How to Talk Like You're a Character on TV's 'Billions'

“Voters don't want William Safire,” an aide told Paul Giamatti's Chuck Rhoades a few weeks ago on Billions. “They want an attorney general who talks like he's actually from New York.” That may be true of the fictional residents of the Empire State who marked ballots for Rhoades hours after he called a press conference to announce his BDSM kink to the world, but the same cannot be said for the Showtime drama's devoted viewers. For us, the key to Billions' appeal is that the characters do not talk like they are actually from New York. Because the characters on Billions do not talk like they are from anywhere other than Billions.