Liev Schreiber had a tough decision to make when he was offered the title role in Showtime’s new crime drama series Ray Donovan:  Did he want to leave his home in New York and the theater work he loves to move to Los Angeles to appear in a series that, if successful,  could tie him up for several years.?

“It was a very, very difficult decision,” he told HFPA members who met him at Sony Studios back in April when he began filming the series. “It was hard for me because my kids were in school in New York, all my friends are there and the theater is there. Those are the things I really miss.”

But it proved a wise move because the series, in which Schreiber plays a “fixer” to the rich and famous, earned Showtime’s best-ever ratings for an original series premiere when the first episode was aired on June 30. It drew 1.4 million viewers, better than the 1.1 million for the 2011 premiere of Homeland which at the time was considered a breakthrough for Showtime.

Liev, who has a contract for at least five years, is settling in to a new home on the West Coast and says: “I’m gettting acclimatized to Los Angeles. Geographically it’s a beautiful place.”