What To Expect From Sky’s New Legal Drama WAR, According To The Cast

There’s nothing quite as enticing as a high-profile divorce: two celebs ripping each other to shreds, multi-million pound prenups, and the mess of it all spilling out into gossip column pages.

The first of its two confirmed series, Sky’s new legal drama WAR opens on the eve of an explosive celebrity divorce: tech billionaire Morgan Henderson (Dominic West), creator of do-gooding social media app Zephyr, and international film star Carla Duval (Sienna Miller) are calling it quits. And London’s two most formidable law firms are joining them in battle. 

On Morgan’s side you have Cathcarts & Sons (all wood-panelled offices and three-piece suits), lead by Beatrice Ubosi (Nina Sosanya) and St John Smallwood (Pip Torrens). On Carla’s, the new, flashy upstarts Taylor & Byrne, headed up by married couple and founders Nicholas Taylor (James McArdle) and Serena Byrne (Phoebe Fox). Though different, they’re each as ferocious as the other, prepared to win the legal war no matter the cost. Drawn into it all is Jonathan ‘Johnny’ Warren (Archie Reneaux), an ambitious young lawyer trying his best to make it in this cutthroat world. And with Celia Imrie, Nick Mohammed and Miles Jupp also starring, audiences are in for a treat. 

Created and written by George Kay (Lupin, Hijack) and directed by Ben Taylor, this eight-part series is a twisty-turny struggle, and guaranteed to get you hooked. We caught up with the cast to find out more about the high-stakes drama. 

Meet The Cast Of WAR

Sienna and Dominic, by the time we meet your characters they’re pretty much at each others’ throats. How much work did you do to establish the romance that came before?

Sienna: We had some rehearsals early on where we had those conversations and got our timelines in order. Dom and I have known each other for 20 years, so we already have that sense of history and familiarity. I think you can sense that we were already close.

Dominic: We did a play about 20 years ago, so we kind of did our research then. But we had rehearsals, and conversations with Ben, our first director, and George, the writer. And actually, we didn’t get all of the scripts at once – each episode, we were learning about it three or four days before we’d start shooting. It was all a bit of a mystery to us as well.

Nicholas Taylor (James McArdle), Carla Duval (Sienna Miller) and Serena Byrne (Phoebe Fox) in WAR. ©Sky/ HBO/ New Pictures

Sienna, you’ve spoken about wanting to play Carla without warmth. How do you switch into that headspace?

Dominic: Quite easy for you, wasn’t it?

Sienna: I think it was a conscious decision to not be concerned with making other people feel comfortable, which is something I carry through my own life and is quite an exhausting trait, whether I succeed or not. Just turning down that noise – I don’t care how they feel – was really interesting and really hard. I wonder if I sustain it throughout the whole thing; I’m not sure I do, because some vulnerability starts to creep in for Carla. But initially, just not being attached to other people’s perception of you, and therefore not giving them that energy, was quite fun. I was like: that’s how it must be…

Dominic, you discussed how you wanted to make Morgan a benign billionaire. Did you draw on any real or fictional figures when building his character?

Dominic: I did. I listened to this podcast called Good Bad Billionaire – brilliant programme. They take one billionaire at a time, and there are around 2,500 billionaires in the world, and three good ones according to this podcast. That was really my research. It was interesting, because there are very, very few benign billionaires. I was asking George, ‘How benign is he?’ And someone like Branson isn’t necessarily regarded as benign. A benign billionaire is, in some ways, an oxymoron.

The show is shot across some spectacular London locations. Was there a favourite?

Sienna: My flat! I loved it. It was at the Columbia Hotel. 

Dominic: My hotel was looking right over Piccadilly – I’m not sure you even see it in the show. An incredible balcony looking down on everything. Looking right across at The Ritz. Brilliant.

St John Smallwood (Pip Torrens) and Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) in WAR. ©Sky/ HBO/ New Pictures

Pip: I’ve got a very nice office, which has a lot of artwork in it that I personally requested. My first request was for a photograph of Charlie Watts – the Rolling Stones drummer. A great sartorial model. Fantastic head, always immaculately dressed. If you look closely, you’ll see a black-and-white profile shot of him in there.

James: Your office is stunning. Ours is very IKEA.

Pip: I think the offices are characters in their own right. You go to Taylor & Byrne – modern, sleek, soulless. Then you come to Cathcarts, and it’s like being in a gentleman’s club. 

Serena Byrne (Phoebe Fox) in WAR. ©Sky/ HBO/ New Pictures

Phoebe and James, you have the joint challenge of not only playing spouses, but business partners. How did you navigate that double role?

James: It was almost impossible, because she’s so difficult [laughing]. No – we’ve known each other for years, so there was a real shorthand, and it was lovely because of that.

We got to really just play. We were guided towards screwball comedies by the director, and we figured out that there was an option where you played it harsh in the workplace and softer at home – but we found we were just as harsh with each other at home. And that’s when they were most attracted to each other: when they were sparring, trying to beat each other. The argument that impresses the other one. The more they spar, the more they love each other. Those are great scenes.

Phoebe: Part of their dynamic is that they are always lawyering and always married, whether they’re at home or in the office. When they’re at home, they’re sparring like they’re in court. I particularly loved bringing their domesticity into the office – especially when so much of our dialogue was exposition, legal jargon. It was lovely to just have a line about lasagna. Like a cool drink on a hot day. 

James and I trained at drama school together – and what we were told there, which seems to be true to this day, is that we have a natural chemistry that neither of us is really aware of. We didn’t feel we had to work too hard to make this couple feel very real.

Beatrice Ubosi (Nina Sosanya) in WAR. ©Sky/ HBO/ New Pictures

Nina and Phoebe, both of you are playing female lawyers in what remains a fairly male world. How much did that shape how you built your characters?

Nina: When I spoke to some female lawyers, one of the things that really stood out was how they had to negotiate the boys’ club – not only in law, but in many professions heavily populated by men. How do you infiltrate that gang? What do you use – your wit, your humour, your intelligence, your academic prowess? Just how bloody good you are at your job? Each person said: you use a different facet for every different situation. They couldn’t just sit back and be lawyers.

Phoebe: I spoke to a woman – a lawyer – specifically about what it’s like to be pregnant in a professional environment. Would Serena hide it? Would she celebrate it? Would she have to pretend it wasn’t happening? Would she still be wearing heels, or would she have a pregnancy ball in her office? There are quite a lot of women working in family law, so I felt like Serena didn’t necessarily have to lean too hard into a more masculine side. Because our client is a woman of a similar age, the most effective way for Serena was to speak woman to woman.

Pip, your character St John has been described as the series villain. Do you think that’s fair considering how brutal everybody is to each other?

Pip: I don’t know why people feel the need to say there’s a villain, because it’s not like he’s an evil person. He’s just ruthless professionally. He’s not a bad person. Even when he’s being horrible, it’s for entirely tactical reasons.

Johnny Warren (Archie Renaux) in WAR. ©Sky/ HBO/ New Pictures

Archie, your character Johnny has a bit of an edge to him. What was it like getting to play with this role?

Archie: It’s a dream. As soon as I read the first two episodes, I was like: ‘Oh, okay. This is really interesting.’ Because he’s constantly battling his morals against his ambition. As an actor, that’s a dream scenario: when you’ve got those two things playing off each other.

Was it difficult juggling his many layers?

Archie: It makes the job a whole lot easier. There are just so many more things to think about – so many more layers. I’ve got to play this, but also play that, but not dial it up too high. A performance within a performance. And honestly, it’s so much fun.

Michael Stefanou (Nick Mohammed) in WAR. ©Sky/ HBO/ New Pictures

Did you draw on any real-world or fictional examples when building your characters?

Archie: Weirdly – I said this to Ben and George at my very first meeting – there are little bits of Del Boy in there. He’s a salesman, a bit of a wheeler-dealer. Saying one thing, meaning another. And Ferris Bueller, just energetically. A lot of running around trying to make good. The Secret of My Success – Michael J. Fox. That’s another one that helped me quite a bit, energetically.

Nick: We don’t see as much of Michael in this series, but there were key things I was aware of for later seasons. I always like knowing where a character’s going to go – because you can very subtly plant seeds as to what gets under his skin. Michael is very black-and-white. It’s law. He’s doing his job, or he’s not. He’s so into it being done properly that he’s naturally suspicious.

How did you manage with all the legal jargon in the show?

Nick: I’ve got friends who are lawyers. There was a lot of technical legal language in the scripts, so we’d occasionally check in with each other – making sure we were saying things correctly, giving them the right intonation. I remember James saying a line, and Ben saying, ‘No – this is a good thing for this firm.’ So the whole tone of the line had to shift. There was a fair bit of that, really.

WAR will premiere in the UK on 2 October on Sky and streaming service NOW.