With “Yellowstone” and its many spinoffs, Taylor Sheridan is one of the buzziest filmmakers in Hollywood right now. So buzzy, in fact, that Zoe Saldaña balked at Sheridan’s proposition for her to star in his upcoming series “Special Ops: Lioness.” That’s not something to expect from an actress who stars in some of the world’s most lucractive blockbusters. But that’s the clout Sheridan has now in this business, and if “Lioness” ends up another hit, expect that influence to only further deepen.
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“He sent me a pilot he wanted me to read, and if I responded well to it, he really wanted to continue writing this character around me,” Saldaña told Vanity Fair for their first-look at the upcoming series. “When you get a call from someone like Taylor Sheridan…. You work really hard, expecting those calls. And when you get those calls, you don’t believe them. I’m known for being the queen of sabotaging myself.” Sheridan called Saldaña about “Lioness” as the COVID-19 was happening, and the actress thought signing on to a multi-season show at the time was “just daunting.” “I told him that I just wasn’t ready,” the actress continued. “I was scared shitless, in other words. I was just like, ‘I’m going to fail. I just do science fiction. I don’t do this.'”
So what changed Saldaña’s mind? Well, Nicole Kidman was already on board the series as executive producer, playing a minor role. And the role Sheridan had in mind for Saldaña sounded excellent. She’d play Joe, the station chief of the CIA’s Lioness program, an ex-undercover agent who now oversees a new generation of all-female operatives on stealth missions. Now married, Joe has two children, but one foot still firmly planted in the world of geopolitical espionage. It took Saldaña’s spouse to convince her to take the part. “He was like, ‘Just do it,” continued the actress, “You haven’t been able to let go of this pilot. You are a fan of Taylor’s work. Just fucking call him!’ So I texted him, and he called me back immediately,” says Saldaña, who ultimately signed on not just to star but also executive produce.
And after Sheridan sent more scripts over, Saldaña knew she made the right choice. “Once he started sending Nicole and I episode after episode, we just couldn’t believe that we were going to be a part of something this great. So we shot it. We did it.” For both Saldaña and Kidman, the idea of playing formidable women in a world Hollywood typically presents as male-centric was very intriguing.“There’s power in having a female identity,” Kidman said. “They have access in a different way than a lot of men who are working undercover do.” And Sheridan always wanted “Lioness” to be a production led by women. “Before he’d written anything, he was just like, ‘I want a woman to produce this with me,’” Kidman continued. “I said, ‘But I’d also love to be in it, in a sort of pivotal supporting role. I didn’t want to play a lead in a series, but I wanted to speak his dialogue.”
Kidman plays Kaitlyn Meade in the series, a senior CIA supervisor who oversees the Lioness program from Washington D.C. “She’s had a long career in terms of playing politics, but also she’s been in the field,” Kidman says. “She’s actually running the Lioness program. But she also knows how to be a soldier.” While Saldaña’s Joe oversees newcomers to the program, like Laysla De Oliveira’s Cruz Manuelos, a marine recruited to help infiltrate a global terrorist network, Kidman’s Kaitlyn must tangle with political higher-ups in the nation’s capital. That includes Morgan Freeman‘s secretary of state Edward Mullins and Michael Kelly‘s CIA Deputy Director Byron Westfield.
“I’ll just say she’s very smart,” Kidman said of her character. “She’s very, very suited to the job she does. There are particular personalities that can handle these situations. Kaitlyn has the ability to compartmentalize, she has the ability to lead, and she has the ability to make decisions under enormous stress, with very little sleep. I find that fascinating, particularly being an emotional person. You know, 99% of the population can’t do this. There are very few people who are equipped for these kinds of positions.” And these position don’t come with a lot of prestige either: much of the work these women carry out goes unrecognized, as Lioness is a secret special-ops program. It’s thankless, anonymous work, but these woman are up to the challenge.
“Lioness” works around a central mission: De Oliveira’s Cruz needs to infiltrate the family of a billionaire businessman who secretly funds terrorist acts around the globe. Her method of infiltration? Getting close to his daughter, a very different mission than what the marine is used it. “She goes in to befriend the target’s daughter,” De Oliveira explained. “So this girl becomes her mark. She wants to get close to this girl so that they can get to the target. But when you’re hanging out with somebody every day and get to know them as humans, it gets really hard to do what you have to do.” But Cruz is more used to combat on the battlefield, not duplicitous social interactions. “She’s not used to these interpersonal relationships, or getting this deep,” De Oliveira continued. “It really tests her because Cruz is somebody who’s very tough on the outside but supersensitive on the inside.”
Cruz’s mark in “Lioness” is Stephanie Nur‘s Aaliyah, the daughter of the businessman who funds the terrorist network. “She basically just infiltrates this friend group,” De Oliveria said about her character’s mission. “And it’s very different for her because she’s used to being a Marine. She’s not used to shopping and wearing tiny bikinis. It’s so fun because I got to play the extreme of being this very tough Marine with the boys, and then I would go and shoot the stuff with the girls, and we were shopping and going clubbing and dancing and wearing these scrunchy, tight dresses with heels.” It’s a confounding mission for Cruz, to say the least. “Sometimes I would have to try to stay as grounded as possible because I felt like I was on two different shows. One day, like I said, I would be with the guys in my gear. And then the next day, I would be in the dress and heels. But that is what the undercover world is.”
In “Lioness,” each female lead represents one generation of the covert program, each with its distinct responsibilities and dynamics. “They each represent a different sort of generation in this program,” Saldaña explained. “One is just starting, so there’s this freshness and passion. Then you have me [as Joe], who’s in the middle of it all. [Joe’s] been here long enough to be burned out but long enough to understand the mission and be resolved with what needs to happen. Then you have someone like Kaitlyn, who may appear on the surface to be the North Pole—she’s just complete ice—but she’s the one who’s having to deal with everybody in the White House, keeping her program alive.” As for Cruz, she’s the grunt of the team, and that means her relationship with Joe sometimes borders on nastiness. “Cruz’s relationship with Joe is so interesting because Joe is really hard on Cruz. She has to be so that Cruz can complete this mission.”
But “Lioness” is a show about the harsh realities of covert ops, including their inherent deception and expendability. “You’re dealing with all the politics of what happens when you’re ground zero, and how expendable these girls have to be, sometimes,” Saldaña said about the show. “Inevitably. Unfortunately.” For Joe in particular, that comes into play regarding her family ties. “What’s hard about Joe? It’s losing assets, while also maybe losing the connection with her child, and maybe losing her marriage, and maybe losing a grip on what’s real and what side she should be on,” the actress continued. “I don’t think it’s becoming easier. I think it’s becoming harder for her.”
But Saldaña also loves “Lioness” for being a show led by complex female characters that doesn’t cater to a “battle of the sexes” dynamic. “Not a single episode talks about women versus men and how women do it better,” said Saldaña. “This program could have been about men the same way it could have been about women, and that’s why I signed up for it. I don’t think I wanted to sign up and have a history lesson or a social conversation and preach to people. I wanted to shed light on a world that women do inhabit. They don’t necessarily get their stories told, and this is their reality. Their fights are more about saving a nation, saving communities, and less about fighting men.”
So will Joe, Kaitlyn, and Cruz get the job done on “Special Ops: Lioness”? Find out when Taylor Sheridan’s latest show premieres on Paramount+ this summer. Take a look at first-look pics from the series below.
