Sienna Miller looks ready for battle in the first images from “War,” the upcoming Sky/HBO drama from “Hijack” co-creator George Kay.
Miller stars opposite Dominic West (“The Crown”) in the eight-part series, as they play a high-net worth couple going through a divorce. The show, which is set to land on Oct. 1 on HBO in the U.S. and Oct. 2 on Sky in the U.K., follows the couple’s fortunes through the eyes of their respective legal teams Taylor & Byrne and Cathcarts & Sons. It will roll out weekly.
A second season has already been greenlit which will stay with the lawyers as they take on a new high-profile case, this time revolving around a defamation suit. Marisa Tomei, Kelly Macdonald and David Harewood guest star as clients.
“War” Season 1 will also be available in Ireland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, Asia, France, and Belgium. NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution are repping global sales.
Kay created, writes and exec produces the series, which is produced by New Pictures, a Banijay company, and Observatory Pictures, in association with Sky and HBO.
Ahead of the release of the first-look images, he sat down with Variety to talk about the genesis of the show and what viewers can expect.
Sienna Miller and Dominic West in “War” (courtesy of Sky/HBO)
Where did you get the idea for “War”?
I was really hungry to do a mainstream, high-end TV [show] with characters at the heart of it. I’ve worked on a lot of thrillers and I’ve worked on a lot of crime stories. I was really keen to do character stuff and do it in a high-end, unapologetically affluent setting, and go back to those kind of shows that I grew up loving – “The Good Wife,” “Ally McBeal” — go back to that network-era stuff. So I was thinking about doing this legal show because I love the idea that a case that you’re working on as a lawyer is a kind of metaphor for your own life, where you’re constantly bringing the personal into the professional.
What is the show about?
It’s two high-end rival London law firms, and each season we try and concoct a way for there to be a battle again. I wanted to do one traditional, older firm [and a] fresher firm with ambitions and less resources, but always full of characters who are smart. No one’s fusty, but there’s the traditional one and there’s the modern one. Each season we can come back and reboot with guest star clients.
Why did you decide to focus on a divorce in Season 1?
I was thinking, what is the first big case? I didn’t want to do story-of-the-week because I think so many of these cases really take up a lot of the lawyers’ time and lives.
I was in a queue and there was a woman standing behind me on the phone who was quite a well-off, glamorous woman in her fifties, and the queue was quiet except for her talking. And then I started to gently eavesdrop on what she was saying right behind me because there was nothing else to do. And then she screamed “YES!” and hung up the phone. I turned to her and I said, “Congratulations, you seem really excited.” And she said to me: “The bastard signed.” … She’d been getting divorced for four years from this really well-off guy.
I thought a divorce might be the thing [for Season 1] because we can all relate to — not the high-end wealth — but we can all relate to being in relationships or having partnerships, and then suddenly that metaphor thing that I was just describing became relevant for all our characters. So in Season 1 of “War,” it’s about rivalries and partnerships, and it’s told via the mechanism of a divorce trial.
Divorce law in the U.K. is quite prescriptive – was there anything you wanted to do for the drama that your legal consultants said was unrealistic?
No, it was never prohibitive. I did a show five years ago on Netflix called “Criminal” which is just set in three rooms: I like a restriction… because that drives you on and makes you think outside the box, or demands you have a solution, there’s no way out. Or if you’re on a plane [like in “Hijack” Season 1], you’ve got to work out how to tell a story. And then other times we would just focus in on what we can do and try and make that work, and that’s when a writers’ room is really helpful. I will listen to the consultants to a point – you don’t want to let that tail wag the dog.
There have been some very high-profile divorce cases that have spilled out into the public arena in recent history, whether it’s Olivia Wilde getting served on stage at CinemaCon or Heather McCartney throwing water at Paul McCartney’s lawyer in court. How much did you borrow from real life?
We were always thinking about these well-known cases, but we were always reverting to how it would feel.
I guess there are little lifts off real life, little nods, but really it’s original storytelling and it’s our characters.
Season 2 has already been greenlit and is in production. How much will that overlap with Season 1?
We pick up in Season 2 with a new case, with new clients, but every time we return with the same lawyer characters. So the more the show goes on, the more you get to invest in them and their lives.
Do you have ideas for Season 3 bubbling away if the show gets picked up for a third season?
Yeah, we’re starting to do that. The family law thing really has been brilliant for us. And there are other aspects of family law that I’d like to revisit, and then we can keep growing. It’s also about which worlds we’re setting them in, in terms of the clients. So with Dom and Sienna, we had acting and we had social media and tech entrepreneurs. So we can visit these different worlds each time.
This interview has been edited and condensed. Check out the trailer for “War” below: