Dominic West says he would strip to his socks for £100. Sienna Miller says War is even more fun because it lets her play against type. Together, they are selling an eight-part legal drama built around a divorcing billionaire and a Hollywood star who would rather weaponise status than charm.
West, Miller and £100
“No, I’d want three figures. A hundred quid.” West’s answer landed beside his description of a “benign billionaire,” the kind of man who gives money away while still knowing exactly how power works. He also put it bluntly: “That, I suppose, is the kick billionaires must get: that people would do anything for money,” then added, “And you go, oh, now we see why he’s a billionaire.”
Miller’s side of the same joke was lighter. “for the lols,” she said, laughing about West stripping, before explaining that the real appeal was getting to be unpleasant on purpose. “it was really fun not to.” She said the part let her ignore the usual instinct to soften a character for the room.
Carla Duval and Morgan Henderson
War puts West as a social media billionaire and Miller as Carla Duval, a Hollywood star who wants half of her philandering ex’s wealth with the help of her legal team. West said he approached Morgan Henderson by trying to see the appeal of a man whose money turns other people into a sales pitch. Miller took the opposite route. “To not be invested in other people’s reactions or responses. To be narcissistic, basically.”
That ugly precision is the point. A divorcing couple is easier to write than a couple that still likes each other, and War is built on contempt, leverage and money moving through legal hands. West said he tries to “desperately try to make people like me,” which makes Morgan a cleaner inversion: a man who can afford not to care.
As You Like It history
Miller said the pair’s shared past helped on set: “So we had a history, which was great,” she said of working with West again. They first worked together 21 years ago in the West End production of As You Like It, and that kind of memory gives a performance a shorthand no table read can manufacture. It also keeps the banter sharp enough to sell a relationship that has already curdled.
West had the same shorthand with George Kay, who had written Morgan Henderson with him in mind after working with him on The Hour. Kay also said the show began with a conversation he overheard in a queue in an airport lounge: “This woman screamed ‘Yes!’ into her phone. I turned around, because I’m quite nosy, and said: ‘Can I ask what has made you so happy?’”
George Kay and the one borrowed scene
Kay said War was not built from real-life cases, apart from one scene that took its cue from the public serving of custody papers involving Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis. He said that moment became “one of our most emotional days [on set],” because it was “such a horrible thing to do.”
That leaves War in a useful place for viewers: rooted enough to feel contemporary, but not trapped in retelling one headline. The show leans on the messiest parts of wealth, vanity and divorce without pretending to be a courtroom reconstruction, and the cast is treating that as the job rather than the decoration.
