{"id":611490,"date":"2026-09-25T15:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T15:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/611490\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T15:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T15:36:10","slug":"id-strip-for-100-dominic-west-and-sienna-miller-on-nudity-narcissism-and-their-juicy-new-show-war-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/611490\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019d strip for \u00a3100!\u2019 Dominic West and Sienna Miller on nudity, narcissism and their juicy new show War | Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a London hotel room, Dominic West is weighing up how much he would accept to strip to his socks. In the new series War, West plays a social media billionaire who is supposed to be fairly decent, though there\u2019s one excruciating scene \u2013 goading someone to strip for money \u2013 that reveals he\u2019s definitely also a bit of a git. \u201cThat, I suppose, is the kick billionaires must get: that people would do anything for money,\u201d he says. He wonders what his price would be. His co-star Sienna Miller<\/a> laughs and says he\u2019d do it \u201cfor the lols\u201d, and West grins and says: \u201cNo, I\u2019d want three figures. A hundred quid.\u201d<\/p>\n

War is a juicy eight-part legal drama, where Miller and West are a divorcing couple \u2013 she a narcissistic film star, he said billionaire \u2013 so just about all their scenes together are suppurating with contempt, which is fun, but also a bit of a shame because they have such good chemistry. They first worked together 21 years ago in the West End production of Shakespeare\u2019s As You Like It<\/a>. \u201cSo we had a history, which was great,\u201d says Miller. There have been many times she\u2019s gone into jobs where \u201con the first day you\u2019re married to someone and you don\u2019t know them. It\u2019s helpful to have some sort of rapport.\u201d<\/p>\n

West was cast first \u2013 he had worked with the creator George Kay previously on the classy BBC drama The Hour, and Kay had written the role of Morgan Henderson, a\u00a0tech entrepreneur, with him in mind. Miller plays Carla Duval, a Hollywood star who wants half of her philandering ex\u2019s wealth \u2013 with the help of her formidable legal team. Neither Carla nor Morgan have much to recommend them. Miller struggled, she says with a laugh, to \u201cfind the more human aspects of her, until I realised it was really fun not to. I decided to have fun leaning into the unappealing qualities of Carla, which was quite uncomfortable for somebody who errs on the side of people-pleasing. To not be invested in other people\u2019s reactions or responses. To be narcissistic, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throwing shade \u2026 Miller with James McArdle and Phoebe Fox in War. Photograph: Miya Mizuno\/Sky\/HBO\/New Pictures<\/p>\n

For West, it must have been just as tricky finding his way into playing a \u201cbenign billionaire\u201d. Do they exist? The BBC podcast Good Bad Billionaire came in useful, he says. Only a handful of the billionaires covered could be considered \u201cgood\u201d. \u201cBasically they\u2019re the ones who give away all the money \u2026 It was intriguing to me, the idea of a benign billionaire.\u201d But Morgan obviously has a ruthless side \u2013 the hardball divorce negotiations, and that strip scene. \u201cAnd you go, oh, now we see why he\u2019s a billionaire. But other than that, I was doing what Sienna was avoiding, and I do all the time, which is desperately try to make people like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was the high-profile divorce based on real-life cases? No, says Kay when we speak. Only one scene was inspired by real events \u2013 when the actor and director Olivia Wilde was served custody papers<\/a> at a public event on behalf of Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis. \u201cIt was one of our most emotional days [on set],\u201d says Kay, \u201cbecause it\u2019s such a\u00a0horrible thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show was inspired by a conversation Kay overheard in a queue in an airport lounge. \u201cThis woman screamed \u2018Yes!\u2019 into her phone. I turned around, because I\u2019m quite nosy, and said: \u2018Can I ask what has made you so happy?\u2019\u201d She told him her husband had finally signed the papers after a four-year divorce battle. The more Kay looked into high-stakes, high-end divorces, the more he realised it was filled with drama \u2013 the prenups, the affairs, the property \u2013 and ideal for the kind of glossy legal shows he\u2019d grown up watching. \u201cI\u2019m a kid of the 90s,\u201d he says. He loved the big law shows such as Ally McBeal<\/a>, and later The Good Wife<\/a>, and The West Wing<\/a> was inspiration as a workplace-based drama. \u201cI loved the humour. I wanted to do something with the sort of zip and repartee of those shows.\u201d It\u2019s the reason the cast of War is so comedian-heavy, including Miles Jupp<\/a> and Nick Mohammed<\/a> as solicitors at rival firms. \u201cPeople [who] are just super-sharp on the cues because if anyone slows down, it dies on its feet.\u201d (Extra fun fact: Mohammed and Celia Imrie, who plays a barrister, were also filming The Celebrity Traitors at the same time. \u201cThey were so tight-lipped!\u201d says Kay.)<\/p>\n

Law and disorder \u2026\u00a0West with Nina Sosanya and Pip Torrens in War. Photograph: New Pictures\/Sky\/HBO<\/p>\n

He had previously worked with writer Abi Morgan on her show The Hour<\/a>; Morgan\u2019s series The Split<\/a> also features glossy divorce lawyers, but Kay says his were \u201call American references\u201d. There\u2019s already a second series with the rival law firms taking on a defamation case. Expect more juice.<\/p>\n

A public divorce brings wild scrutiny of the private lives of the people going through it, and when it\u2019s a celebrity couple \u2013 as Morgan and Carla discover \u2013 it\u2019s on a different scale altogether. Miller and West both have experience of this, though not in divorces. West had a brief period of what might politely be called \u201cmarital scrutiny\u201d (in late 2020, photographers camped outside his house after photographs were published of him with his The Pursuit of Love<\/a> co-star Lily James) but Miller had years of intense hounding during her relationship with the actor Jude Law. A victim of phone hacking by the News of the World, she won damages in 2011, gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry, and settled with News Group Newspapers in 2021 over alleged hacking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [the paparazzi] were hounding you, weren\u2019t they?\u201d says West, remembering scenes outside the London theatre where they worked in 2005. Yes, says Miller, \u201cbut it feels like another life and another world. It\u2019s now almost, from a kind of sociological perspective, interesting to look back on what the culture was like then.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is curious, though, is why Miller seems so willing to put herself through it in her work: in War, as in Netflix\u2019s Anatomy of a Scandal<\/a>, she\u2019s harassed by paps and dealing with an unfaithful husband. Having only got the later scripts after signing on, she didn\u2019t know what Carla would be dealing with. She laughs and says maybe directors instantly think of her for \u201cthat kind of storyline, which is something I\u2019ll now avoid\u201d. But does it stir up difficult memories, or is there a catharsis in playing it? \u201cMaybe that\u2019s it. Maybe it is kind of reframing it for myself \u2013 to pretend at it, and to then remember how crazy that was as a way of living.\u201d Separately, Kay says his stars\u2019 personal experiences didn\u2019t influence the casting or writing. \u201cOne of the things we did quite quickly was we resisted any of that meta-referencing, because they are incredibly good actors, and\u00a0these parts are different from their own experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

West has had plenty of accolades, but Miller has always been underrated; she has said that the emphasis on her personal life probably derailed her career. She puts in a wonderful performance in War, as she has in other roles such as the weighty 2018 film American Woman<\/a>. \u201cI feel less like I have to prove something, and I\u2019m not sure whether that\u2019s because I don\u2019t have anything to prove, or I just don\u2019t care about proving myself any more,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

There are also a few better roles now for older women. \u201cI remember speaking to actresses who were like: \u2018You\u2019re so lucky that you\u2019re turning 40 now, because we were obsolete when that happened.\u2019 But I still wish I\u2019d played Juliet.\u201d She remembers speaking to a theatre heavyweight not so long ago and asking if he thought she could still play Juliet. She laughs as she remembers: \u201cHe said, \u2018I just think people will struggle to see you as a virgin.\u2019\u201d West adds with a laugh, \u201cYou just need an old Romeo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Has this show put them off ever getting divorced? \u201cOf course!\u201d says West (married since 2010). \u201cI think that\u2019s the big takeaway. I was talking to a guy who was rich and getting a divorce, and he backed up everything in the show. The interesting thing, and George anatomises it so well, is how two people who loved each other can descend into warfare. That\u2019s where the drama is: that knife edge between love and hate. You get it in any relationship, when you\u2019re arguing or whatever, but this is in a wildly expensive public arena. Like a battle in any commercial situation, with big lawyers, your marriage becomes that.\u201d A commodity, says Miller (she\u2019s engaged to the actor Oli Green), \u201cto be bartered with, and the more acrimonious, the more money [for the lawyers]\u201d.<\/p>\n

The stress and vitriol unleashed by this divorce, arguing over numbers so big they\u2019re almost meaningless, seems barely worth it. I\u2019d have settled for a lot less to avoid it (I\u2019d be a terrible divorce lawyer). \u201cI imagine that kind of money to be incredibly corrosive,\u201d says Miller. \u201cI have been in proximity to people who have a huge amount of money, and I just don\u2019t see them as happier. I mean, it\u2019s a revolting amount of money.\u201d West has given billionaires more thought recently than he\u2019d probably like to. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got several hundred billion, and you\u2019re not solving the climate crisis, then really something\u2019s deeply wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

War is on Sky Atlantic on Friday 2 October at\u00a09pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a London hotel room, Dominic West is weighing up how much he would accept to strip to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-611490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}