Why did Damian Lewis leave Billions? Bobby Axelrod’s exit explained

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There are many things to love about diving further and further into a TV show you love, but there are always some disappointments along the way too.

Often, the biggest ones stem from character exits, whether the actor has decided to leave or the character exits organically.

Indeed, Billions fans will be familiar with this heartbreak at the moment.

Created by Brian Koppelman, David Levien, and Andrew Ross Sorkin, the American drama series began airing on Showtime back in 2016 and has gone on to earn considerable acclaim for a wealth of reasons.

One of those is the performances at its centre, with the actor who plays Bobby Axelrod championed as a highlight by many.

However, season 6 ushers in a colossal change, so why did Damian Lewis leave Billions?

still from Billions season 6 trailer, Showtime

Why did Damian Lewis leave Billions?

Damian Lewis was actually only contracted to appear in five seasons of Billions, so essentially his contract came to a close after 2021.

He and Brian Koppelman actually began discussing his exit from the series “for a variety of reasons” a few years ago. The 50-year-old English actor made the decision as a result of wishing to spend more time with the family.

There was also the issue of him living in England and the show being produced elsewhere.

Tragically, Damian’s wife and actress Helen McCrory passed away in April 2021. Shortly after in October of that year, Damian said goodbye to Billions on Twitter, thanking those he worked with for the opportunity that he described with great fondness.

“A pleasure and a privilege to play Axe for five seasons with some of the smartest, funniest most talented cast and crew I’ve worked with,” he wrote. “I’ll miss the Billions family… Yep, some jobs are more than just a job…. Love.”

This content could not be loaded Thank you @SHO_Billions thank you @briankoppelman @DavidLevien. A pleasure and a privilege to play Axe for 5 seasons with some of the smartest, funniest most talented cast and crew I’ve worked with. I’ll miss the Billions family. Yep, some jobs are more than just a job…. Love. — Damian Lewis (@lewis_damian) October 4, 2021

Will we ever see Bobby Axelrod again?

During a conversation with the New York Times, Damian gave audiences the shimmer of hope they were waiting for.

Addressing a potential cameo or return down the line, he weighed in: “There’s an opportunity maybe for me to return. But for now, broadly speaking, Axe has been vanquished.”

Indeed, co-creator Brian echoed such signs of hope when discussing Damian’s Billions future:

“Knowing the conditions in which he performed, travelling back and forth to England for years to be with his family, it’s impossible to imagine just how hard and focused that guy worked. We feel really honoured and lucky to have had five years of being able to know that Damian Lewis was Bobby Axelrod. But, again, not saying it’s goodbye forever.”

Let’s hope not, but of course, wish Damian the very best in everything he does.

Billions Season 6 | Official Teaser | SHOWTIME BridTV 5472 Billions Season 6 | Official Teaser | SHOWTIME 875858 875858 center 13872

“There is no question I miss seeing Damian Lewis”

With the latest season in full swing, audiences have hopped onto Twitter to react to the series in Bobby’s absence.

Check out a selection of tweets:

This content could not be loaded I’ve finally seen Billions S6 premiere. There is no question I miss seeing #DamianLewis on my screen, but the show is as alive and kicking as ever. I always said I came to #Billions for Damian and stayed for the show. And, guess what, I’m here for more! #Billions #TeamWendy pic.twitter.com/Mqeze830Pm — Fan Fun Damian Lewis (@FanFunDamian) January 23, 2022

This content could not be loaded Post-Damian Lewis #Billions is going to be an acquired taste. — Christian Stegmaier (@cstegmaier) January 23, 2022

This content could not be loaded Yeah, I miss Damian Lewis on #Billions, too but tonight’s episode featured @MJMcKean as a cannon-firing billonaire named Milton Revere, and, look, I’m only human. — Amanda Cuda (@amandacuda) January 24, 2022

In other news, Is Clay leaving SEAL Team? Max Thieriot’s role explored

Billions Season 6 Premiere Recap, Episode One: ‘Cannonade’

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Billions Cannonade Season 6 Episode 1 Editor’s Rating 4 stars * * * * « Previous Next Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME

Approximately four months ago, Billions said auf Wiedersehen to Damian Lewis’s renegade tycoon Bobby Axelrod. In the season-five finale, Axe’s dubious financial practices finally caught up to the larger-than-life billionaire, forcing him to abscond to Switzerland. Shortly after the finale aired, Lewis confirmed his departure from the series. Considering the actor had spent the last five episodes of his Billions tenure shooting his scenes remotely from England, the news wasn’t exactly shocking.

Also not shocking? Twitter’s reaction to Lewis’s news, which saw many fans declaring any Axe-less Billions episodes DOA. Now, if Lewis had left the show at the end of the first or even second season, I, too, would probably be on Team Cancel Billions. But since Axe had appeared heavily via Zoom and FaceTime anyway, the series could organically transition from the original Chuck Rhoades versus Bobby Axelrod aggro spectacle into its current ensemble-drama incarnation.

That’s not to say Billions isn’t still finding its footing. Of course, the big question mark is Mike Prince, the sanctimonious deca-billionaire who took over Axe Capital at the end of last season, with Corey Stoll now occupying Lewis’s top-billing slot. If I’m being brutally honest, Prince is nowhere near as captivating as the pugnacious Axe, but, again, returning to the ensemble drama argument, he doesn’t have to be. Because despite betraying Chuck last season, Prince is not the sole source of Chuck’s ire.

In fact, the WTF? cold open of “Cannonade” suggests that Mike Prince is the furthest thought from Chuck’s mind. The blue-blooded New York attorney general has ostensibly traded his power suit for a plaid flannel jacket and is leading a mob literally carrying pitchforks and lanterns to a large estate where several cannons are being loaded. When Chuck announces to an unseen adversary that “this cannon has fired its last salvo,” I had to wonder if I was watching some bizzaro John Adams reboot.

No, Paul Giamatti isn’t reprising his Emmy-winning role as the second American president. Following Axe’s disappearing act, Chuck has temporarily decamped to the adorably named hamlet of Stony Gorge, New York, to indulge in some self-care. But we know nothing gets his justice juices flowing like tangling himself up in a war of his own creation. Fortunately, the great Michael McKean is on hand push every single one of the state AG’s buttons. McKean plays Melville Revere, Chuck’s entitled billionaire neighbor who gets his jollies by firing off his Revolutionary War cannons twice a day. Much to Chuck’s chagrin, Revere has also purchased the town’s compliance with a new fire truck and police gear.

Downstate, the bumpy transition from Axe Capital into Michael Prince Capital continues. The office atmosphere is a Circle of Distrust, with Prince constantly reminding his employees that he’s not Bobby Axelrod, which isn’t a reassuring tactic. First of all, the audience knows he has the potential to be way worse than Axe — because Axe never hid his true colors. Secondly, this crew doesn’t necessarily want him to be so different from their former leader, with Bonnie astutely summing up the new order by observing, “We used to work for a killer, now he wants to know how we feel?” Plus, the three people Prince needs most in his corner have zero interest in working toward unity: Taylor views him with suspicion, Wendy with bitterness, and Wags with apathy.

Not only does Prince lack the trust of his own team, but, thanks to Axe’s criminal history, the SEC has slapped MPC with a six-month probationary period — and investors are poised to bail. So who are the investors he really needs to hold onto? Why Melville Revere and Charles Rhoades Sr., of course! During a civilized Stony Gorge meeting between Chuck and Prince over glasses of Glenlivet, in which Prince gives Chuck his zillionth “I’m not Axe” spiel while pleading with him to leave Revere alone. It’s here that Chuck’s new mission comes into focus: Instead of concentrating his efforts on a single enemy, Chuck wants to take down all billionaires, Prince included. He dismisses Prince’s exhortations of following the letter of the law, claiming in his season-six thesis statement that billionaires are guilty of “breaking the laws of decency.”

Before Prince can arm himself against Chuck, he needs to get his own house in order, which he does by requesting sharp, direct guidance from Wendy: Her advice is that he kill every toxic vestige of Axe Cap — and get Wags on his side while he’s at it. Although it doesn’t take long for Wags to prove he’s indispensable to the company, crushing Scooter’s superficial employee profiles Erin Brockovich style.

As everyone on the trading floor braces for layoffs, Prince flips the script. He acknowledges that MPC must get rid of “compromised individuals,” but, surprise! He’s not firing his employees; he’s firing his investors! Everyone — except for a single Axe Cap relic, the New York Firefighters (hmm) — has been given their walking papers, including a dumbfounded Senior and Revere. It’s a big, dramatic, twisty scene that fits well into the Billions formula, though I wonder if it’s part of Wendy’s grand plan. Earlier, in session, she paraphrased Don Draper by counseling, “If you don’t like the legacy, change out everything from that legacy.” Not only does Prince follow her advice, but he also continues on the Draper-inspired path by announcing the formation of “The Prince List,” which requires that future clients “qualify to invest with us.” Yes, MPC has placed itself at a financial disadvantage, but at least now it’s presenting with a unified front.

Back in Stony Gorge, another unified front approaches Revere, with Chuck and his pitchfork-waving mob piling onto what has already been a terrible day for the constitutional-law enthusiast. Having rallied the initially tentative townsfolk behind him, Chuck presents Revere with a restraining order against cannon fire — as well as an environmental conservationist threatening court action over the presence of endangered bog turtles.

We could delight in Revere’s downfall until we remember that this is Billions, and the only way Chuck was going to win this battle was by putting his thumb on the scale. As in bribing the conversationist with project funding in exchange for planting bog turtles on Revere’s land. Call it sabotage for the greater good.

I think what’s going to make Billions 2.0 an intriguing watch is unlike Bobby Axelrod, who never professed to have good intentions, Mike Prince and Chuck Rhoades think they’re decent people. We already know they’re not, so let’s just pour a glass of Michter’s and have a ball watching two rich guys twist themselves into pretzels trying to prove us otherwise.

Loose Change

• Those time jumps still confuse the hell out of me, but the “One Week Ago” segment contains a praiseworthy detail: It’s the moment Billions recognized that a scene featuring a wealthy, middle-aged white man having a heart attack while riding a Peloton would look hopelessly derivative. But thanks to some zesty ADR by David Costabile, Wags assures his colleagues he’s “not going out like Mr. Big” — and the scene is saved from the Cringe Hall of Fame.

• To be fair to Billions’ unfortunate Peloton cameo, filming on season six was well underway several months before And Just Like That … premiered in December.

• I feel like the name “Melville Revere” was too on the nose. Even for Billions.

• Did you know Victor Mateo translates French literature in his spare time? Impressive.

Financial instruments

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Last September, in the mid-season opener of the Showtime series “Billions,” American rocker Jason Isbell appeared as himself, to play a benefit sponsored by Taylor Mason Capital. Later in the show, he visited the gallery of painter Nico Tanner (Frank Grillo), who is essentially being kept as a pet by boyishly charming evil billionaire Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis).

Isbell looks at Tanner’s paintings and makes approving noises. When Axelrod offers that he ought to think about commissioning a piece from Tanner, Isbell demurs.

“I spend most of my money on guitars,” he says.

If you’re familiar with Isbell’s concerts, you don’t doubt the accuracy of that line; the last time he played in Little Rock he showed off tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of instruments on stage. In a (terribly edited) YouTube video posted by GQ as part of its “Collected” series a little over a year ago, Isbell talked about his guitar collection, which he said at the time only contained 50 or 60 instruments.

On the video, Isbell shows off a couple of 1953 Gibson Les Paul “goldtops” (instruments that Reverb magazine blue-books at $13,205–$22,740), a pre-CBS ‘65 Fender Telecaster (give or take $20,000), a ‘60 Fender Strat ($33,000 to $75,000), a 1961 Gibson ES 335 ($25,995 to $41,995), a Gretsch White Falcon that belonged to John Prine, a Martin D-18 from the ’50s ($3,500; $6,500 in today’s market) and the centerpiece of the collection, a 1959 Les Paul Standard Sunburst nicknamed Red Eye, once owned by Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Ed King. (Isbell has been coy about how much he paid for the guitar, purchased from King’s widow, but estimates range as high as $650,000. The 1973 Fender Stratocaster that King used to write and record “Sweet Home Alabama” reportedly sold for $450,000.)

We can be assured that in real life, Isbell spends most of his money on guitars.

Good for him. People spend their money on a lot of things, and I’d rather have classic instruments in the hands of players like Isbell than in the humidified vault of some Bobby Axelrod-like billionaire collector. That’s where Ed King’s Redeye ended up after it was stolen from him at gunpoint in 1987.

For years, King called every music and pawn shop in every town he visited to try to recover the guitar. Then, 11 years later, he saw it in “The Beauty of the ‘Burst: Gibson Sunburst Les Pauls from ‘58 to ‘60,” a book by Yasuhiko Iwanade. Though the book hadn’t yet been translated into English, King recognized his guitar by a distinctive red spot near the toggle switch. Fortunately Iwanade listed the guitar’s serial number. It matched.

While the statute of limitations had expired on the theft, the book did credit a collector, Perry Margouleff, as current owner of the guitar. King dug a little further and discovered Margouleff, while he collected guitars, often acted as a procurer of guitars for Dirk Ziff, the billionaire scion of the Ziff Davis company, publishers of PC Magazine and Car and Driver, and a hedge fund manager who was one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party.

(I can think of any number of reasons why a billionaire might prefer someone else to do his shopping for him–it might seem unseemly to haggle over a few thousand dollars when you’re worth more than Sri Lanka. Margouleff reportedly purchased King’s guitar from a Los Angeles guitar shop in 1988 for less than $10,000. Even back then, that was a good deal.)

Ziff was also an avid guitarist who built his own studio with dozens of rare guitars lining the walls. He had others, locked away in a vault he required visitors to don felt jumpsuits before entering.

After months of negotiation and due diligence–there was some question as to whether King or his insurance company was the rightful owner of the guitar–Ziff agreed to either return the guitar (then worth an estimated $40,000) or buy it from King. King wanted his axe back, and he got it. He kept it and played it as his main stage guitar until his death in 2018.

Whenever Redeye changes hands again, it’s likely to sell for significantly more than whatever Isbell paid for it. Not only is it a Sunburst ‘59 Les Paul, it belonged to King and Isbell and has this great story about being lost and recovered. It’s rare, and it has lore.

And it’s a great-sounding guitar. Based on its sonic capabilities–Isbell can tell you all about how condensation affects the potentiometers in the old Gibsons to allow them to have more treble or something–its current owner claims it’s the best guitar in Nashville.

I don’t have a Gibson Les Paul–the headstock angle on Gibson products has always bothered me; I’ve always been afraid I’d snap it off–but I can understand why a working musician might want to have a lot of guitars. Every guitar has its own qualities, and when you’re chasing a tone you might not be willing to compromise.

And guitars, unlike most things idiots buy, tend to retain their value; some even appreciate. I have an eight-string baritone that, according to some sites, is worth roughly $1,000 more than when I acquired it in 2016. (Part of the reason it has appreciated is that the model has been discontinued.)

I’ll keep this guitar for a long time. It has a rich, throaty voice and something of the quality of a piano. I’ve never played it in public, but have used it on some recordings. I can justify it as a tool.

And if I did decide to sell it, I’d have to be patient. I doubt I’d find a buyer right away (if ever) and if I took it to a guitar or pawn shop I’d probably get half or a quarter of what the experts say it’s worth.

It might be a stretch to call it an investment, but it’s probably better–or at least safer–than collecting baseball cards or sports memorabilia. Or all those Scotty Cameron headcovers that Titleist sent me back in the day.

Hold on to any guitar–no matter how crappy it is–for long enough, and it will eventually become collectible. If you know about them, and you don’t overpay, you can build a decent portfolio over time. Maybe some of them will yield returns better than Bitcoin or one of Nico Tanner’s paintings.

Maybe, if you’re like the “Billions” version of Jason Isbell, who admits he never really feels comfortable around the financial set, they’re just a better investment.

Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@adgnewsroom.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.

Billions Season 6 Release Date: Cancelled or Renewed?

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Billions is an American drama television series created by Brian Koppelman, Andrew Ross Sorkin, and David Levien.

The series first premiered on January 17, 2016, on Showtime, and thereafter with the success and love the series gained, it went on for another five seasons and the fifth season premiered on May 3, 2020.

Due to the restriction as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, only the first seven episodes were released that concluded on June 14, 2020, and the rest of the five episodes aired on September 5, 2021, and ended on October 3, 2021.

The series has received positive reviews both from audiences as well as critics. The series is generally set in large financial centers, most remarkably New York and Connecticut.

The series features the story of hedge fund manager Bobby Axelrod (played by Damian Lewis), as he obtains wealth and power in the world of high finance.

Axelrod’s fierce approaches to get higher returns very often leap over into the unlawful acts that United States Lawyer Chuck Rhoades (played by Paul Giamatti) tries to summon.

Here’s what we know so far about Billions Season 6.

In October 2020, the renewal of the series for its sixth season was announced and premiered on January 23, 2022, on Showtime. The series is available to watch on the streaming service, Stan.

Billions Season 6 Cast

In the sixth season, we won’t see Damian Lewis, who portrayed the lead character of Bobby “Axe” Axelrod. We will see below characters in Billions Season 6:

Corey Stoll in the role of Michael Thomas Aquinius Prince

Paul Giamatti in the role of Chuck Rhoades,

Maggie Siff in the role of Wendy Rhoades

David Costabile in the role of Mike ‘Wags’ Wagner

Condola Rashad in the role of Kate Sacker

Asia Kate Dillon in the role of Taylor Mason

Jeffrey DeMunn in the role of Chuck Roades Sr

Kelly AuCoin in the role of ‘Dollar’ Bill Stearn

Daniel Breaker in the role of Scooter Dunba

We can also see some other characters returning in the recurring cast.

Billions Season 6 Plot

The powerful billionaire Mike Prince sent waves through Axe Capital in the fifth season. He also became the new weapon Chuck had to bring down Bobby Axelrod (played by Damian Lewis), or so he thought.

Alliances were established and quickly torn apart and established yet again, with everyone from Taylor (played by Asia Kate Dillon) to Wendy (played by Maggie Siff) getting dragged into the clash, which came on the verge of ruining all they held dear.

Axe was pushed out of the picture in a surprising twist that pitched the last episode of the season and left viewers thinking what would be the next chapter the show has in store.

But we can see in the new trailer that Mike Prince is taking his position on top of the Axe Capital throne and he is committed to turning the game and new wealth signifies no mercy.

After surpassing Chuck and formulating a plan with Axe in the last scenes of the season, Prince is now certainly on the scopes this season.

“When I get a big game in my sights, I can’t lower my rifle,” Chuck states with a vicious grin in the trailer.

Billions Season 6 Trailer

On December 10, 2021, the official trailer of Billions Season 6 had been dropped by Showtime. Click on the link below to watch the full trailer.

Conclusion

The sixth season has also brought some thrilling and surprising twists for sure. We will keep you updated with all the latest information until then stay tuned.

Showtime’s ‘Billions’ season premiere references Astros’ cheating scandal

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Jeff Neumann/Showtime/TNS

No TV show script is littered with more pop culture references than Showtime’s hedge fund drama “Billions” - there’s even a web site devoted to all of them. Sunday’s Season 6 premiere didn’t hold back - “You’re sassier than Claudia Conway on Mother’s Day,” Corey Stoll’s Mike Prince character spits out at one point - and even included a cloaked reference to the Astros.

Although the Astros weren’t mentioned by name, their sign-stealing scandal from the 2017 and 2018 seasons in which they decoded signs and then banged trash cans to relay what pitch was coming in real time, made the cut.