Maggie Siff is famous for her roles in hit shows like Sons of Anarchy and Mad Men, but she’s back for Season 4 of Billions and is opening up on the challenges of playing her role as Wendy Rhoades.
Siff plays a woman who is a respected performance coach in the hedge fund world — which is a much different role than she plays in real life. However, in an interview with Business Insider, the actress admits that the S&M scenes — although straightforward and are quite the opposite of how she presents herself day-to-day — are parts of a relationship that should remain unseen by the public.
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“I’m pretty naturally modest and those scenes, they require a lack of self consciousness,” she explained. “They are actually incredibly intimate. When they work their best, you are looking at the most intimate moments in a marriage, things you should not be able to see.”
Those scenes might be slightly risqué, but that’s not completely unfamiliar to Siff. From 2008 to 2013 her role as Dr. Tara Knowles Teller introduced her to an edgier side of life on a regular basis.
In Billions, Siff’s character, Wendy, is lost in the mix between her boss, Bobby “Axe” Axelrod and her husband, Chuck, who is a US attorney, and confesses that it’s a world of difference between who she plays and who she really is in her personal life.
“With Wendy, I love, I just love stepping in and out of her,” Siff confessed. “It’s kind of a joke for me. When I’m not at work playing this superwoman, I’m in a hausfrau in sweatpants looking after my four year old. It’s like a big cosmic joke. [Playing a character with this] swagger around dudes is really fun. It’s been a lovely antidote having a small child.”
Siff mentions “superwoman” but on the contrary, her character is rather the opposite.
“On TV we see all these anti-heroes who are men. We don’t see a lot of women,” Siff said.
Her character is definitely one who can keep up with the boys — and let’s be honest, history shows these types of roles play well for her. Wendy is different though, in a sense that a lot of successful business women can relate to this character and Siff is the first one to highlight that.
“There is just so much appreciation for a character that has that much power, pulling strings behind the scenes,” she said.
Coming from parents who are two “ex-hippies who settled in the Bronx,” no one would ever know such a thing based on the characters Siff plays and performs so well at.
Billions is slated to air Sunday March 17 on Showtime.
