NEW YORK — For years, David Costabile has flourished as a most familiar unknown star, the sort of all-purpose actor you like and recognize but aren’t sure from where.
But fans new and old are welcoming Costabile in his latest role as Mike (Wags) Wagner on the Showtime drama Billions. In the lively clash between 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).
On Billions (which airs Sundays on The Movie Network), Wags Wagner gives 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 detective on Damages.
On the movie screen, he played a U.S. congressman in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and a CIA operative in the recent Michael Bay film, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.
Perhaps Costabile is best remembered as Gale Boetticher, the dweebish, karaoke-fancying chemist who served as lab assistant to crystal-meth 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.
With chipmunk cheeks and a broad forehead, a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous smile, 49-year-old Costabile can morph into different roles almost as if shape-shifting. But 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,” said Costabile, who, after graduating from Tufts University in Massachusetts 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.”
Costabile lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, actress Eliza Baldi, and their infant daughter. A Washington native, he acted in high school musicals, and his extensive stage work on and off Broadway was grounded by summers with a regional theatre company performing Shakespeare outdoors in Albany, New York.
“It’s something you’re always chasing,” he said of acting. “There’s never a moment when you can actually be satisfied. It’s exciting to do something that you know you cannot succeed at, only hope to get closer to success.”
Costabile tries to take the road less travelled in each role.
“I’m not interested in what’s on-the-nose,” he said. “I read the script and I say: ‘Well, that’s what should happen, so I’m not going to do that.’ My wife says: ‘Why don’t you?’ But that’s boring. I want to take an oblique angle to get to the answer. That’s the more interesting path. Maybe it’s because I’m obstinate.”
