Gina Torres Explains How Firefly Brought Her to 9-1-1: Lone Star – Plus, Watch Her New Character in Action.
After a decade of brawling in boardrooms on USA Network, Gina Torres is getting back into the field on 9-1-1:Lone Star, and she’s loving every minute of it. “As fabulous as it was playing Jessica Pearson, I feel safer climbing rigs and getting shot at than I did walking around in 5.5-inch stilettos for hours,” she tells TVLine.
That exact scenario unfolds in the Fox drama’s second season premiere (Monday 9/8c) when Torres’ character Tommy Vega – who steps in to replace departing paramedic captain Michelle Blake (Liv Tyler) – takes part in a dangerous medical rescue mission atop a cell tower.
“I’m a physical person, and I love doing my own stunts,” Torres says, adding that she filmed this particular scene on her very first day. “They were like, ‘You’re going to climb this rig… and you’re going to get shot at.’ That was Day 1. But pretty soon, I was just like, ‘I remember this! Being outside, having people shoot at you in 110-degree weather, I’ve done this!'”
Check out an exclusive clip of Tommy and Owen (Rob Lowe) in action below:
Unfortunately, Tommy doesn’t necessarily share her portrayer’s confidence. “Like so many parents, she’s rejiggering her life and reinventing how she’s going to provide for herself and her family,” Torres says. “Their restaurant closed down, so her husband’s out of work, and she has this incredible skillset in a field that absolutely has needs. So she goes back to work after an eight year absence, not knowing if her badass card has been provoked.” (Spoiler alert: it has not been revoked.)
“[Executive producer] Tim Minear is completely responsible for bringing me onto this show and drawing such a great character for me to play,” Torres adds. “He literally made it impossible for me to say no. I’ve loved his brain for almost 20 years since we got to work on Firefly together. To get this beautiful offer in the middle of this crazy pandemic, where I didn’t know how or if I was going to work again, was mind-blowing and has been nothing but a blessing since Day 1. It wraps up all the reasons why I became an actor n the first place.”
CLEOPATRA 2525 “That show was ridiculous!” Torres says of the pulpy sc-fi series, in which she played Hel, whose mission was to fight the machines that had taken over Earth in the 26th century. Did we mention it was from the minds behind Hercules and Xena? “[Series creator] Rob Tapert pitched it to me,” Torres says. “God bless him, he saw something in me that I will always be grateful for. He sauid, ‘I want you to lead this group of freedom fighters. You’ll be wearing rubber hot pants and a silver corset in the processs and protecting a cryogenically frozen stripper..'” She laughs. “There were times when I was on set that I felt like Alan Rickman in Galazy Quest. I was like, ‘I can’t believe this is where [I’ve landed]. I’ve done this classics…All these years later, I’m like, ‘That was a good time.’ I’m waiting for my daughter to be old enough to check it out.” 
FIREFLY The short-lived space wester, Joss Whedon’s follow-up to the highly successful Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, “was a lesson in that there are no givens,” Torres says. Still, the cast – which included a pre-Castle Nathan Fillion – was “happy to come to work, see each other every day, do this and inhabit this world, and it showed,” she adds. “The idea of it was fantastic. I really do think we were ahead of our time. Unfortunately… Fox just didn’t get it, and they buried us. They can take full responsibility for that. 
FIREFLY (cont’d.) Though as the ship’s first mate, Torres’ Zoe had her share of larger-than-life moments – “Coming out of the fog and a sand storm with a shotgun with Mal saying, ‘What does that make us, Zoe?’ ‘Big damn heroes.’ It doesn’t get better than that!” – but the actress is fond of the “sweet” exchanges between her and Alan Tudyk, who played her husband, Wash. “I so appreciate that the writers would let Zoe really be a girl and a woman and a wife,” she recalls. “That made her the ultimate chick, because she was a fully realized person. That’s what I mourn most, given the early demise of the show.” 
ANGEL Next, Torres played a completely different type of character: Jasmine, the smiling-yet-sinister entity that possessed and birthed itself through Cordelia, them brainwashed Los Angeles until everyone was under her sweet spell. “She wanted love. Is that so wrong?” Torres asks, cracking herself up. “I think the scariest monsters are the quiet ones, the ones that are sitting in front of you and are very seductive. I put my voice into that honey place… There was just this calm grace about her delicious evilness. I love Jasmine for that.” 
24 Torres’ first day of work on the Fox thriller, “I was called in, in the middle of the night, to do a phone call with Penny Johnson [Jerald, who played Sherry Palmer],” she recalls. Sherry was in her car for the scene, “so I folded my 6-foot self into the back of a car that I shared with a camera crew, because there was a camera in the front seat,” Torres says, remembering how impressed she was by the series’ dedication to detail. “I was like, ‘They’re taking this seriously… They want the reactions to be real, and they want it to be a tennis game.” As for her character, Julia, “I mean, she had the world by the balls that first hour, and then it all goes terribly wrong – that you very much, Gary Palmer,” Torres says. 
ALIAS K-Dirctorate assassin Anna Espinisa “should have had her own show,” Torres says. “She was the other side of the coin of Sydney Bristow. They’re both ride or die, believe in their cause, doing their job, excellent at their job. They just happen to be pitted against each other.” Turns out, the character was originally written as a born-and-bred Russian, but a suggestion from Torres – as well as the fact that she can do a Russian accent – turned Anna into a Cuban-born Russian. “I’m proud that I had the courage to even bring it up, and I’m so proud they ran with it,” she says. 
THE VAMPIRE DIARIES. “I was robbed!” Torres says, laughing, about the demise of her character, a witch from Damon’s past named Bree, on the supernatural CW drama. “Yeah, you pulled my heart out, but come on.” 
HUGE “I’m so much taller than the average bear,” says the statuesque actress. Add in that her self-described “ethnic ambiguity” wasn’t seen much on TV or movies when she was growing up, and you’ve got someone primed to be in the ABC Family series about a camp for overweight kids. “I understood on a bones level what it is to be “othered” and feel different… It’s another show that I mourn, and it was also an opportunity to play somebody” – camp director Dr. Rand – “who wasn’t altogether together.” 
CASTLE Reuninting with Fillion on his ABC procedural also gave Torres an opportunity to have some fun lampooning the Real Housewives franchise via her character, Penelope Foster. “I show up on set and I know exactly how I want to play it,” she recalls. “I wanted to fly the New York flag high, and I showed up with this thick Bronx accent. The director, I think he was expecting [Suits] Jessica Pearson. I said, ‘No, she’s not here. She’s not showing up.’ He just let me play. 
TRANSFORMERS: PRIME Here are Torres’ unedited comments about her role in the Hub Network animated series, in which she voices Airachnid: “The job came up. It was a good fit. Do I get an action figure of my own? Do I get to work with Optimus Prime? I think it’s better that he just lives in my head. He’s awesome. That voice. “Transformers, roll out.” What’s wrong with that? Nothing. 
REVENGE Torres showed up as schemer Natalie Walters in Season 4 of the ABC drama, but “I wasn’t going to do it if I wasn’t going to work with Madeleine Stowe,” she says. “I said, ‘Who do I play with?’ ‘Victoria Grayson. You’re her foil.’ ‘Sign me up. I don’t need to know anything else.'” 
HANNIBAL Working with one;s spouse – like Torres did when she took on the role of Bella, the terminally ill wife of Jack Crawford (played by Torres’ real-life husband Laurence Fishburne) – “is not an easy thing,” she says. “People often mistake that for peeking through the window in our lives, and that’s not of interest to us.” But a conversation with series creator Bryan Fuller, with whom she’d worked on Pushing Daisies, sealed the deal. “He crafted the most beautiful woman and arc for me to play… somebody who doesn’t have all the answers, who is struggling, who is vulnerable.” Plus, she points out, her diseased character was probably the only person on whom the drama’s titular cannibal wouldn’t want to nibble. “If anybody is safe on that,” she jokes, “it’s Bella.” 
SUITS Torres minces no words when she sums up the firm’s current situation. “It’s f–ed up,” she says, laughing. “These next six episodes are what we were all afraid of and desperately trying to keep at bay.”
Read on for more of our Q&A with Torres, including the on-set reunion she wasn’t even aware of.
TVLINE | We learn in the premiere that Tommy is old friends with Judd and Grace, which is funny, because you and Jim Parrack have worked together before.
Wait, have we?
TVLINE | According to IMDB, he guest-starred in an episode of Stand Off with you.
[Laughs] Really? Wow. That was one of those shows, not unlike Suits, where I was not a part of the action. I was the lieutenant who was somewhere else telling people what to do. There were so many guest stars in that show that I never got to meet or work with, as there were on Suits, so it’s entirely possible he was on that show and I just had no idea.
TVLINE | Something else I was wondering: Do you happen to know what Tommy is short for?
I actually have no idea. And I asked, I did! I was like, “Thomassina?” I think Tim said, “Maybe.” He wouldn’t get specific.
TVLINE | Lastly, give us a little tease. What can we expect from Tommy vs. the volcano in Episode 2?
I win! [Laughs] I believe it;s already been teased that it comes at a great cost to the team, and I think that’s all I can say.
Original article at TVLINE.
This article has been reproduced for archive purposes.
