Damian Lewis has exited Showtime’s Billions.
Lewis played Bobby Axelrod, aka Axe, on the Showtime series, which aired its season five finale Sunday night.
With his very rich Bobby Axelrod on the run in Switzerland from the legal claws of Paul Giamatti’s Empire State Attorney General, Emmy winner Lewis ended his five season run on the Brian Koppelman, David Levien, and Andrew Ross Sorkin-created, high finance drama with a smile tonight. After years of staying just one step ahead of the law and a big loss, Axelrod also saw nearly all his considerable fortune gone as he settled down to a handcuffs-free life in Europe.
Already renewed for a sixth season, Billions returned for the second half of its fifth season, which had been delayed by the pandemic-related production shutdown, on Sept. 5. It expanded the battle between Lewis’s Axelrod and Giamatti’s Chuck Rhodes to include former House of Cards star Stoll in a very unholy trinity. Stoll is now joining the drama full-time as he has been promoted to a series regular for Season 6.
Also starring in Billions are Asia Kate Dillon, Maggie Siff, David Costabile, Condola Rashad, Kelly AuCoin and Jeffrey DeMunn. The Season 5 finale lifted a little bit of the real life escape with Axelrod’s replaying arrested Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn secret flight out of Japan in 2019.
It’s not the first Showtime series that Lewis has departed during the show’s run. He exited the network’s Homeland in 2013 after three seasons.
