Sarah Wayne Callies Talks ‘Colony’ Finale On USA Network & Playing Katie Bowman! [INTERVIEW]
By Jorge Solis (j.solis@mstarsnews.com) | Mar 16, 2016 01:00 PM EDT
Created by executive producers Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Ryan J. Condal (Hercules), USA Network has one episode left of their sci-fi drama, Colony. In an exclusive interview with MStars News, actress Sarah Wayne Callies teases what’s to come for Katie Bowman in the highly anticipated first season finale.
As we previously mentioned, Colony is set in the near future of Los Angeles, after the invasion has taken over. There are those who collaborate and those who resist their new world order. Before a rebel terrorist attack ruined his plans, Will (Holloway) was trying to cross the wall, in order to find his missing son. Because Will was an FBI agent, Proxy Snyder (Peter Jacobson) offers Katie (Callies) and her husband a chance to find the leader of the resistance, in return for their missing child. Unbeknownst to her husband, as he collaborates, Katie has actually been working for the resistance the entire time.
Before Thursday, March 17 episode, Gateway, on USA Network, the Colony actress discusses her role as Katie Bowman. Now that the Resistance has kidnapped a high-value hostage, is there enough time for Will Bowman to rescue Katie from lockdown in the season finale?
MStars News: When building her back-story, what was the inspiration behind Katie Bowman? Did you base her on research or someone you knew?
Sarah Wayne Callies: It started as a bit of joke, which is that Katie is from New Orleans, which is why the bar is what it is. And another term for a bartender is a barmaid. And so the Maid of Orleans is what they used to call Joan of Arc.
So it started as like I just had this weird brain fart. And I emailed Ryan [Condal] and Carlton [Cuse] and I was like, “Clearly you based this character on Joan of Arc.” And they laughed and we thought it was weird. And then, I was like, let me just go watch a movie about Joan of Arc. And I went in the back and I reread Saint Joan. And I do think there’s something interesting to the idea that Katie, like Joan, is a true believer. And Katie, like Joan, runs face first into that role where your ideology meets the reality of trying to mount a resistance.
MS: Did director, Juan José Campanella, who worked on the pilot, have an idea who Katie Bowman is as well?
SWC: Juan Campanella also had us watch a movie called the Battle of Algiers, that immediately became one of the best films I’ve ever seen. And there was a lot in that film about femininity as a tool of war. Which is why I put Katie in dresses and try to kind of articulate a femininity in her characterization.
In our recent recap, Broussard (Tory Kittles) got a little closer to Katie as he trained her how to shoot and use a silencer. Broussard and Katie were planning with a new cell team, including Morgan (Thora Birch), to bomb a train carrying a VIP known only as Hyperion. Before the bombing, Will and Katie blamed each other for their lies and secrets. In the wreckage of the train explosion, Katie and her team discovered a mysterious stranger covered from top to bottom in armor. Could they have possibly found an alien?
MS: Will and Katie have this intense argument with each other in Zero Day. In this critic’s opinion, it was heartbreaking to see them divorce in a way. Will we see the consequences of that confrontation in the season finale?
SWC: I think in a way, the whole first season builds to that conversation. Will and Katie, I think that in a way, Will and Katie learn that love is not all you need, in the first season, that these ideological differences really may become profoundly problematic in their marriage. And I think there’s a trust that over the course of the season, but that really culminates in that final argument. It’s a tough thing to come back from.
MS: And now it seems like Katie is on her own, without Will, or even the kids to keep her grounded.
SWC: I think when Will says to Katie, “You put the noose around those kids’ necks,” meaning Rachel’s son. That’s a huge bomb to drop on someone, and certainly people say things in the heat of the moment that they don’t mean, but I think that’s one of those arguments in a marriage that’s going to take them a long time to recover from.
MS: Whas does it mean for Katie that Broussard is training her how to use and shoot a silencer?
SWC: Katie is one of the few I think that we really get to know who doesn’t have any experience tactically. She’s not military trained. She’s not law enforcement trained. She knows how to shoot a gun because she spent time in New Orleans and her husband’s a former Army Ranger. I think all of the things that you have to do internally to get right with the idea that you might have to take someone’s life. Katie hasn’t done that stuff, because she’s a bartender. And she has had the great privilege of never having to get her hands dirty, in the name of anything she believes in, such as liberty and free society.
MS: This writer loved Prison Break! I was so excited to hear your character, Dr. Sara Tancredi, is returning with Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller! What does the revival of Prison Break mean to you?
SWC: It’s such a fascinating, creative challenge to resuscitate something that I buried such a long time ago. There has been a lifetime for me between the end of Prison Break and now, the whole Walking Dead world. My son wasn’t even born, my daughter was just a baby. I feel like a completely different person.
And so the idea of doing what you do in theater quite a lot actually, which is returning to a role once your own sense of yourself, your own life has changed so much; it’s just a really fascinating and kind of a scary idea too. But it seems to me all of the more reason to do it.
Colony continues for 1 more Thursday at 10pm on USA Network.
