War, the new HBO drama about a high-profile divorce between a movie star and a billionaire tech founder, opens with Dominic West cheating on Sienna Miller. Or, more accurately, Dominic West’s character of Morgan Henderson cheats on Sienna Miller’s character of Carla Duval. It’s a scene that feels scandalous but also, well, familiar.
It seems like West does his spouse dirty in every show he stars in. Behold the curriculum vitae: Jimmy McNulty in The Wire, a serial womanizer whose wife, Elena, leaves him due to his infidelity. In later seasons, he has an affair with the assistant state’s attorney. Noah Solloway in The Affair, which, as the title implies, is a show about a guy who cheats on his wife. Then there’s Prince Charles in The Crown. You know the story. (Then there’s the case of life possibly imitating art, when in 2020 West was spotted extracurricularly scootering around Rome with his then costar Lily James. Amid the ensuing tabloid storm, the actor walked outside his Cotswolds home with his wife Catherine FitzGerald. They left a note that read: “Our marriage is strong, and we’re very much still together. Thank you.” The moment was instantly memed.)
With all respect to West’s previous cheating-on-television canon, War might be his finest adulterous work. War is glossy, catty, and glamorous, swinging between multimillion-dollar townhomes in West London and high-end lawyer’s offices where they have retainers; the characters are so rich that they wear million-dollar watches and so bitchy they’ll stab each other in the back to get what they want. “Every man has his price,” says Morgan while drinking green juice at a five-star hotel. “And mine is prohibitively high.”
West plays his cheating roles deftly: He’s just smarmy enough that you believe his transgression, but not smarmy enough that you loathe him for it. In War, for example, Morgan Henderson does indeed cheat on his wife with a 20-something aspiring actress. But as it turns out, Morgan’s actually a pretty great stepdad, whereas Carla’s parenting skills have more…mixed reviews. (During a research and discovery session, Carla’s lawyers find out from a Hollywood director that “she wanted to get away from her family” and was “not exactly the maternal type.”) In The Crown, Prince Charles did humiliate Princess Diana. But Prince Philip pressured him into that marriage and Charles really, really loves Camilla Parker Bowles. (West himself admitted to The Sunday Times that his own tabloid drama shaped his role as Prince Charles. “I’d had a very acute understanding of what it’s like to feel the horror of your name or your photograph coming up in the newspapers,” he says.) As for Noah? The Affair is told with a dual his-and-hers narrative. Each episode shows the perspective of West’s Noah as well as his paramour, Ruth Wilson’s Allison. As a result, the viewer is unable to truly villainize either. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango.
