MAKING BILLIONS
More success for Costabile
For years, David Costabile has flourished as a familiar unknown star, the sort of all-purpose actor you like and recognize but aren’t sure from where.
With a laugh, he recalls being accosted by a fan in a Pennsylvania shopping mall who blurted out, “Hey! Are you —? Uh, do I —? Do YOU know ME?”
Fans, new and old, are welcoming Costabile in his latest role as Mike ( Wags) Wagner on the Showtime power-battle drama Billions. In Canada it airs on The Movie Network and streams on CraveTV.
In this lively clash of a U.S. attorney (Paul Giamatti) and the hedge-fund titan he wants to take down, Costabile plays attack dog and consigliere to high-flying financier Bobby Axelrod (played by Damian Lewis).
“Bad idea,” jokes Axelrod as Wags assists in swapping out his dress shirt for an upcoming meeting. “No man is a hero to his valet.”
“That goes double for his COO,” Wags fires back in his clipped purr. “So you are (expletive) with me either way.”
On Billions, Wags Wagner is giving viewers one more dot to connect with the many characters Costabile has logged in the past, some so different it’s hard to remember they’re all him.
He was the stone-hearted managing editor on The Wire and a doofus, cuckolded husband on Flight of the Conchords. He was the fussy former law partner on Suits and the savage police detec- tive on Damages.
On the movie screen, he played a pivotal U.S. congressman in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and a pivotal CIA operative in the recent Michael Bay film 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.
Perhaps he is best remembered as Gale Boetticher, the dweebish, karaoke-fancying chemist who served as lab assistant to crystalmeth king Walter White on Breaking Bad. As Gale, an eclectic loner with a taste for the poetry of Walt Whitman, he hurled the series toward its explosive finish as well as stealing every scene he appeared in.
A man with chipmunk cheeks and a broad forehead, a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous smile, the 49-year- old Costabile can morph into different roles almost as if shape-shifting.
But as he readily concedes, he seems to have a particular gift for characters that are slightly “off.”
He acknowledges a penchant for “the ineffectual bureaucratic type — a beige guy who blends into the wall.” But even if he doesn’t call attention to himself, you don’t dare take your eyes off him, because there’s always more to his performance than first meets the eye.
“I feel really lucky that as an actor, you’re trained to transform,” says Costabile, who after graduation from Tufts University earned a master of fine arts degree from New York University.
“If you get the opportunity to play lots of different characters in lots of different worlds, you get the opportunity to disappear. That’s the most fun: when you get to disappear.”