"It takes a big leap for me to imagine having that kind of wealth and hoarding it," Corey Stoll said of the kinds of billionaires portrayed in Billions. Photo / AP
The actor talked about taking over from Damian Lewis as the show's chief nemesis, and why a do-gooder billionaire is still a billionaire.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for earlier seasons of Billions.
"Living in what must be a 30,000-square-foot town house on Gramercy with everything just so? It's fun to pretend that it's actually my place."
Corey Stoll is not immune to the charms of enormous wealth, or at least a soundstage's meticulously designed simulacrum thereof. Considering the character he portrays on Billions, that's probably a useful tool in his arsenal.
Stoll portrays Mike Prince, the dashing, do-gooding New York billionaire who teamed up with the state's attorney general, Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), to take down Chuck's white whale: crooked hedge-fund wizard Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis, who departed the show last season).
But in a swerve that neither of the show's main characters saw coming, Prince made a last-minute deal with Bobby that spared the hedge-funder from prosecution and incarceration, at the cost of handing over his business. Now Prince presides over the newly christened Michael Prince Capital, putting him in the crosshairs of both Rhoades and Mike's own potentially mutinous employees.
As if replacing one of the show's stars weren't difficult enough, getting Billions to this point was an extra challenge because of Covid-19. "I did half of Season 5, and then we sat on it for a year and came back," Stoll said of the show's pandemic-induced stop-start filming schedule. "We shot a season and a half all in one go — it was all a bit of a blur."
Now the show — created by Brian Koppelman, David Levien and New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin — is back for its sixth season, which premieres on Showtime this Sunday. In a phone conversation this past week, Stoll explained how Prince is cut from a different cloth than Axe. But the new boss is the same as the old boss in one important respect.
"The show is, I think, intrinsically the same," Stoll said. "It gives the same pleasure of watching incredibly smart, driven people betray each other, and then become allies, and then betray each other again."
These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Q: For a series that was so defined by the relationship between two characters, was it a challenge to step in and take that weight on your shoulders?
A: You know, that really wasn't the challenge. Brian and David did a good job of setting the terms of the Chuck Rhoades-Mike Prince relationship differently from the way that it was with Axe.
For me, the real challenge was turning from an antagonist to a protagonist of sorts. In Season 5, I was the engine of pretty much every scene that I was in. I was on the attack, pursuing this goal, and Axe and Rhoades were reacting to me. In just the first few days of shooting Season 6, I had all these scenes where I'm behind the big desk, taking incoming fire. I hadn't really prefigured how different it would be. It uses very different muscles as an actor.
Q: I adored that scene in Season 5 that was just one long take of Prince and Rhoades having breakfast together. I couldn't picture Axe standing still for that long.
A: Axe really couldn't sit still. He was a shark. From the very first scene, when I got the first script, I felt that the defining characteristic of Mike Prince is that he's home wherever he goes, that he's completely comfortable in his skin. It's also his greatest weapon: He can disarm people by agreeing with them. It's a really fun power move to play, to just agree with someone when they really want to fight.
Q: Prince's overtures to Chuck do seem sincere.
A: A hundred percent. In contrast with Axe, Mike Prince doesn't enjoy having enemies. You got a sense with the old Axe Cap that having an enemy was a good unto itself, almost. It was an engine. It was a driver. Mike Prince is incredibly driven, obviously, but his first instinct is to gain allies. When that doesn't work, that's when other tactics come in.
The very first scene that Paul and I shot in Season 5 — it was this very intimate scene, and I was coming to him for help — Paul was just … he was really taken aback. He was like, "I have never shot a scene like this in five seasons on the show." It was completely new. He almost felt a little out of sorts. [Laughs.] "I don't know who Chuck Rhoades is without an immovable force to push against."
Q: Prince sees himself as an ethical billionaire. Is there such a thing?
A: It's an open question. There are billionaires who definitely do great things with their wealth, and their companies generate wealth for others, and they may be good people. I think the show is actually more interested in … There's the cliche "Behind every great fortune is a great crime." The other side of that is what the great fortune does to that person — what the power and wealth and resources do to a person's soul, for lack of a better word.
In terms of my own opinion of it, it takes a big leap for me to imagine having that kind of wealth and hoarding it, keeping it for myself and doing whatever I have to do to grow it. I find it very hard to put myself in the shoes of someone like that. I understand greed and covetousness as much as anybody, but on that scale, I find it really difficult to conceptualise what would keep you underpaying your workers when you already have tens of billions of dollars.
Q: Is that in the back of your mind when Prince tries to convince people he's not like those other guys?
A: Yeah. I do think his worldview, his self-conception, is fundamentally different from most people. It's kind of backward, kind of circular. He knows, on a cellular level somehow, that he is a good person, and that his judgment for how to use capital and resources and power is exceptional; therefore, everything he does is good. That's what really drives him, and that's how I play him. He believes what he says.
Q: Could that self-confidence lead him to making even more morally questionable decisions?
A: The short answer is yes. That's his struggle, and that will be the engine of a lot of the drama and conflict this season, both with Chuck and with his employees.
Q: His belief in his own morality also means that, unlike Axe, he has to worry about what hoi polloi think.
A: Well, it's intrinsic to any kind of leader that there is this dance between giving the people what they want and telling them what they want, and that's been a real key to Prince's success. There are times when he does the most popular thing at the cost of, maybe, the most profitable thing. I think he also knows when to switch gears and place profits above popularity, but for Mike Prince, how something will be perceived is top-of-mind.
Q: Much of the show's appeal lies in the voyeuristic thrill of seeing how the other half lives — the best restaurants, the best clothes, the best gadgets, living the dream. Are there times during filming where you've had to pinch yourself?
A: There are. There's been a number of cameos, people who are the best in the world at what they do, and there's that experience of being able to sort of host them, you know? They're out of their comfort zone, even though they are these world-historical masters. To have that experience of showing them how to hit their mark and save themselves for their close-ups and all that technical stuff has just been incredible.
Q: At the same time, it feels like public opinion has legitimately changed, and there's a bigger portion of the audience now than when the show started who think: "I don't like these billionaires. Maybe things shouldn't be this way, in fact."
A: Yeah, but I do feel like it was there from the beginning. The concept of the show started shortly after the financial breakdown and the Great Recession.
I think there's tension. The wealth porn, fantasising about these amazing apartments and clothes and cars and private jets — the dirty pleasure of that still remains. As a society, we want to see these powerful, rich people and imagine how they live. But we also want to hurt them. We want to see them miserable.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Sean T. Collins
Photographs by: Erik Tanner
© 2022 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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