‘Billions’ Creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien On What They Learned From Steven Soderbergh

When a series enters in its fourth season, viewers would be well within their rights to expect a certain amount of growing pains to set in, but in the case of Billions, it’s as strong as it’s ever been. Granted, part of that might come from the fact that it sort of – if not entirely – started back at square one this season, having reset the playing field at the end of Season 3 to put Chuck and Axe on the same side for a change. Given that the quality of the series has stayed constant since the beginning, it’s hard to say that the decision actually reinvigorated the series, but it’s certainly put things on a path that serves to keep things particularly interesting.

With season four now in full swing, Decider recently hopped on the phone with series creators and showrunners Brian Koppelman and David Levien, and the longtime collaborators took some time to talk about the changes in the Chuck and Axe relationship, the startling way the show has been echoing real-world events, the top-notch characters actors in the cast, and whether or not there’s any plan for Billions to cash out in the near future.

DECIDER: I have to start by asking a question I’ve been wondering since the season premiere: can a Motorhead fan [Axe] and an Al Green fan [Chuck] ever truly find happiness together?

BRIAN KOPPELMAN: I mean, it’s a good question, but… [Laughs.] I’m not going to speak for David on this, but when you’re talking to me, you’re definitely talking to someone who’s a fan of both! It’s a great question, though. Listen, to us, one of the great things about being the age that Axe and Chuck are is that you’re kind of every age you’ve ever been. So as you grow and find different cultural signifiers that mean something to you, it doesn’t mean that you necessary toss other ones aside. We’ve seen that Axe loves this hard rock and metal music. He loves Metallica. It makes sense that he’d like Motorhead. Chuck is someone who’s quoted Dylan on the show but also understands what opera is. And both of them are people who appreciate their enthusiasms and obsessions. So if Chuck’s using Al Green to make a point, he’s going to make that point in a really deep way, but he’s also going to allow himself to feel the feelings. And it’s the same with Axe: when he puts on that Motorhead, sure, it probably reminds him of how hungry he was when he first heard “Ace of Spades.” 

Okay, I’ll buy that. So the new season starts out with Chuck and Axe working together rather than being at odds. Was that a direction that you always intended for the series, or was it something that just came about organically?

DAVID LEVIEN: It was an evolutionary thing. We mapped out some moments from the seasons beyond Season 1 when we were creating the thing, but it was really as we went through the various rounds that the two characters sparked with each other. In the first couple of seasons, we evolved to a place where we asked ourselves, “How can we get to see them being different with each other and do different things together?” And in a longer-running series, these are the sorts of questions that you start to ask yourelf.

BK: A lot of this stuff isn’t as instinctive. Like, David and I both journal a lot, and we meditate. It’s something we learned from Steven Soderbergh a long time ago. Steven taught us that some days you just want to be able to receive the ideas without deciding how you’re going to use them right away. So when this idea surfaced of them being at the table together at the end of last season… I mean, that was the first thing David and I talked about: this image of the three of them sitting together. And I’d say that didn’t come with a lot of intellectual baggage or underpinnings. It was an image. And we started talking about it, and as we did, we got really excited about the idea. That’s really what we follow. We like those characters and we’ve learned to follow our obsessions and curiosities. So once we had that image, we understood that we had to build to it. And from there, certain things would logically flow. And that probably comes from 20-plus years of telling these types of stories.

It’s a little staggering to realize that you’ve got storylines in this season which, even though they echo real-world goings-on, were in place before the real-world parallels ever even happened. 

BK: Yes!

When they actually took place in the real world, what was your reaction?

DL: We…thought a lot of things. You know, obviously, what happened to [journalist Jamal] Khashoggi was a huge tragedy, so you’re not going to feel good about that. When you’re creating these stories, though… I mean, there were various other things that happened.

BK: When the Khashoggi thing happened and you absorb the tragedy of it and you’re outraged and you can’t believe this situation existed, I would not say we were glad about it. I would say that it told us that our understanding of these issues was still manifest, and that we and our writers and our actors have somehow through our research and through paying attention have been able to understand the undercurrents that are fueling a lot of the big decisions that are getting made. So the sadness of the thing that happened at that embassy pointed to us the fact that it’s useful to make this show, it’s useful to tell these stories the way that we see them, because when you present them in a fictional context and construct, maybe you can get people to think about them differently.

And then the other things, like Trump and his son got gun permits the same way Chuck is trying to get a gun permit. And we don’t want to spoil it, but there are events in Episode 4 which echo certain events that have happened, and… Okay, that one was funny to us. [Laughs.] But with the tragedies, we can’t allow ourselves anything other than being agog that it’s happened. 

Speaking of fathers and sons, the relationship between Chuck and his dad is a constant reminder that Jeffrey Demunn can play absolutely despicable character with the best of them. 

DL: Jeff Demunn is an incredible actor. He constantly blows the entire cast away. When we have table reads, everybody just stops and marvels at how amazingly he plays his scenes. That guy is incredible, and… You know, we don’t concern ourselves with award talk and all that stuff very much, but we do feel that he should be recognized. Several of the cast, we feel, should be recognized, and he’s chief among them. 

You guys do great work when it comes to selecting character actors for the show, like Clancy Brown. I’m particularly looking forward to Kevin Pollak’s upcoming arc.

DL: Allison Estrin, who’s the casting director on the show, is brilliant at supplying us with the best actors in New York…and beyond, but there’s such a great community of actors in New York that we can draw from. When it comes to somebody like Clancy, we’d been intending to work with him for, like, 20 years at this point. [Laughs.] Brian ran into him in a bar in Toronto while we were making our second movie, and we talked about it then. But we finally found the perfect thing and came together to do it. So we’re getting to check people off of our lifetime wish list, and Kevin Pollak is one of them as well. 

BK: Yeah, we ran into Kevin at a premiere this year, and we went right up to him and said, “We have a part for you.” And he said, “Okay, I’ll do it!” And it wasn’t, like, some bullshit Hollywood thing. We sent it to him the next day, he said, “Yes,” and we were rolling! 

Can you tease what part he’ll play in the series?

BK: He plays Taylor Mason’s father, and he’s a brilliant engineer but also a bit of a prickly character. And we see the incredible influence he has over Taylor, both in the way that Taylor was formed and as an ongoing influence. Their relationship is a really important one for Taylor’s character, and within the show it has huge consequences as the season unfolds.

By the way, regarding Clancy Brown, when I interviewed him last year, he said that he and Paul Giamatti have discussed how, when it comes to the dialogue, “Nobody would ever speak like this, but everybody wants to.”

BK: [Laughs.] That’s a very nice thing to hear!

When you’re putting together the scripts, is that something you ever consider? That it’s not something that someone in the real world would probably ever say in that way?

DL: No, we don’t. [Laughs.] Because… I mean, you know, we’re making a show! And we have these brilliant actors that can handle this dialogue and make it seem like it’s just flowing out of their mouths in an extemporaneous way…and we love it!

BK: We’re guys who grew up loving David Mamet’s plays and the Coen brothers, and we’ve always liked speech that was a little bit heightened. We’re drawn to it. And in our experience, people are able to talk this way! Especially when they have a little more time and they can stretch out. We’re writing about people way smarter than we are, and we’re writing about people who have a huge cultural palate, and we want to be able to make them as smart as they can possibly be. 

Have you enjoyed the opportunity to show what real billionaires live like? Because I know that you guys go out of your way to make it as accurate as possible when you can.

BK: When we started to conceive of the show, we became aware that there was a little subset of young – you know, in their forties – self-made billionaires who had these things called hedge funds and were able to accrue incredible wealth and, along with it, incredible cultural influence and impact. And that fascinated us. The idea of one of these people as a main character in a show was fascinating to us. The raw stuff that they had that allowed them to get there, the way that they used it, and the way that they thought of their position in the firm… It seemed like something that was sort of outsized from the normal citizenry. They seemed to feature themselves as nation states or kings. And we knew that it was a great jumping-off point, and we were very excited to get to explore that in the series. 

I wanted to ask about another project that you guys worked on together: Tilt. Do you view that as an underrated series? It was great while it lasted, but it seemed ripe for another round, and that never happened.

BK: Well, it was intended to be a limited series, so for us it wasn’t like we were waiting to see if it got renewed, and then it wasn’t, and we were disappointed. For us, it was always, “Let’s make a nine-episode arc.” I guess there’s always a world where something could continue, but for us that wasn’t the plan. And we were excited to jump in with ESPN. They were really new in the drama space, they’d only done one show before us, and we were excited to do it, to tell that story and get into an angle of the big poker games out in Vegas that were happening at that time, and we had a great time doing it.

Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on – whether it’s film or TV – that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?

DL: I think that we’d have to count ourselves as fortunate, because the ones that we feel were the most worthy, whether it be with commercial recognition, critical reception, or a bit of both, we’ve been fortunate enough not to have them overlooked in both way. This movie we made called Solitary Man, it wasn’t a big blockbuster at the box office, it did fine for its relative scale, but it really did get some nice recognition from the critics at the time in year-end best-of lists, and Michael Douglas’s performance was really singled out, so we felt good about it. Rounders didn’t find commercial success in its time, but it’s certainly been viewed very warmly and respectfully over time. And we feel like we jumped into the Ocean’s franchise, and people seemed to like that third chapter, and it was a big hit. And we really feel like we’re getting the best of both worlds with Billions. It feels like the audience and the critics are all appreciating it in its time, and we’re just having a great time telling the story.

Not that characters like Chuck and Axe couldn’t have a dramatic fall at any moment, but you actually have a Billions endgame in mind?

BK: There are various endgame scenarios. I mean, it’s fluid. We don’t know exactly how long the story will go on. From our point of view, we’ll do it as long as it’s fertile ground for us, and it’s extremely fertile still, so we’re not packing toward a definite end point. Of course, it’s ultimately the network’s decision, but they seem to be enthusiastic about us continuing. so we’re ready to keep it rolling as long as it’s alive for us.

Will Harris (@NonStopPop) has a longstanding history of doing long-form interviews with random pop culture figures for the A.V. Club, Vulture, and a variety of other outlets, including Variety. He’s currently working on a book with David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. (And don’t call him Shirley.)

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