AS MUCH AS we might not want to admit it, the public has a particular interest in high profile divorce cases. While it’s awful for the pair going through the experience, the details of famous couples’ marriage woes will always make media fodder.

Behind the scenes of such cases, there are legal teams trying to get their ducks in a row and two people trying to navigate their way around big personal changes. No wonder the TV showrunner George Kay is focusing on celebrity divorce for his new show War, which kicks off today on Sky Atlantic and stars Sienna Miller and Dominic West as a couple trying to dissolve their marriage.

Kay is also behind series like Hijack and Lupin, so knows his way around a glossy thriller. In War he is focusing on two rival law firms – the stuffy Cathcarts and the new upstarts Taylor & Byrne – who each represent one side of the couple that is Morgan Henderson (West) and Carla Duval (Miller).

Cathcarts represent Morgan, who is a billionaire businessman. Taylor & Byrne represent Carla, who’s a famous actress. 

The series brings us the juicy story of how Cathcarts and Taylor & Byrne try their best to get the most for their respective clients. Crucially, neither are afraid of a bit of subterfuge to get their way. In the middle is the young lawyer Jonathan Warren (Archie Renaux), who finds himself trapped between both teams.

‘I wanted to turn down any warmth’

Sienna Miller in War Miya Mizuno Miya Mizuno

When Best of the Box caught up with Sienna Miller and Dominic West in London ahead of the premiere of War in Leicester Square, we started by asking what most excited them about playing their characters.

“I was really excited to navigate a world that’s familiar to me with a completely different perspective and character within it,” Miller tells us. “I wanted to turn down any warmth that I might naturally have. I think I can often be quite vulnerable when I act; it’s just more my nature. But to not be concerned with other people in an environment I felt was intrinsic to who Carla is, and to be able to navigate a space only thinking about herself was so uncomfortable at first, and then really liberating. So that was my main approach with playing her.”

Carla is the mother of a young son, Gabriel, played by Aran Murphy (son of Cillian Murphy – more on him a moment). While she loves her son, she can be very self-absorbed, something that Miller enjoyed getting her teeth stuck into. 

“She does what she wants. She doesn’t care what other people think,” she says, adding with a laugh: “She’s a narcissist, basically. I kind of loved it – it was liberating.”

Dominic West, meanwhile, was drawn to the different sides to Morgan. “I was very interested to play a billionaire because there’s obviously a ruthlessness there, and the suits are nice,” he says with a chuckle. “George [Kay] said he was a benign billionaire, and I thought, what’s that mean? I think Sienna said yesterday that’s an oxymoron. I looked into it, and of 2.5k billionaires in the world, there are three benign ones.”

Morgan has money and power, but he also runs a social media network called Zephyr that has aims of making the world a better place. He’s the opposite to Elon Musk, in other words.

“That was an interesting challenge, and you realise the scenes like when he challenges a guy to strip off in return for a million quid, there was a ruthlessness there and a nastiness,” says West of one particular turn from Morgan. “[He was that] sort of billionaire, [and has what] some of them seem to have, which is a sort of superiority over the rest of us.” But that’s combined with “somebody who did have a heart and was trying to do the right thing”. In other words, the makings of a very fun character to play. 

Public figures

Archie Reynaux as Jonathan Justin Downing Justin Downing

Important to both Carla and Morgan’s experiences is that they are public figures. This echoes West and Miller’s lives, as both know what it’s like to have the tabloids interested in them and their personal lives. Miller has even won damages from the News of the World after it hacked her phone, and she gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry in 2011 about her experience with the paparazzi.

When asked about drawing on their own experience as public figures for their roles in War, Miller said: “I think that when your private life becomes fodder or it’s taken out of your hands, that you’re vulnerable in that moment.”

“Because we’re all human and everybody makes mistakes or does things that they are ashamed of, perhaps. To have that dissected by people everywhere is a vulnerable situation for anyone [and] if you’re in the public eye, it’s something that you just have to deal with,” she continues.

So I think it was probably important that some vulnerability came into Carla, because I was having a really good time making her quite unpleasant. But I hope that there is a little bit of empathy that creeps in there because she is just a person and she’s built up an armour to navigate the world.

West, meanwhile, said: “I found it was interesting being a businessman looking at Carla being the star actress and bullied by paparazzi, and suddenly [Morgan] was being bullied by paparazzi, and I thought, ‘God, it would be great if the paparazzi bullied billionaires instead of young actresses’.” 

But they don’t intend to make viewers of War feel too much sympathy for Morgan and Carla, who we watch doing some pretty manipulative things across the eight episodes.

“I think that they’re not the nicest people, so I don’t know that we’re looking for sympathy and love on this one,” says Miller. Overall, she’s particularly interested in what the series shows us about life in the lawyers’ offices.

“It’s always interesting to see behind the mask, and that applies to the lawyers as well. You see them being ruthless within the office space or within the navigation of this divorce,” she says. “But it’s great to see them go home and discuss it, and see the human behind the lawyer as well.”

Indeed, the series brings us into the private lives of the married couple Serena Byrne (Phoebe Fox) and Nicholas Taylor (James McArdle), who have newly set up their firm and are trying to balance business and their relationship.

Also important to the plot is Carla’s son Gabriel, played by the aforementioned Aran Murphy. Did Miller and West give him any advice on set? “We didn’t give any advice, and he probably got all the good advice he needed from home,” says Miller. “But I’ve worked with his dad a couple of times, and he just has the same humble, sweet, kind, gentle, not arrogant at all energy, and I think he’ll be fantastic. He’ll have a great career.”

West agrees, saying that Murphy was “great, he was lovely”. 

“I really enjoyed our scenes,” he says. “He’s really good, which is the main thing. But he’s also, as Sienna said, he’s nice to have around.”

Miller adds that the troubled Gabriel “couldn’t be more different” to who Aran is as a person. “So he’s done a great job,” she enthuses.

Also starring in War is Shaheen Jafargholi, who plays Saeed Masood, a training associate at Taylor & Byrne. (Keep an eye out for Jafargholi in Heated Rivalry season two, where he’ll play Fabian.) Other young additions include Emma Laird as fellow training associate Molly Giordano, while the cast also includes well-established actors like Celia Imrie, who plays Budgie (yes, Budgie) who works at Taylor & Byrne, and Nick Mohammed as Michael Stefano, who works at Cathcarts.

War is already in production for its second season, which will star Marisa Tomei, Kelly Macdonald and David Harewood, and its plot will revolve around a defamation case. If you’re looking for a juicy, glossy new legal series that doesn’t hold back on the drama, give War a go.

War will air tonight (Friday 2 October) on Sky Atlantic at 9pm and will stream on NOW.