Women at war
The End Game pits two feisty females against each other on M-Net – and for good reason says the lead stars.
The Endgame
Season 1 Thursdays M-Net (*101) 19:30
“We are taking over!” says Morena Baccarin with a grin on her face. “It’s time for girls to be good and bad together – we’re tired of being second fiddle and being told we’re not up to scratch.” The Brazilian-born actress is playing the lead role of Elena Federova in new crime drama The Endgame, which replaced season 2 of action cop show Walker without notice. “Elena is an enigma and she’s as complex as villains come on the smallscreen,” says Morena, who’s best known as Marine wife Jessica Brody in action thriller Homeland. “We see flashbacks to what we think is her youth in Russia and how she was raised with her father – they had this really interesting dynamic where he taught her to use automatic weapons as a teen and she loved it.” But that’s the tip of the iceberg with Elena, because she’s got something up her sleeve and she has the perfect person to play off against: Troubled FBI agent Val Turner (Ryan Michelle Bathé).
CHECKMATE
In episode 1, Elena turned a room full of hardened cops and FBI agents into cowering children who looked like they had been given a hiding. “She knew everything about them, their most intimate details. That’s the kind of power that she has. She has every base covered and she’s two steps ahead of the people she’s controlling,” says Morena. So when infamous crimelord Elena was arrested by the FBI, it was actually part of her masterplan.
Val could be Elena’s match though – she’s got a tough exterior and doesn’t flinch in the face of danger, says Ryan. “She’s been married to her childhood sweetheart for years and she’s also the person who turned him in to the police when she realised he was a criminal. The only time she showed a hint of emotion was at their prison meeting when he told her that he wanted a divorce.” But even then, Val’s police brain is in gear because her hubby can’t afford that kind of law firm. So something’s up and Val thinks it involved Elena. With episode 2 and 3 this fortnight, it’s going to become clear just how intelligent Val is and why she’s got a point to prove. “Every single boss she’s worked for has held her back. They’ve always been men and they’ve always just had this ‘go away and let the men work’ attitude towards her,” says Ryan. That changed in episode 1 though when Val correctly predicted that Elena’s thugs would rob a specific bank and her boss realised – too late – that she was right. “Val told them it would happen and as it plays out in front of her, she’s secretly going in her head, ‘Yes! I was correct!’” adds the actress.
GIRL POWER
The show was created by Jake Coburn, who’s worked on productions like drama reboot Dynasty, superhero action series Green Arrow and drama show Gossip Girl – and Nicholas Wooton, who was the headwriter of action comedy series Chuck, drama series Prison Break and procedural cop drama shows Law & Order and NYPD Blue. And the guys are crystal clear that they needed two strong female leads.
“It wasn’t even a question, to be honest. We’d never considered having one male as the lead. We auditioned Morena and Ryan and we knew straight away – they were our stars,” says Nicholas. “We have seen too many male-male or malefemale driven spy thrillers. We wanted not to reboot or rewrite that. We want to put it right. It’s that simple because in these two actresses, they’re driving the story in a way that you don’t know what they’re going to do, but you know that they’re going to do something big in relation to the other,” adds Jake.