‘Lioness’: First Look at Upcoming Taylor Sheridan Series Starring Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman
Jill Wagner as Bobby, Thad Luckinbill as Kyle, Zoe Saldaña as Joe, James Jordan as Two Cups, Jonah Wharton as Tex, and Austin Hébert as Randy in the new Taylor Sheridan series Special Ops: Lioness. Image by Greg Lewis for Paramount Plus, via Vanity Fair.
Yellowstone may be coming to an end, but Taylor Sheridan has so many other stories to tell on Paramount Plus, even besides the sequel series to the Kevin Costner-led cowboy drama. This summer, the streamer will be releasing yet another drama from Sheridan, but this time it’s an espionage thriller titled Special Ops: Lioness.
Vanity Fair dropped last week our first-ever look at the new series, which stars Zoe Saldaña as CIA spy manager Joe and also features Nicole Kidman as CIA senior supervisor Kaitlyn Meade. Saldaña revealed in an interview that she got the call from Sheridan back during the pandemic, when he sent her the script for the pilot and asked her to join the project, at which point he would continue building the character around her. And yet, she wouldn’t believe it:
“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. 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.
We were in the middle of the pandemic. The thought of me committing to a multi-seasonal show was just daunting. I told him that I just wasn’t ready. 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.’ It was Taylor Sheridan. Nicole Kidman was already attached to produce, and she was going to play a part in it as well. So obviously, that was a dream for me.”
Nicole Kidman as CIA senior supervisor Kaitlyn Meade in the new Taylor Sheridan series Special Ops: Lioness. Image via Greg Lewis for Paramount Plus, via Vanity Fair.
The women of Taylor Sheridan’s Lioness — Nicole Kidman as CIA spy manager
The plot of the series circles around the Lioness program and highlights the three levels of women who keep it alive. At the very top, we have Nicole Kidman as the woman overseeing the operation all the way from Washington, DC. The actress first boarded the project as a producer, as Sheridan wanted a woman to be involved in the creation of the show from the very beginning; she told Vanity Fair:
“Before he’d written anything, he was just like, ‘I want a woman to produce this with me.’ 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 also talked about the power of having this operation run by women:
“There’s power in having a female identity. They have access in a different way than a lot of men who are working undercover do.
It’s a secretive world. They put their country before themselves by remaining anonymous. They have to remain anonymous to preserve their program.”
Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman in Taylor Sheridan’s new espionage drama Special Ops: Lioness. Photo by Ramona Rosales fo Paramount Plus, via Vanity Fair.
Her character may now be more of a politician than a soldier, but the military is a very important part of her past, as she explained:
“She’s had a long career in terms of playing politics, but also she’s been in the field. She’s actually running the Lioness program. But she also knows how to be a soldier.
I’ll just say she’s very smart. 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.”
Zoe Saldaña as the CIA spy manager Joe in the new Taylor Sheridan series Special Ops: Lioness. Photo by Lynsey Addario for Paramount Plus, via Vanity Fair.
The women of Taylor Sheridan’s Lioness — Zoe Saldaña as the program’s station chief
As stated earlier, Zoe Saldaña plays the Lioness station chief, who lives Stateside with her spouse and two children. While she ended up playing the lead and even executive-producing the series, the actress took her time to accept the job. Her husband ultimately played a key part in that decision:
“He was like, ‘Just do it. 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. 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.”
Saldaña also talked about the three different levels of characters that Taylor Sheridan created for Lioness:
“They each represent a different sort of generation in this program. 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.”
Zoe Saldaña’s Joe on the battlefield in the new Taylor Sheridan series Special Ops: Lioness. Image by Lynsey Addario for Paramount Plus, via Vanity Fair.
The main struggle of her character is how to balance her life at home with what she has to deal with at work, where the wrong decision could end the life of one or multiple soldiers under her command:
“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. I don’t think it’s becoming easier. I think it’s becoming harder for her.
Having to talk to parents of these assets, and give them some bullshit story on how they’re not coming back home because they died in some training exercise, versus they actually died because they were spies for [Joe’s] program…. Those are the things that are eating Joe alive.”
Laysla De Oliveira is counseled by Zoe Saldaña as Nicole Kidman’s supervisor listens. Image by Luke Varley for Paramount Plus, via Vanity Fair.
The women of Taylor Sheridan’s Lioness — Laysla De Oliveira as boots-on-the-ground Cruz Manuelos
The third tier of female characters in the series is led by Laysla De Oliveira’s Cruz Manuelos, who spearheads the mission as our main soldier. While Vanity Fair revealed an image of De Oliveira wearing soldier armor (see below), it looks from the preview that Lioness might not feature a lot of Middle-Eastern gunfire; they even said this is not Afghanistan or Iraq. The mission is to “gather intel and identify key targets within a global terrorist network” by targeting the wealthy elite who secretly benefit from armed conflicts.
As revealed in the coverage, De Oliveira’s character will have a special connection to their target:
“She goes in to befriend the target’s daughter. 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.
She’s not used to these interpersonal relationships, or getting this deep. It really tests her because Cruz is somebody who’s very tough on the outside but supersensitive on the inside.”
Laysla De Oliveira in battle mode as Cruz Manuelos. Image by Lynsey Addario for Paramount Plus, via Vanity Fair.
The target is a billionaire businessman who is believed to be the main wallet behind a terrorist organization; his daughter, Aaliyah, is played by Stephanie Nur. She will be the character who Manuelos grows fond of, and as such, responsible for softening up the soldier’s thick exterior:
“She basically just infiltrates this friend group. 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.”
The actress also talked about her character’s relationship with Joe (Saldaña), and how that is a double-edged sword for Manuelos:
“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.
Cruz comes from an abusive relationship. That abusive relationship becomes a catalyst of her becoming a Marine and completely switching her life around. So, she doesn’t always respond to Joe in a way that somebody would in her position.”
Stephanie Nur as the socialite Aaliyah and Laysla De Oliveira as Cruz Manuelos, undercover as the rich woman’s new friend. Image by Luke Varley for Paramount Plus, via Vanity Fair.
The men in Taylor Sheridan’s Lioness
Despite the fact that the show is led by three women and it is focused on their struggles, Taylor Sheridan did not write Lioness as a “battle of the sexes”, as Saldaña explained:
“Not a single episode talks about women versus men and how women do it better. 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.”
Vanity Fair confirmed that the two main male characters in the series will be played by none other than Morgan Freeman and Michael Kelly. Freeman is playing Secretary of State Edwin Mullins, and Kelly is CIA Deputy Director Byron Westfield. The two of them will be interacting quite a bit with Kidman’s character, as they are all based in DC.
Nicole Kidman, Michael Kelly, and Zoe Saldaña debating the Lioness program within the confines of the CIA. Image by Luke Varley for Paramount Plus, via Vanity Fair.
Special Ops: Lioness promises to be a high-stakes series for every character involved, in every aspect of their lives; from losing people on the battlefield to losing touch with the people at home, and how to balance all of it to try to make the best out of the situation.
The new series from Taylor Sheridan will debut in the summer on Paramount Plus.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
