Special Opps: Lioness gave Zoe Saldaña more than just a sexy role as a CIA intelligence officer, it gave her a friend in Nicole Kidman. That’s especially the case in Season 2, which brings the two forces together in more scenes than ever before.
“It’s a lot of fun. I can call her friend. “We have so many things in common,” Saldaña told TheWrap: Our dedication to our work, but mainly our dedication to our families,” Saldaña told TheWrap.
For Paramount+’s “Liones,” the two stars shared a sneak peek at the makeup. Saldaña plays Joe, while Kidman plays his boss Caitlin Meade, a high-ranking member of the CIA’s Lioness program. “In the morning we always talk about what we’re going to do, as well as taking a break from work and talking about personal stuff.”
The two are so close that they even had some fun after facing a difficult scene. While preparing for the shoot, both women called model Taylor Sheridan at the same time to see who would answer first.
“It wasn’t like a competition. It was more like: ‘We have an urgent question. “We’re about to shoot this scene and he’s the one who can give us that answer as a writer, director and director,” Saldaña said. “This level of camaraderie with Nicole Kidman is incredible.”
This level of support is particularly useful in the second season of “Liones.” After the first season chronicled the anarchic movements of Sergeant Cruz Manuelos (Lizla de Oliveira) through Lioness, the second season focuses on Joe de Saldaña. But this time, instead of coordinating from the sidelines, Jo has to travel to the center of the action. This is especially difficult when every mission outside of your family is life or death. Because of this focus, Jo’s story largely revolves around the stress of being a full-time working mom with incredibly high stakes.
“It’s very difficult for [Joe] “Losing a lioness, and she has a lot of responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Saldaña said. “In season two, those struggles intensify for her because it now requires her to physically be on the ground and put her life at risk every step of the way.”
Although she has repeatedly emphasized that her own life is not as stressful as that of a real CIA agent, Saldaña drew on her personal experience to play Jo this season.
“I can communicate in my own way, knowing that what I do has to take me away from my family,” Saldaña said, noting that her own children are about the same age as Jo’s youngest daughter on the show. “Sometimes they don’t understand why I’m leaving or for how long. And sometimes it’s more painful than others to leave them to do what I have to do. For Jo, that is intensified to the tenth power.
Reflecting on her role, Saldaña has great respect for the men and women in positions like hers. “The level of responsibility and pressure that people like Jo and even Caitlin are under is unimaginable. “But the way Jo sees it is that she’s sworn to serve her country, and sometimes that comes at the cost of sacrificing her family to save another family,” Saldaña said. “I think the only reason Jo didn’t leave the Lioness program is because he couldn’t find someone who could replace her. And if he couldn’t, I don’t think it would be easy for him to leave.”
New episodes of Special Opps: Lioness air on Sundays on Paramount+.
