They’re ready to make war, not love

Half of a conversation — just one word, actually — helped nudge a new drama series.
Well, that word was repeated often and with increasing glee. For writer George Kay, it was a spark for “War,” which starts at 9 p.m. Thursday (Oct. 1) on HBO and HBO Max, with Dominic West and Sienna Miller (shown here) as divorce combatants.
Kay had already envisioned the basics — a show about two high-end London law firms, one old and one new. Each season would involve one case, viewed from both sides. But what would the first case be?
At a restaurant, he said, he was sitting near a wealthy-looking and “quite put together” woman who kept saying that one word (“yes”) into her phone. “Finally, she screamed ‘YES!!’ and hung up.”
He asked her about it and she said her four-year divorce case had finally been settled. That got Kay going; this first season has a divorce case with:
— Carla Duval (Miller), a film star.
— Her estranged husband Morgan Henderson (West), a tech mogul.
— An old-school law firm, including partners St. John Smallwood (Pip Torrens) and “Queen Bea” Ubesi (Nina Sosyana).
— And a newer firm, led by Nicholas Taylor (James McArdle) and Serena Byrne (Phoebe Fox).
West, 56, and Miller, 44, had worked together previously, doing Shakespeare. “You get to know each other so well,” she said. “We did 100 days.”
Still, that’s hardly a set-up for this one: The play, “As You Like It,” was in 2005. West was Orlando; Miller was Celia, who marries Orlando’s brother.
Now, 21 years later, they play feuding spouses. West describes it as “on the knife’s edge between love and war.”
For their lawyers, it’s strictly warfare. “We don’t have conventional moral sense,” Torrens said. “That wouldn’t be productive.”
He’s in the old-school firm, but the newer one shares that view. Fox says her character is “as ambitious and ruthless as the others.”
They’re ready for battle. Next season will add new actors, including Marissa Tomei, Kelly Macdonald, Richard Schiff and David Harewood. It will also switch subjects, from divorce to defamation. But it will still be war.