder, like an old video cam. It's just like, pung. And he goes, oh, I'm Stephen. He goes like, hello, Stephen, and Tom's there again. And he just asked me a bunch of questions. And the Hamlet thing, they just start saying, did you do, have you done, what have you done, this, that, and the other?

And I said, yeah, and I said, I've been on Broadway. I did Hamlet. And Tom suddenly goes, Hamlet? You were in Hamlet? I said, yeah. The one with Ray Feins. You know, he said, who did you play? And I said, I was Laertes, you know, the big sword fight at the end.

I had really long hair and a beard, a bit like you, actually. And he said, I saw that show. It was an amazing show. And I remember you now. And he said, in retrospect, you were very good. Which is the weirdest thing to say. I said, thank you, I think, now that. Anyway, great.

And then they just, you know, They offered me the role there in the room. It was great. It was a day to change your life, right? Oh, yeah. A little hungover, but it changed everything. It was a great day. It was a great day.

We spoke a lot about soccer, I remember. Steven's 12-year-old son was about to go play soccer. So we had to leave. He said, anyway, I got to go play. My son's a really good soccer player, and I'm going to, I'm going to go now. You know, it was... That's an amazing story.

It was good. It was good. jobs or the struggling actor jobs for you. I was a car alarm salesman for a while, which was a really bad job. Cold calling people and saying, is your car alarm still working? Do you feel secure when you're in your car?

Like it went on forever. What a weird call to get, too. It was really terrible. And then I had to know all about, I think I was working for CIMBA security car alarm systems. Simba security. Can I introduce you now? Interested you in a Simba car alarm security system.

That went on for a while. Were you good at it? A few months. I hated it. I used to sell raincoats in Burbary's. That was my vacation. It was like a shop assistant. And just putting really over the Japanese,

and you guys loved Burberry Max more than anybody. And the Americans, it was great. That is a beautiful fit for you, sir. And then the Japanese. would walk in and they were mostly smaller than you. I'm allowed this is not on PC territory. This is okay because it happened and it's funny. And they were much smaller and I was always going around for the slightly smaller size and put it on.

And they'd just go like this. And they would just walk out totally happy. It was fine because they had their Burberry Mac. They loved Burberry Macs. I got fired from that because I used to stand around with my hands in my pockets. I couldn't get interested in. in selling oversized Burberry Macs to Japanese tourists. And that was one job.

Christmas hampers was another job. I used to be the delivery guy selling Christmas hampers for a company called chalk and cheese. And I would go and buy the hampers and all that. I don't know, acting all really started. You were young, though, right when you started acting? Teenager? I was really, I was 16.

The school I was at, you had to have. hire, they encourage sort of free enterprise, encouraged free enterprise. So you had to hire the theater, the school theater from the school, then you had to hire the costumes from the school. So you had to present a budget for the value of your production, what you needed.

And then you had to go and raise that money in order to then hire the theater from the school. And so we were 16. And then basically, I mean, Uncle Jimmy, have you got a hundred? And then as long as we could put together enough Uncle Jimmy's, we had our, you know, 1,200 pounds or whatever we needed in order to do the thing. But that was really where it started. We had a little independent theater group.

We called ourselves the Chameleons. You know. Yeah, right. Exactly. That's appropriate for 16-year-old theater troupe. Yeah, the chameleons. And, wow, that's a bad. That's what we were and we put on a production and I I just loved it.

And I turned to mom and dad one day, the question they were dreading hearing, which is, if I didn't go to university but wanted to go to theater school, would you mind? And they just came and watched a lot of stuff in that period. And to their eternal credit, Mom bless her. He's not with us anymore, but they said, go. Go, you have our blessing. If you can get in, we think you have something. We don't think of a total waste of time.

You'll go to university. You'll play lots of sports. You'll do lots of theater. You'll chase girls and come out with a crappy degree. So audition for, see what happens. And I got in and went to theater school, to drama school, as we call it. And started working.

It was lucky. Now you're on the hottest show going. There's the beginning. The Willie Guy show. That's what I was referring to. Forget billions. No, I knew. I knew.

This show. You set that up. Thanks, man. That was blast. My thanks to Damien Lewis for that conversation on billions on showtime. What happened after the end of what you heard there was he beat me like 17 to 3 in ping pong. And I think he was also sort of like playing down to me. so he might have been able to skunked me.

Well, you get to 15-0, and they just call it before you get to 21. But he was very kind and let me continue to play. Damian Lewis Billions is on Showtime right now, of course. You can check that out. Thank all of you for checking out the Sunday Sit Down podcast again this week. To hear more of my interviews, be sure to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. And, of course, don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist.

Thanks for listening. for the Sunday Sit Down podcast.