Exclusive: Billions’ David Costabile Talks ‘Soulmates’
Airing this week is Episode 2 of AMC’s six-episode anthology series Soulmates, written by Emmy® Award-winner, co-creator and executive producer Will Bridges (Stranger Things, Black Mirror) with co-creator and executive producer Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso, Superbob, Adult Life Skills)
The series is set fifteen years into the future, when science has made a discovery that changes the lives of everyone on the planet – a test that unequivocally tells you who your soulmate is. In a first-ever format for AMC, each one-hour episode will feature a different cast and explore an entirely new story around discovering (or opting not to discover) the results of this new test and the impact of those results on a myriad of relationships.
In this week’s episode, “The Lovers” (airing Monday at 10/9c), David Costabile (Billions) plays David, a tenure-seeking professor whose life is at risk of being turned upside down when Alison (Lodge 49‘s Sonya Cassidy) confronts him with proof that she is his soulmate.
Costabile, having appeared in several films and TV series such as Breaking Bad, Damages, Flight of the Conchords, Suits, and The Wire, is best known for his portrayal of Mike "Wags" Wagner on Showtime’s Billions. Season 5 of Billions was halted because of the pandemic but will continue once safety measures are secured for the actors to come in. The show was renewed for a sixth season.
BlackFilmandTY.com recently caught up with Costabile as he spoke his role in Episode 2 of Soulmates.
What went into saying yes to playing David?
David Costabile: I have worked with AMC a number of times so that was the easiest and most attractive part. It's always fun to know that the product that you're going to get into are of the highest quality. That's always driven by writing. Certainly, the first time I worked for them was on Breaking Bad. I would say that's really good writing on that TV show. That's always been true. So I didn't know the guys Breton will who wrote this episode.
I didn’t know the writers who wrote that episode but I did have great trust in AMC to know that what we were going to make, with this episode, was going to have great integrity and going to be really interesting. I think one of the things that attracted me about the character is that on some level, he's kind of lost, right? He's a guy who is trying to find his way. He’s trying to really attach himself to a sense of belonging. It struck me as if he doesn't think he really doesn't have it. He's got this job, and he's in this marriage and doesn't feel like he particularly belongs in the marriage. I don't think that he also feels like he is worthy, or belongs to the class that he's moved up to. He's moved up into a higher class and he's ever been.
The idea of getting tenure and really being able to, at the highest level of being an art historian is clearly very important to him. And yet, he is also somebody who clearly feels that there's something missing in his life, and he doesn't know what it is or how to identify it. He comes to this particular crossroads, and I think he feels like this is going to be a good choice, like the choices that he makes. Then we see in the episode, you really get to see a guy approaching the crossroad and then taking a path that is surprising.
What do you think goes into finding a soulmate? Should it be something that people should be tested for, as in this series, or do you rely on the emotional feeling?
David Costabile: In the show, they've found that soulmate they can identify. The thing that becomes enticing to people is that they want to feel that certainty. Then we see from that episode what that may lead you, probably not certainty. What's fun about the fact that they've set the show in the near future is that, as we all you know, and quite prophetic of them, they obviously didn't know that this was going to happen as we were making it. But that living in the age of uncertainty that we are in now, that becomes even more attractive.
If you knew in your love life or inside of your being, that you could find concrete certainty about the similarity of one sort or another. It might be it would be compelling to want to find out want to act on it want to potentially change everything about your life in order to get that to find that kind of connection and surety about living in a really unsure world. We live in a deeply unsure world. We are an uninsured people now. This is a very timely piece of TV to be watching right now, as we all look for that kind of certainty. For my own self in my own life, do I think that that is how the connection between love and one soul works? I think it's probably a little less certain than that. There’s a little more flexibility with regard to that intersection, don't you?
What goes into saying yes, to the characters you play?
David Costabile: To me, it's really about the writing. It’s about writing that intrigues you, writing that excites you and has a real integrity to it; that you can look at it from lots of different angles, and you can press on it, you can pull it, and you can try to rip at it. And it has resilience. Because when you get good writing that has that kind of resilience, the things that you're going to do in the role is flow, not just easily but that are exciting to you. You want to look for something that if I come at it from this angle, it's going to it's going to manifest this way, if I come from this other angle, it's going to manifest a different way.
Where are we with Billions? Will it be a new season or continue from last?
David Costabile: No, we're going to continue to finish the last season. We were in the middle of the eighth episode and when we come back, we will continue with that episode.
