The Killing’s Mireille Enos is television’s new ‘TGIT’ girl
Actress is the latest addition to Shonda Rhimes’ Thursday lineup, joining other must-watch heroines
Mireille Enos is certainly no stranger to viewers. She appeared on HBO’s long-running series Big Love, starred in the lead role of Sarah Linden on The Killing and graced the big screen alongside the likes of Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds.
But it’s her upcoming role with the debut of Thursday night’s new ABC series The Catch that promises to make her a household name.
The Shonda Rhimes-produced series, which debuts on CTV in Canada, is the latest addition to the “TGIT” lineup that has long-touted Ellen Pompeo, Kerry Washington and Viola Davis as the mustwatch Thursday night heroines. If The Catch becomes another hit with viewers, Enos could easily count herself among those stars in the very near future.
“They’ve paved the way for all of Shonda’s shows to make strong audiences, so there’s already this big audience base,” Enos says. “There’s a relaxed way you get to sit down and watch it that’s very enjoy- able. When all of our lives are busy and stressful, getting to sit down and have something that’s pure entertainment is a gift.”
What Enos’s character, Alice Vaughan, on The Catch goes through is certainly anything but enjoyable to her. As a company co-owner and private investigator, her life seems pretty perfect at the outset. She’s great at her job and is engaged to a charming man (Peter Krause of Parenthood and Six Feet Under). Then within the first hour it all goes haywire when her fiancé and his real girlfriend ( Lost’s Sonya Walger) swindle more than a million bucks from her in a long con, stealing all of her firm’s clients along the way.
It’s there that the story breaks into three portions in the coming episodes: the cases Vaughan’s company works on; the jobs the con artists are currently working on; and the ongoing love story between the two leads.
“It’s actually a Romeo and Juliet story; they’re star-crossed lovers,” Enos explains. “They’re destined to be together, but their worlds are conspiring against them. Peter brings laughter and lightheartedness to the con-artist side of him, and then he really knows how to be grounded and real in the love story.”
There to counterbalance that relationship is the one between Vaughan and her partner at the firm, Valerie Anderson (Rose Rollins). After the initial pilot was shot, creator/co-showrunner Jennifer Schuur and her partner Josh Reims exited the show over creative differences with the network, and Rhimes vet Allan Heinberg came aboard as their replacement. One of his biggest changes (aside from recasting Krause and Walger in their respective roles) was to promote Anderson to Vaughan’s equal and create a strong female friendship in the workplace.
“I’m grateful he’s written this really strong relationship, especially because my love relationship is so broken and complicated,” Enos says. “To have my other powerful relationship in the show be with a woman seems true. Women have their female friends who are their support through the hard times of life and we don’t often see that.”
As for how much else viewers will see down the line, their guess is often as good as the leading lady’s. After the pilot reshoot, things kicked into overdrive in order for The Catch to take over How to Get Away With Murder’s time slot now that that series has wrapped for the season.
According to Enos, table reads can happen as late as two days before the next episode begins filming, with the actors knowing only the broad strokes of what’s actually coming up. It’s a huge change from the actress’s last series, The Killing, which featured a dark and dreary backdrop, and had Enos playing a morose detective who had seen more than her share of terrible things.
“I had to keep reminding myself, you’re allowed to have it be brighter and fresh,” she says. “Obviously what Alice goes through is no joke; it’s real betrayal. That betrayal is real and serious, but it’s in a package that just gets to be a little more lighthearted and fun.”
Sounds like she’s got ShondaLand pretty well figured out. The Catch debuts Thursday at 10 p.m. on ABC and CTV.