British actor Damian Lewis, an alum of Band of Brothers and Homeland, is currently chewing through all kinds of scenery on Showtime’s Billions as the enthusiastic Bobby Axelrod. When he’s not too busy crunching the numbers at Axe Capital, however, it seems Lewis is moving on to other projects — like Run This Town, a new thriller in which he will play the late former mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford. And no, we’re not making this up. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the 47-year-old actor is currently filming the role in, of all places, Toronto.
According to an interview with Kit Magazine, Lewis was recently “fitted for a prosthetic” so that the decidedly slimmer British actor could portray the characteristically larger late politician in the film. THR later confirmed with the filmmakers that Lewis was in fact playing Ford, noting that “[m]uch of the details on the movie remain under lock and key”:
[I]t is understood to follow a reporter, played by Ben Platt, who attempts to expose a scandal involving a politician who doesn’t play by the rules. The politician’s aides, played by Nina Dobrev and Mena Massoud, try their best to handle him and keep the story suppressed.
Ford first came to international prominence in 2013 when video of him smoking crack cocaine while in office surfaced. He promptly became a favorite subject of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live, especially since the bumbling politician continued to make the news after his initial drug scandal was already forgotten. Ford passed away in 2016 after succumbing to complications from cancer at the age of 46.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
