COLONY -- "Yoknapatawpha" Episode 106 -- Pictured: Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman -- (Photo by: Isabella Vosmikova/USA Network)
COLONY -- "Yoknapatawpha" Episode 106 -- Pictured: Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman -- (Photo by: Isabella Vosmikova/USA Network)

Colony: A Chat with Sarah Wayne Callies, Part 1

As the first season of this extraordinary show wraps up, we were treated to a very thoughtful chat with the show’s female lead, Sarah Wayne Callies. She proved to be extremely articulate, and very entertaining! Sarah’s been in some big action TV shows – Walking Dead, Prison  Break – and has done quite a bit of humanitarian service as well.

A little bit about Sarah: She will next be seen opposite Nicolas Cage in the feature film “Pay the Ghost” directed by Uli Edel, and “The Other Side of the Door,” written and directed by Johannes Roberts.  Other credits include starring in “Into the Storm” directed by Steven Quale and “Black November” directed by Jeta Amata.  Shot on location in Nigeria, “Black November” is the only film to ever be screened for the United Nations General Assembly.

In the film “Whisper” Callies worked opposite Joel Edgerton and in Benoit Phillipon’s “Lullaby for Pi,” she acted opposite of Rupert Friend, and also composed and performed an original song for the film.  In 2013, Callies returned to her stage roots, starring in the Kennedy Center’s production of “The Guardsman” in a new translation by Richard Nelson and directed by Gregory Mosher.

In 2010, Callies was named International Rescue Committee’s first ‘IRC Voice’ for her humanitarian work on the ground and at camps in Iraq, Jordan and Thailand. Raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Callies attended Dartmouth College and obtained a Master of Fine Arts from Denver’s National Theater Conservatory.  She lives with her family in British Columbia, Canada.

COLONY -- "Blindspot" Episode 104 -- Pictured: Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman -- (Photo by: Danny Feld/USA Network)

COLONY — “Blindspot” Episode 104 — Pictured: Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman — (Photo by: Danny Feld/USA Network)

Katie’s always being pulled in both directions, obviously from the Resistance and from her husband. Can you kind of talk about playing that dichotomy in your character?

Sarah: Yes, my pleasure. I think it’s called being a woman. There’s something I think about being a working mom. Almost every working mother I know feels a constant sense of guilt and failure that either you’ve devoted so much time to your family that the people at work are feeling like you’re not sufficiently contributing, or that you’ve poured so much of yourself into your work that you’re not sufficiently there for your family.

And so obviously in Colony, that’s heightened because Katie’s work is no longer running a bar. Katie’s work is, you know, undertaking Resistance with an eye towards (degrading) not only her family but her city and possibly her species. But I think, you know, as we see in episode nine, part of the cost of that work has been…not seeing what’s going on in her own house with their children. And so you know, I mean, when it comes to playing it, it’s not real hard for me to go down that road, because every morning I leave my kids and I go to work. I’m a breadwinner for a family of four.

And I observe in my life that none of my male colleagues speaks to the same amount of kind of internal tearing that all the working moms I know feel, and I don’t know quite why that is, but I think maybe culturally we need to soften things a little bit for those of us who are trying to do the family and the work thing, because it does tear you up a little bit in ways that I think we probably could improve.

Was there anyone — either a character or a person in particular — that you kind of were inspired by when you played her? Or did you just take everything from the script? Obviously, you added your experience as a mother, but was there anything else that you brought into it?

Sarah: Yes. This is going to sound a little crazy — Joan of Arc. I realized – sounds kind of, I mean, 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 and Carlton 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.

And so in that sense, I think they both go in, you know, giving that they’re doing quote unquote “The Lord’s work” like I am doing the moral, ethical, right thing, and I have no qualms about that. I might be afraid, but I won’t let my fear stop me from trying to do the right thing. And then all of a sudden, these are women neck deep in politics and ethics for which they’re not equipped.

And they have to catch up very quickly. So, you know, it did start as (stuff) that there was something that I found actually very cool about it. 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.

COLONY -- "Yoknapatawpha" Episode 106 -- Pictured: (l-r) Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman, Josh Holloway as Will Bowman -- (Photo by: Isabella Vosmikova/USA Network)

COLONY — “Yoknapatawpha” Episode 106 — Pictured: (l-r) Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman, Josh Holloway as Will Bowman — (Photo by: Isabella Vosmikova/USA Network)

That very cool argument in that fantastic backyard that you have on the show between you and your husband when you’re arguing back and forth and he’s like, “I saved you,” and you say, “I saved you, too.” From your point of view, to me I thought it was really a game changer in their relationship. 

Sarah: Yes, I agree. I mean, I think in way, the whole first season builds to that conversation. 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 (unintelligible) of 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.

And, you know, particularly I think when Will says to Katie, “You put the noose around those kids’ necks,” meaning Rachel’s sons. 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.

Another thing that I love about her is when she’s already been in killing situations and we really see it through the eyes of the audience how she reacts to the killing. Like, Broussard, he’s more used to it. But for her it’s all something very alien to her. Speak to how that weighs on her as well.

Sarah: Well, you know, I mean Katie is — among the people that we see in the Resistance — 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. You know, she knows how to shoot a gun because she spent time in New Orleans and her husband’s a former Army Ranger, but there’s not – 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 — you know, liberty, free society, et cetera.

And so, she’s unprepared for – she’s thrown in the middle and she doesn’t have the coping skills. Yes, so she doesn’t have the emotional framework to do the work that she’s doing, and so it takes an enormous toll on her. And I think by the end of the season, it wouldn’t surprise me — and I don’t know anything about season two — but it wouldn’t surprise me if she started season two as a confirmed pacifist, just somebody who refuses to take arms again because the cost has been so great.

I love her. And you know, she’s closer to me than anybody I’ve ever played, which is a little terrifying, to be honest. I feel more exposed in her skin than in anyone else. But, she’s sensational and you know, the fact that Ryan and Carlton have articulated her so well, with such complexity. It’s a huge gift. I love playing her.

As I’m watching Colony, I just kept thinking just tell Will. Just tell him. Why do you think that Katie hasn’t told Will about her part in the Resistance, even before he kind of got forced into fighting the Resistance? And maybe even more importantly, do you think you could keep a secret that big from your husband?

Sarah: Well I will say that Nelson McCormick, who directed episode six, came to me at a certain point during the filming and he said, “I don’t think your husband should watch this episode.” I said, “Why?” He said, “No man wants to know his wife can lie this well.” And that gave me something to think about.

I mean, first of all, I don’t think Katie was very significantly involved with the Resistance until Will was forced into collaboration. You know, I think these were people in her orbit. I think she warped, you know, she might have taken a flyer from here to there, but she was not neck deep with them. And I think she makes the decision to join their work fully as a response to Will’s forced collaboration. And it’s partly as a means to protect him, but also a need to balance this dilemma, just thinking, you know, I can’t stomach the thought of being a collaborating family. That’s just sort of more than I can take.

And she doesn’t tell him, because it’s the best way to keep him safe. You know, I mean, Juan Campanella, the director of the first three episodes, grew up in Argentina under a dictatorship. He talked to us quite a lot about just those conditions of knowing that people disappear all the time and knowing that information can be an extremely powerful but also very dangerous currency. And I think for Will to have plausible deniability, if he was ever questioned about his wife’s activities, could save his life. And so Katie would never want to put him in a position of having to withhold information that could kill him.

I absolutely love your character. You’ve played your share of strong female roles. Do you feel that you have a responsibility to portray women in a way that other women can identify with?

Sarah: You know what’s seducing? I’ve had this strong woman question a lot in the last couple of months, and what I found myself thinking, I think all women are strong. I think just getting through the day, making whatever 60 cents on the dollar and having to put up with the high heels and the way men treat you and the way men look at you and the double standards of beauty and aging and everything else. You know, I kind of feel like sister, if you just get from the beginning of the day to the end, you’re strong. You’re a warrior. Because God knows you’re doing twice as much and you’re not getting twice the compensation.

I don’t know. They seem to be the roles that I get cast in. I don’t know that I feel a responsibility to play strong women. I think that’s just how they come out of me. But I do feel a certain responsibility, particularly as a mother of a daughter, to try and work with certain kinds of other aspects of my business that can be problematic, you know, about vanity and modification of women’s bodies and stuff like that. It’s a tricky line to walk, but you know, I certainly am trying not to get wrapped up in aging.

I’m trying to promote images of women’s bodies as having to be hypersexualized, having to be super thin. I’m aware of that, I think in a new way, having a daughter who will be growing up looking at those images and contending with her own relationship with those images — not only of me, but of women all over. You know, it’s the reason I turned down the cover of Maxim, because I knew someday — I didn’t even have a kid then — but I knew that someday I would have a daughter and I didn’t want her to look at an image of her mom like that and try and find a way of folding that into her own sense of sexuality and femininity and identity as a woman.

I don’t know that I’m doing very well, by the way. I don’t know that I’m succeeding. But I am doing my best to contend with those things.

COLONY -- "In From the Cold" Episode 108 -- Pictured: Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman -- (Photo by: Isabella Vosmikova/USA Network)

COLONY — “In From the Cold” Episode 108 — Pictured: Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman — (Photo by: Isabella Vosmikova/USA Network)

Was that something that actually made you want to take the role of Katie? And what else actually drew you to that role?

Sarah: You know, I mean, the thing about Katie, as I said, she is closer to me than anyone I think I’ve ever (been cast). And that scared me enough that it made me want to do it. I tend to walk towards things that scare me. But Katie also was every bit as fully developed and articulated as Will in this story, and I think often wives and mothers are accessories to leading men. And it felt to me, reading the pilot script, that Katie’s philosophical universe was as fully represented as Will’s, which made it a really exciting exploration because you can present two very different ethical responses to a dictatorship, to an occupation. And you could have a real dialogue because they were two fully articulated human beings. One happens to be a woman. One happens to be a man.

And I think that dialogue actually is the reason that I wanted to take this job, because I think it’s a really important time right now to be talking about the role of citizens in resisting oppressive governments.

What do you hope people take away when they watch the show?

Sarah: You know, I hope primarily people take away a sense of entertainment, because none of us want to do homework. And I wouldn’t want to show, as ideological and political as it is, I wouldn’t want it to feel like homework.

I’ve said this all over the place, but the first season of Battlestar Galactica was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen, because it was so entertaining and I loved watching it. And it was one of the most salient discussions on the Patriot Act that I saw anybody having anywhere.

And I would be so happy if Colony followed in those footsteps — of a show where you just care so much about the people and it’s such an interesting and unique world. And while we’re doing that, we’re also talking about the genesis of resistance and the nature of resistance and the definitions between resistance and terrorism, and governments and oppression and repression. That would be – it’s a really tricky balance. It’s a very difficult line to walk, but I think if anyone can walk it, it’s Ryan. You know, it’s Ryan Condal and Carlton Cuse. And I’m sort of along for the ride doing my best on my end. Does that make any sense?

13

Broussard and Katie have kind of become confidants over the course of the show so far. But the history between them is still a mystery. Can you shed any light as to how they became friends and how they grew to trust each other over everyone else?

Sarah: You know, I think part of that has to do with the history of a bartender and a patron. Broussard and Katie got to know each other before it all happened. And I always imagine that, he’d come into the bar between deployments and she recognized in him a man like her husband — someone who’s a military man and somebody who’s been through some stuff and someone who needs maybe a little bit of space to deal with what he’s been through and what he’s seen, a space not to be judged and a space maybe not for anyone to say I know how you’re feeling, because in my experience, a lot of vets feel things that no one can understand.

And so, I think they developed a respect and a friendship before it all happened, before it all went down. I don’t know if they will go this route or not, but something Tory and I talked about is a possibility that when the arrival happened, he was in the bar and he was one of the people who helped Katie get out. Tory and I talked about it. We shared it with Ryan and Carlton. I don’t know if they’ll build that into our backstory.

So I think part of it has to do with that kind of history. And I think (we all) have a gut feeling about the people in our lives that we can really trust. And it doesn’t – sometimes it happens right away. Sometimes it evolves over time. But there are people in your life that you just go ok, I’m all in. I trust you. And I think Katie brings that trust out in Broussard and it’s a trust he doesn’t have for many people.

And I think she just absolutely trusts him, which is why, you know, Quayle’s orders to have her killed I think really shake Katie to her foundation, because she sees that Broussard is contemplating it. It’s his nature as a man who follows the chain of command.

So when he emerges up the other side of that as a human being, I think then he becomes somebody that like – I think that does bring them ironically closer together. Does that make sense?

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It was recently announced that you will be reprising your Prison Break role on the revival series.  What are you most excited about in regards to returning to that universe and that character?

Sarah: You know, I mean, 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, you know, 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 theatre quite a lot actually, which is returning to a role once your own sense of yourself and your own life has changed so much, is just a really fascinating and kind of a scary idea too. But it seems to me all of the more reason to do it.

You know, the story picks up several years later, so (we have) travelled a distance from where we left them. That’s, you know, I just actually finished – I’ve gotten one episode left in season one. I locked myself in a room and binge watched the whole first season to remind myself who these people are and what we went through and what’s going on.

And it was extraordinary. I mean, I wrote to Paul Scheuring last night. I was like, you know, I don’t watch a lot of television and I don’t watch very much of what I’m in, so some of these episodes I’m seeing for the first time. That first season was an extraordinary season of television. There was just so much really interesting writing and really terrific performances. And if we can build that again, that level of intelligence and (unintelligible), it would be wonderful.

COLONY -- "Blindspot" Episode 104 -- Pictured: (l-r) Isabella Crovetti-Cramp as Grace Bowman, Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman -- (Photo by: Danny Feld/USA Network)

COLONY — “Blindspot” Episode 104 — Pictured: (l-r) Isabella Crovetti-Cramp as Grace Bowman, Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman — (Photo by: Danny Feld/USA Network)

TIBS:  I’ve loved Katie’s character. I love the show. But it seems like there are a lot of fans who are not happy with Katie, who really feel like she should be doing what she can to protect her family. And you know, in the argument with Will she says that she’s protecting basically everybody’s families is kind of her attitude I think. What would you say to those people who are saying Katie needs to get out of the Resistance work and follow Will?

Sarah: Should the French Resistance have given up and followed the Nazis? There’s – the history of civil society is the history of resistance. And I think Katie’s perspective is it’s not enough to just raise children. You have to raise children that are free.

And you see it in her daughter that this little girl is getting used to it. She’s only eight. And so, her memory, the longer this goes on, her memory is more and more a memory of checkpoints and breadlines and curfews and people being afraid of their government. And I think Katie feels very strongly that the greatest act of love is fighting for her children’s intellectual and creative and spiritual freedom.

TIBS: That’s great. And we may think that would sway some people, but other people are still going to say you need to be playing with your – you know, working for your children. Was there a scene this season that you felt really articulated that point of view for Katie?

Sarah: You know, I’d have to go back. I have to spend some time with that and really go back and watch and check it out. I think everything she does is an expression of that. And I think there’s a moment between her and Bram at the end of episode nine where she all but tells him what she’s doing. And I think in that moment, to me at least, it’s pretty clear that she’s doing it for him.

You know, I’ll also point out that I think there’s a pretty profound double standard when it comes to men and women and some people’s perception of whose job it is to stay home and take care of the kids. I don’t know what, you know, you’re talking about when you’re talking about people’s reactions to Katie. I don’t go online. I don’t engage in any of that stuff. It’s not my business. My business is to tell a story.

Male characters rarely are so, first of all, heavily defined by their identities as parents. And they’re also very rarely criticized for doing meaningful work, ideological work outside the home.

TIBS:  Right. I totally see what you’re saying. If Will had been fighting for the Resistance, if the roles had been switched, nobody would have argued.

Sarah: No. He would be a hero. You know, to me, that makes it even a more exciting story to tell, because it’s able to hopefully slightly move the needle on those perceptions by normalizing the idea of women and those traditions.

Watch for Part 2 tomorrow!

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