Archie Renaux Prepares for Battle

It’s a storyline for our times. A tech mogul and a movie star embark on a very public divorce, with hundreds of millions of pounds on the line, played out on the front pages (and social media accounts) of Britain’s still-kicking tabloids. In the new HBO/Sky Atlantic legal drama War, Morgan (played by Dominic West) is the founder of Zephyr, an X-like app, who continues to defend the high-minded morals of his product and is caught cheating with a young woman hours after they lock eyes at an awards ceremony. Carla (played by Sienna Miller) is an internationally renowned actor whose latest career moves range from a prestige World War II blockbuster to an experimental piece of theater, who has long suspected Morgan’s infidelity and helps instigate the honey trap that ensnares him.

There is plenty of conflict between the couple, with battles over the fate of the multibillion-pound conglomerate as well as Carla’s teenage son, but much of the show’s intrigue comes in fact from the fledgling lawyer Johnny, a new hire at the upstart law firm Taylor & Byrne who, as revealed at the end of the series premiere last month, is actually a mole placed by its rival, the historic Cathcarts. “I would say that he’s struggling, in all honesty,” says Archie Renaux, the English actor who plays Johnny, about the conflict at his character’s core that helps drive the show. “I think he’s at quite an important moment in his life in terms of figuring out who he is and what makes him feel good and what his reasons are for doing what he’s doing, the reasons why he wanted to be a lawyer. I think he’s having a bit of a moral battle at the moment with himself and his ambition. I think that’s what he’s trying to figure out.”

Created by George Kay, who also created the French thriller Lupin and the Criminal franchise and worked on Killing Eve, War is a gripping legal drama with, thanks to Johnny’s infiltration of Carla’s legal team on behalf of Morgan’s, the heart-pounding pace of an espionage thriller. Renaux says it was exactly that combination of genres that drew him to the project, which has proven reliably addictive as its first season rolls out. “It was all the twists and turns and the backstabbing and the tension building up, certainly in those first two episodes, getting to know these characters and what drives them and what they are looking for,” says the actor about the early scripts he read to prepare for his initial audition. “The fast-paced writing that George and his team put onto the page was something that gripped me straight away. The script was a real page-turner, and I was instantly interested in where this was going to go.”

Johnny’s actions are morally dubious, blatantly illegal, and extremely risky, but Renaux says he made sure to imbue his performance with a frantic charm and roguish energy that have kept viewers on his side. “Because of what happens to him and how much he spins out of control and the messy decisions that he makes, I looked at characters in films that I’d watched before that convey that stress in quite a fun way,” he explains. “I remember I’d enjoy watching that, and I think Michael J. Fox does that really well in Back to the Future and The Secret of My Success. I looked at Ferris Bueller as well. Those characters who are constantly on the move and constantly having to think on their feet are what I used to get a bit of inspiration, energy-wise.”

As for the questionable decision to act as a spy in what both firms recognize as one of the most important divorce cases in recent memory, Renaux says he feels a sense of understanding and sympathy for the difficult position in which Johnny finds himself. After an unexplained scandal at a law firm in New York, Johnny has returned to London with his girlfriend Bella (played by Honor Swinton Byrne), who feels compelled to lie to her friends about his (non-existent) competing job offers while he makes a living as a waiter. “I think he’s taken advantage of, really; his desperation is taken advantage of,” the actor says. “Yes, he shouldn’t be doing those things, but I feel like that character is running out of time and running out of luck, and there’s pressure building in his own personal life. I don’t think he really knows what he’s getting himself into, in all honesty. Things are moving so fast for him that he just has to. I think he’s a yes man and deals with the consequences later.”

Like any actor who is accustomed to the emotional and mental effort required by seemingly endless rounds of auditions, Renaux says he connected with Johnny’s drive and need to prove himself as he makes increasingly desperate promises while interviewing for a job as a paralegal. “I feel like I know versions of Johnny, even in myself, in terms of the ambition and having to sell yourself as a product to other people,” Renaux explains. ”We’re fighting for something, and we’ve got big aspirations, so we had similarities there. Mine is acting, and Johnny’s is being a top lawyer.”

For Renaux himself, the road to an acting career that, at just twenty-eight, has already included Netflix’s fantasy hit Shadow and Bone, the Alien franchise, a string of popular rom-coms, and now a lead role in a major drama series, required an equally robust sense of determination. After landing a major role in a school play at a young age, he says his appreciation for acting was nurtured in class. “I remember really wanting to do well. I was quite competitive because I grew up playing sport, and I remember just really enjoying the work and learning the lines and performing,” he recalls. “Then we got to do it as a lesson, drama in school, and my curiosity and my love for it sort of grew quietly. I was a little bit embarrassed because none of my friends were into it. They saw it as the mess-about lesson where you get to just wind people up and dick about for an hour or so, and I was really enjoying it and trying to be like, ‘Yeah, alright, shut up, let me concentrate.’”

At eighteen, knowing he would never be happy with an office job, Renaux began an apprenticeship as an air conditioning engineer, following in the footsteps of his grandfather. “The guys that I was shadowing and working for were not very enthusiastic about the whole thing,” he says. “I was eighteen years old, and I was up on a rooftop somewhere in London and I remember thinking like, This is it, this is the first day of the rest of my life.” After four months, he quit and made the difficult decision to switch careers. “I was like, OK well, let me just try the acting; I’ve got to try and do it,” he recalls. “Then at least if it doesn’t work out, I can say at least I tried, because I would live to regret that. I think if I was an older man and looked back on my life and I didn’t take that leap of faith to try something that I really enjoyed, I would have been really bitter and sour about how my life was.” He spent weeks suiting up in his work uniform every morning and wandering around London until he gathered the courage to tell his parents. “Look, it’s going to be alarming for most parents if a kid out of nowhere says, ‘I want to be an actor,’ after quitting an apprenticeship and a good career opportunity,” he explains. “Because we don’t have anyone in our family in that sort of business, it was so alien to all of us, and we didn’t really know what was going to happen. I think most people were probably expecting failure, but I always said to myself, As long as I get to do it, whether it be amateur dramatics, I’d get to scratch that itch. I could work as a laborer, and if every now and then on the weekends I’d get to do this, I would have been happy.”

Fortunately for Renaux, his persistence and focus brought him success. After a year of weekend acting classes at the London drama school The Unseen, he was signed by an agent after a showcase performance and gradually began picking up work. In 2021, he starred in Shadow and Bone, based on Leigh Bardugo’s popular series of young adult fantasy novels, alongside Jessie Mei Li and Ben Barnes, marking his introduction on a major international platform. Leading roles in the romantic comedies The Other Zoey and Upgraded quickly followed, along with a part in the sci-fi thriller Alien: Romulus in 2024, offering a wide range of experiences in his young career. Now with War, his first prestige drama series, Renaux says he is ready to be more adventurous and discerning with his acting choices, a reward he has earned after years of putting in the work. “Characters,” he answers when asked what his focus is. “I want to push myself and be a bit braver if I can, just interesting stories, really compelling stories. It’s not one size fits all; something for someone might be amazing, but I might read it and go, I wouldn’t enjoy doing that. I’m going to start to try and be a little bit braver and wait for things that I really find interesting.”

War continues on Thursdays on HBO.