Corey Stoll on Billions season five and his ultimate bucket list role

When Marvel star Corey Stoll turned down a role on Billions years ago, it was a gamble that would ultimately pay off.

Corey Stoll was almost on Billions from the beginning.

The actor who found international fame as the doomed Peter Russo on House of Card s before going on to feature in some high-profile movies including a Marvel flick, is the big-name guest star on the fifth season of the drama, starting today on Stan.

But he was in talks with the writers of Billions as early as the first season.

“It was for a role that was fine, but it wasn’t terribly challenging, there wasn’t much to chew on,” Stoll told news.com.au on the phone from New York where Billions is filmed and where the actor has been riding out the coronavirus pandemic in lockdown.

“I thought the writing was great and the cast was incredible, so I rolled the dice, betting that the show would go on for a while and I could hold out for a role that was going to be a little more challenging. I’m glad I did.”

The gamble paid off. Stoll kept in touch with the writers and they “found the right fit”.

Corey Stoll plays a billionaire philanthropist in the new season of Billions

Joining the cast of the intense TV series set in the powerful world of high finance and dubious ethics, Billions has four seasons under its belt. The show started off as a rivalry between hedge fund king Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis) and politically ambitious prosecutor Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti).

The two alpha males would plot and scheme for more control, ruthlessly taking down enemies real and perceived. Over the years, alliances shifted, betrayals stung but the dynamics of the show remained the same: the pursuit of power and money at any cost.

Into this powder keg enters Stoll’s character, Michael Prince, a billionaire philanthropist who challenges Axe for dominance.

“I think more than any character that we’ve seen on this show, he really sees himself as righteous, and holds himself to an incredibly high standard,” Stoll explained. “He almost uses his niceness and his kindness and his generosity as a weapon, which is an incredibly fun dynamic, especially with Axe who is such an in-your-face, aggressive guy.

“Mike Prince is no less of an alpha and there is this incredible sort of spark between two equally matched fighters.”

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Billions: high intensity

But when you’re playing with that amount of money – and the characters in Billions throw around many-zeroed figures with a laissez-faire attitude – compromise comes cheap.

Stoll said he hasn’t seen all the scripts for the season, but it becomes clear “the position of being righteous is going to be harder and harder to hold”.

When Stoll started filming the fifth season, he was pulling double duty, playing Prince during the day and walking the boards as Macbeth on stage during the evening.

He admitted that doing both meant he was “barely keeping my head above water” so he didn’t have time to plunge himself into research on playing a money guy. But he’s no neophyte to the finance world either, having been “very interested” in economics and business since the GFC.

“That world is not completely unfamiliar to me, but still, the jargon and the dialogue is still dense.”

The overlap with Macbeth gave him some perspective on the similarity between the Scottish king and the billionaire philanthropist – “they both share a desire to see themselves as a good person”.

Stoll became known to international audiences through his role on the first season of House of Cards

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With a spate of great roles in recent years including as Iago, Marcus Brutus, Trigorin and even Buzz Aldrin, there’s still another monarch, another prince, Stoll would love to portray: The Prince of Denmark.

“I do feel that it’s already too late for me to play Hamlet, because that sounds like it would be a terrible production,” he said, laughing self-effacingly. “I would have to find a reason to do it other than ‘the actor wants to play Hamlet’. I promise I won’t force the world to watch a production of Hamlet which only exists because I want to play Hamlet.

“In grad school, you do Gibson, Shaw and Chekhov, and I think these are all really great roles, but strangely I got to play Hemingway (in Midnight in Pa ris), which I never would have dreamt was a bucket list role until it was offered to me.

“That sort of has been the way my career has gone so far, where I’ve been showing and doing the work that I do, and occasionally roles come by where they were dreams I didn’t know I had.”

Corey Stoll played a Marvel villain in Ant-Man opposite Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd

For the moment, like most of his thespian compatriots, Stoll is living through pandemic lockdown like everyone else.

Along with most TV shows and movies the world over, Billions hadn’t finished filming the season when the pandemic struck and the production is now on hiatus as industries go into hibernation.

But he said he “hasn’t lost his mind yet” in isolation. Stoll once described himself as “a constitutionally introverted person” but the times are testing everyone.

Luckily, he has an anchor – his young son with wife actor Nadia Bowers (she played Lady Macbeth opposite Stoll in the same production).

“We have (Brooklyn’s) Prospect Park right here and me and my son have been running around and exploring the woods, while staying six feet away from everybody.

“I’m just trying to be in the moment. Whenever I start to really feel a sense of disequilibrium, I try to really focus on what is happening right now. Luckily, with a four-year-old, it’s always in the moment. He’s been my guide for that.”

Billions season five starts streaming on Stan today

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