Paul Giamatti talks "Billions" and kinky opening scene
When Paul Giamatti read the script for the opening scene script for "Billions," he was all in.
"I was like, 'I absolutely want to do this.' I'm really, really keen to do this," Giamatti said Wednesday, as the "CBS This Morning" co-hosts laughed.
Showtime's "Billions" opens with a kinky scene where Giamatti's character, Chuck Rhoades, tied up in ropes, is approached by a female character in stilettos. The exact details of what happens are left to the viewer's imagination.
"It was incredibly relaxing, and I don't know if that's the reaction you're supposed to have," Giamatti described the experience of being tied up.
But, Giamatti said, it was not erotic.
"I was on a set, you've gotta remember. If I was alone with somebody, maybe it would've been erotic. Yes, but there's 50 guys around me with boom mics, and makeup ladies and stuff," he said.
The viewer finds out Giamatti is the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who is intent on taking down a billionaire hedge fund manager played by Damian Lewis.
"My character has an alternative lifestyle, is what I should say. Yes, he does," Giamatti said. "I mean, I think it's an interesting idea for the whole show, because the whole show's about dominance, particularly this kind of male-power dominance and submission and dominance ... between these two guys."
The show is all about power, money and politics, Giamatti explained. And prosecutors have enormous amounts of power.
"They are infallible, in a sense -- what they choose to prosecute, what they don't choose to prosecute, it's an incredible power too. What they choose to let go," he said.
This is not the first time the award-winning actors Giamatti and Lewis have worked together on a project. They were in "Romeo & Juliet" in 2013, Giamatti as Friar Laurence and Lewis as Lord Capulet.