What To Know
- The latest episode of Lioness turned deadly … more than once.
- Here, actors Laysla De Oliveira, LaMonica Garrett, and Thad Luckinbill weigh in on key scenes.
Things take a deadly turn on Lioness‘ latest episode, but not the way you might expect. Warning: The following post contains spoilers for Lioness Season 3 Episode 6, “Sugar Land.”
The episode begins with Joe (Zoe Saldaña) promising her family that the end of their suffering is near — a false promise, as we know, but one she seems to believe at the time.
From there, she meets with Kaitlyn (Nicole Kidman), Edwin (Morgan Freeman), and Byron (Michael Kelly) as they confront a sitting U.S. senator about his side job as a paid foreign asset. While the official demand is for him to resign and never take public office again, Joe suggests he end his life instead … and, after a fast-paced chase through D.C., with Tucker (LaMonica Garrett) and Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira) on his tail, that’s exactly what he does, running head-first into a semi-truck.
As disastrous as the scene is, the QRF actors had a blast doing their part of it.
“I’ve always wanted a chase scene. I’ve never had a chase scene like that,” LaMonica Garrett told TV Insider. “The Suburbans don’t handle like a Porsche or a Lamborghini. Taylor [Sheridan] wanted high speed. He wanted you [us] weaving out of traffic, and that’s what we got. And how it culminated with this accident, it was a lot of people. Other productions might CGI that because it’s violent. We did not, and seeing the aftermath of a crash like that is like the Taylor Sheridan fingerprint of just this visceral reaction, and you have to turn your head and look away. But me and Cruz… we were looking at like, ‘All right, hey, we’re Thelma and Louise.’ We’re riding right now. We’re gonna get this guy, and we had fun shooting that.”
Laysla De Oliveira had a similar takeaway, saying, “Oh, it’s so fun! We were calling it the Thelma and Louis spinoff, me and Tucker. Yeah, I mean, we’ve never gotten to do that before. I love that everybody went on these little side missions, and you get these scenes that are just the two of us. I think that it’s such a massive ensemble cast. So when we’re all in scenes together, although it’s really exciting, sometimes I feel like it can leave actors wanting a little bit more. So it’s nice when you get to pair up with someone and have some fun.”
The senator’s death means little to the team, but the real problem they have on their hands is what to do with their new Ukrainian asset, Oleksandra (Elizaveta Neretin). Perhaps surprisingly, it’s Kyle (Thad Luckinbill) who emerges as the biggest proponent of keeping her in the CIA system, and he even accepts direct responsibility for her from Edwin.
About the almost emotional reaction Kyle has in his defense of Oleksandra, Thad Luckinbill reacted to say, “I’ll be honest with you: That actually surprised me as an actor. Sometimes, the way I approach things as an actor, I don’t always make all my decisions… But for me, I let that relationship develop as I read the scripts and as we played it, and I don’t know why, but… I remember being there that day, filming that scene, and having those feelings of like, ‘Well, well.’ Kyle’s responsible for a lot of what’s happening to this girl. I don’t know how much I can say, but obviously, there’s a responsibility he felt, and obviously, he believed her when a lot of other people didn’t, and maybe he sees some of her in himself, meaning she’ll do anything for her country, for her job, whatever. And that’s who Kyle is, right? He’s 110% at all costs, and I think he appreciates that about her.”
In the aftermath of Joe’s abduction in the present day, though, it’s Kyle who shows up at her house demanding answers about who might’ve done it. Oleksandra speculates that it could be a Muslim Brotherhood, Qatari, or Iranian operation and provides Kyle with some safehouse information, but she worries it might be too late to save Joe. (Would it then be too late to save Oleksandra? Watch this space.)
From there, the team scatters. As intelligence tracks the airspace and airports, Kyle’s the first to find a major clue. On a tarmac, he walks up on a private jet where the pilot claims to be heading to St. Martin before all hell breaks loose. As a gaggle of other “pilots” approach the jet, Grady (Ian Bohen) realizes he’s getting flanked and calls it in before the would-be attackers are dispensed with. Inside the jet, Kyle stays on the pilot but is unable to stop him from shooting himself in the head, rather than be taken in.
About that confluence of events, Luckinbill said, “I think he was surprised he did it, but also a little bit upset because that was a strong asset that we could have gotten some information out of… It’s important to remember the urgency of what happens if we don’t get Joe… I think maybe there’s some frustration, maybe surprise in the way he did it, but also a little bit of frustration that we didn’t get him alive.”
All the while, the ground team comes very, very close to finding the safe house Joe’s been stashed in, but they’re called away before they can investigate inside. As all this happens, Cruz, Bobby (Jill Wagner), and Josie (Genesis Rodriguez) wait helplessly on their helo.
Cruz cries, begging for just a chance to help Joe. And when Bobby notes, “I thought you hated her,” Cruz counters with, “How can I hate her? She made me.”
About that emotional reaction, Oliveira said, “That line meant a lot to me. I remember reading it, and I got emotional because I feel like that’s Cruz’s whole heart that season is realizing that she does have such a deep love for Joe, and she’s come such a long way since Season 1… I always say she’s always realizing that things aren’t so black and white and that they live in the gray, but it’s in that very moment where she doesn’t know if Joe is coming back that she realizes where she really stands with that human, and also where she stands in the team, and also where her heart is, and also where her north star is…. It’s also kind of how I feel about the show and the job, and so it was like that moment for was so special for Cruz, but it is also so special for [me], that line, because it was art imitating life.”
The episode ends with Joe’s captor revealing himself, promising her a miserable death, and cutting off her pinky toe to get the violence started before they cruise out of their hideaway house unseen.
Lioness, Sundays, Paramount+