For starters, who is Ike Evans?

Ike Evans is a guy who owns the crown jewel of Miami Beach hotels, the Miramar Playa. It is the center of the Miami Beach universe in 1959. And it’s Ike’s baby. It’s his life. He built it with his own two hands. He’s got his family with him there, who are involved in his everyday world. In Season 1, out of necessity, he took on a silent partner in Ben Diamond, who we now know is a bad, bad man and part of the Mafia. So now in Season 2 it becomes sort of Ike’s mission in life to rid himself of Ben Diamond.

In Season 1 it seems like he’s trying to straddle the world of the straight businessman who’s protecting his family and the dark Mafia world.

And now he’s trying to get rid of the devil. But in doing that, I think he becomes less of a family man. He pushes his family away. So it’s a bit of a darker ride this year for Ike. And also, I think, last year we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what Ike was doing. There was a lot of stuff where Ike didn’t tell anybody what he was doing, so as an audience, you’re kind of like, what is he up to?

This year, that game of chess that he starts playing, you the audience will know [what’s going on]. For one, it’s great for me. You’ll know how smart Ike Evans is in this game that he gets involved in with Sy Berman, Jimmy Caan’s character, and Ben Diamond. It’s a super-dangerous game that he’s found himself in. And that moral line that he walked last year so well, it becomes a little bit more muddy.

How far down that road does he go?

He goes pretty far. Which was great, because you know in his heart he’s this guy who loves his family and wants to be there for his family. Unfortunately, this world that he is tied into becomes...he is drowning in it, and he needs to find a way out. And the way out is to join that world in a certain sense. So he gets his hands dirtier than ever. It’s a dangerous world for Ike Evans this year. He’s traveling a rather dirty path.

What’s it like, on both a personal level and character level, working with
James Caan?

Sonny Corleone, you mean? He’s awesome. The whole cast is spectacular, and to have Jimmy come in and join the cast [is great]. My first scene with him, I remember I had a little bit of butterflies going and he’s an amazing actor. I remember watching The Thief, and of course The Godfather, and so to have someone of that caliber come in [is fantastic]. He’s actually intimidating.

Can you give me an example?

He just likes to mess with you. You learn really quick that if you give him an inch, he’ll take 20 feet. He’s a very smart and wily guy. So when you’re acting with him, you have to be on your toes. It doesn’t matter what the script may be. He’ll take that and change that to whatever direction he thinks is necessary. So you really have to be on your toes and know your stuff. Because there’s serious tension. He’s out to kill you.

Who is Vera Evans?

Vera Evans is a former dancer who lived in Cuba and danced at the Tropicana. When Ike Evans goes to Cuba on one of his business trips, he goes to the Tropicana, sees Vera dancing, falls in love with her, and marries her and brings her back to America, and here I am. It’s kind of a cool character. She’s kind of this gypsy that suddenly comes into this rich world because she marries a wealthy man. Vera very much tries to integrate into this world and be like one of those surfside ladies, which is very hard for her because they don’t accept her. They are jealous of her.

On the other hand, she very much dreams of her own family. She wants to create her own family. But there are other risks in the second season. There are risks of losing her husband because of other factors from outside that are trying to take her husband away from her.

Are you referring to Meg Bannock?

For example, Meg Bannock, yes. We have great scenes.

We just spoke to Kelly Lynch [Meg Bannock] and she said there were great fireworks between you. Was that fun to perform together?

To perform, it’s always fun. We’re always excited. When a new episode comes up and we read it, we’re like, “Hey! We get a new scene together! Yeah, that’s going to be fun.” Sometimes they turn out somehow funny in a way because it’s so ridiculous. The cattiness. But it’s a conceived cattiness. Because we’re not literally fighting. But it’s basically like, I want to take your eyes out, but I’m not going to show it. We talk like very civilized ladies, but behind that I just want to take your head off. It’s funny. In fact, people laugh sometimes when we do those scenes.

On the set?

Yeah, they laugh mostly because of my reactions. Because her character is more refined, and as I said, she grew up as an educated woman. My character is more fiery. She’ll go, “What? Why?” Everybody looks. “What are you, a peasant?” And those are great moments, to play someone completely without boundaries.

What can we expect for Vera in Season 2?

She keeps moving forward. She’s dancing, trying to keep her family together and not let her husband get into the claws of Meg Bannock. It is a tougher season for her, because she really does go through a lot of emotion and emotional anxiety. Turmoil about whether she’s going to keep together her family. Last season it was all beautiful and calm and it was perfect, idyllic. And this season she is not sure where it is all going and she is having doubts and she is scared. It’s not as still.

So things heat up a bit?

Exactly, and it ends on a crazy note, actually. Relationship-wise. It’s insane.

What are you trying to accomplish with this show?

Many things, but I was born and raised in Miami Beach in this period. Graduated high school in the ’70s, so this is a wildly personal show to me in the sense that even as I was growing up I was thinking, this is a different place. Growing up in Miami Beach in the ’50s and ’60s, you could feel — at least I could — that it was more exotic, more glamorous, larger than life. As a writer, to have that as the informing experience of your life was a gift. I took notes and listened to stories from friends’ older brothers and parents.

What I love about this period and this place is that besides the incredible Rat Pack cool aesthetic of these beautiful mid-century hotels, the Sinatra-era wardrobe, and the cars and all that, which I love, there was really deep and important stuff happening that affected the country and it’s still being felt today. So I get to deal with the influence of the Mob and anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, the CIA, the desire for gambling, civil rights — all these different larger issues through the Evans family. It’s a Mob story and it’s a glamorous story and it’s a sexy story, but you can also talk about America today through the prism of 1959.

Speaking of the Mob, given that you’re drawing from real life, as a writer, do you feel like you have to tread lightly?

A bit. There are moments where someone will come up to me and say, “In Miami, you should meet so and so. He really was an enforcer.” I mean I’m dying as a writer for any firsthand stories, but I’d rather do my research and go around it in different ways than be beholden, which it seems like I would be. I’d rather create a composite. As I said to Danny when I was talking to him about doing the show, the Ben Diamond character is more Roman emperor than Mob guy. There is something elevated and elegant about him. Equally sociopathic and dangerous and all that. But he’s not based on any hit man. It’s my fantasy of one.

One thing about the show is how stylish, seductive, sexy it is. Are you consciously pushing the envelope on that?

One of the joys, obviously, or freedoms of appearing on cable is that I have not gotten a note ever about anything, even when I think I’ve done something completely insane. STARZ has been amazing about that. The truth is that it was a very sexualized world, Miami Beach in particular. You have the responsibility to be accurate about it. So for instance, Ben Diamond’s viewing window through the floor. I read something 20 years ago that Errol Flynn had one built in his house in L.A., and I remember thinking at the time, I’m going to use this. And as soon as I started getting into Ben Diamond’s head, I went, this is something he would do.

What for you is the “magic” in Magic City?

For me it was always ironic because I grew up hearing the term “Magic City” as a kid — it’s what the PR people called it. Because the façade of the beautiful hotels was glamorous and gorgeous, and literally right behind in the back there would be water rats going in and out near the pool area. So the “magic” always had quotes around it to me. It was magic in an ironic way. Sunny, gorgeous, glamorous, and the dark part of it was always like the Atlantis Lounge. Deals being done and girls being sold. So magic is in the eye of the beholder.

Who is Meg Bannock on the show?

In 1959, the character Meg Bannock that I play is not a woman defined by being a wife or a mother. You know, children and a man in her life do not define her. She is independently wealthy. An heiress. Her parents are both gone. She controls about one billion dollars back in 1959. She doesn’t have to answer to anybody and is really looking for something to do with that money.

So she doesn’t subscribe to the traditional role of women back then?

It’s completely different from the housewife role. And also you see Olga Kurylenko’s character, Vera, who is also an artist, who is also a performer, who is a wife and mother, but also wanting to get involved in the business of her husband this year. And then you have the character of Mercedes, who Dominik Garcia-Lorido plays, who dreams of seeing the world and being a flight attendant and not getting married and having children. Whereas most girls her age, that’s the top on the list. So you actually have three women who are moving into the ’60s as free-thinking people in some regards.

Is there any danger in terms of the attraction betwen Meg and Ike in Season 2?

Let’s just put it this way. It gets very intense and sexy between Ike and very, very threatening for Vera. Like I said, there is something about two formidable women. Two strong women who know exactly what the other one is doing. Even if the rest of the world isn’t seeing what is happening exactly, they know. Absolutely know.

And that dynamic clashes?

Oh, yeah. It builds and builds and builds until you can’t imagine what happens. It’s equally scary to see two women going at it as [it is to see] two guys. I always think of men like dogs and women like cats. Men are straightforward. They are like, don’t mess with me. Women are oh, I love that dress, and this and that and all the nice things and meanwhile the backstabbing is happening and only the two know. Really like a five-dimensional chess game.

What’s it like shooting in Miami?

Olga was filming a scene where she swims nude in the water. We saw it last year, I think it was the last episode. She comes out of the water. That morning, there was a dead body that washed up in in Miami. Like feet from where they were going to shoot. My husband, Mitch, got a call. It’s a crime-riddled city of dreams. It’s always been about gangs. The power has changed hands from Jewish to Italian to Cuban to Malaysian. Some people still want gambling, and they just shot that down again last year. It’s the same thing. And there are all the tourists who come down and say, “Oh, this is so cool.” And they are not really swimming in those waters. But it’s about power and money.