Special Ops: Lioness stars Zoe Saldaña, Laysla De Oliveira, Michael Kelly, Morgan Freeman, and Nicole Kidman, along with series regulars Dave Annable, Jill Wagner, LaMonica Garrett, James Jordan, Austin Hébert, Jonah Wharton, and Stephanie Nur all sit down to introduce their characters.
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TVTranscript
00:00 what made this show so good for me.
00:03 It was a great, great ensemble.
00:05 - I played Jo, the station chief of the lioness program
00:13 tasked with training, managing,
00:15 and leading her female undercover operatives.
00:18 I oversee the undercover military group
00:21 and my mission to take down
00:22 some of the world's most dangerous terrorists.
00:25 And she understood very, very early on
00:28 that in order for her to save lives,
00:31 she has to know how to play the game.
00:36 That keeps Jo sharp, keeps Jo honest,
00:39 but also keeps Jo loyal.
00:41 - I don't play someone in the program, I run the program.
00:45 So that's a very different mindset
00:47 for what I'm trying to achieve.
00:50 There's a strategic element
00:51 to pretty much every action that she does.
00:53 She's gotta think 10 steps ahead of everybody,
00:56 and so her ability to handle that
00:58 is what you see.
00:59 - Westfield is the deputy director of the CIA.
01:01 I would say he's a serious, no-nonsense kind of guy.
01:05 He has admirable qualities.
01:06 He's always doing what he believes is the right thing.
01:09 - It's the Karst Group.
01:10 It's really exciting.
01:11 You know, we had people like Michael Kelly
01:13 and Morgan Freeman.
01:15 - There's not much I can tell you about Mullins.
01:17 He's Secretary of State.
01:19 My job is to protect the president from the fallout.
01:23 - I think in the beginning of the show,
01:24 Cruz is somebody who is deeply lost.
01:27 She's just in this awful, depressing place.
01:30 Cruz is running away from her abusive boyfriend,
01:35 and as she's doing it, this Marine comes and he saves her.
01:39 - I've been out war my whole life.
01:41 - You came to the right place.
01:42 - She realizes that she's had enough.
01:45 - Our little sparrow.
01:46 - Joe contracted our unit to be the quick reaction force.
01:50 - The quick reaction force are responsible
01:52 for if anything goes wrong with our lioness,
01:55 they go and get her.
01:56 But then the specificity of these individual people,
01:59 they're not all the same.
02:00 So they have their different fingerprints.
02:02 - I love Bobby.
02:03 - Bobby is the leader of quick reaction force.
02:08 I think it tells you a little bit already
02:10 that she's a female and she's a leader
02:13 of a bunch of bad-ass guys.
02:15 - You have to earn being a leader.
02:16 It's not just a title that's given to you.
02:18 Bobby gets the job done,
02:19 so we have no problem following her.
02:21 - Two Cups is a combat veteran
02:22 who's had a career in the Army,
02:24 who is a former infantryman,
02:26 who then was selected for special forces.
02:28 His skillset is unique and eclectic and eccentric.
02:31 - Like all of these guys, Tex is a bad-ass.
02:34 No one in this show isn't a bad-ass.
02:36 Trained killer, so to speak.
02:38 On the surface, he's a tough guy,
02:39 but there's a lot going on underneath that.
02:41 - Randy's a technical specialist,
02:43 but he's kind of always looking out
02:45 for the well-being of the group.
02:47 I think Randy has that protective quality
02:49 about him with the team.
02:51 - Tucker is a Marine.
02:52 He's a MARSOC Raider.
02:53 He's mechanically inclined is a good way to put it.
02:56 If we get to a helicopter
02:57 and no one knows how to fly this thing,
02:59 give 'em 15 minutes, he'll figure it out.
03:01 - You obviously have a really big responsibility
03:03 when you do a role like this.
03:04 You have to take that responsibility as hard as you can
03:08 because you're representing something
03:10 that our country's only founded on, but protected by.
03:12 - You see that, yes, they're this bad-ass group of people,
03:16 but they're real people.
03:17 They really are a bit like family.
03:20 - Cruz is really excited to be with the team,
03:21 so I think the reason why Cruz joined the military
03:24 in the first place is to find a family,
03:26 so here she is with her new family.
03:28 - You know what she looks like?
03:29 - I know what she looks like.
03:30 - Look at her again.
03:31 - Alia is a mysterious young Arab woman
03:35 who has roots in Saudi Arabia,
03:37 and she's also the daughter of a heavy-hitter billionaire,
03:41 which is what affords her her very lavish lifestyle.
03:44 And it would seem on paper that she has an easy life,
03:46 but in actuality, it is quite a restrictive life.
03:50 She lives very insulated, a contradictory one.
03:53 - Neil is a surgical oncologist.
03:55 Married to Joe, and they also have two children,
03:58 so Neil is kind of also the stay-at-home dad.
04:01 I think the marriage to Joe
04:02 is probably one of my favorite things
04:04 that stood out when I was reading the pilot.
04:06 There's all the CIA stuff,
04:08 and you can't talk to your partner about her day.
04:12 One of the things that's the coolest part
04:14 of this whole thing is the cast that they put together.
04:17 I'm like, "Taylor, how do you do this, man?
04:19 "This is insane, this cast."
04:21 - I'm just happy that I get to go to work
04:23 and look at the face of people I've admired
04:26 for a really long time
04:27 and get to go on this artistic journey with them.
04:30 I know anybody would be incredibly happy in this situation.
04:32 (whooshing)
04:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]