Jill Wagner and Laysla De Oliveira sat down with Ang Bishop to talk Lioness Season 3, now streaming on Paramount+.

Starring Oscar® winner and executive producer Zoe Saldaña with Oscar winner and executive producer Nicole Kidman, the intense, female-led espionage thriller goes global as chaos ensues and the Lioness team faces its most dangerous mission to date. From Oscar nominee Taylor Sheridan, the series is produced by Paramount Television Studios and 101 Studios.

Q: Congratulations on Season 3. I’ve seen two episodes, including the first one on the big screen last night. What’s it like seeing yourselves up there?

Jill Wagner: It’s exciting and it’s an honour. Most of the time we have helmets on, so I don’t even know where I am.

Laysla De Oliveira: It’s surreal. As an actor, sometimes you can be hard on yourself seeing yourself, but the beautiful thing is seeing it all come together.

Q: There’s a great line describing modern warfare as a combination of World War I and Star Wars—drones in one hand and bayonets in the other. We’re seeing that in real life too. It’s a strange depiction of war, but an accurate one.

Jill: It is so accurate, and I think that’s why Taylor Sheridan is so good at what he does. He looks at current warfare, and it’s important to tell these stories because that’s what these men and women are going through. It’s really hard.

I think it gives people empathy for the men and women who go over there and have to deal with this. 

Q: We see the physical toll in the battle scenes, but also the emotional toll. What has the response been from those serving?

Jill: I’ve had generals and service members, especially the women we’re portraying, come up to me and say, “Thank you. Thank you so much for telling our story. We feel seen.”

I think it’s nice to recognise that they’re out there doing some amazing things. Not all heroes are Marvel heroes wearing capes. There are men and women who are real heroes, and I’m just honoured that we get to portray them on TV.

Q: Did you know women were doing this before joining the series?

Laysla: I didn’t know about the Lioness Program, and I was so intrigued when I found out the original story, why there was an “in”, the information they were collecting, and how it evolved into something bigger. That really interested me.

Jill: My husband was an investigator in Afghanistan, and I asked him about the women he worked alongside. He said he would come out of villages with an empty notebook thinking it had been a waste of time, while his female counterpart would come out with five pages of notes. The way women perceive things can be different.

Laysla: And also just trust, from female to female.

Jill: Women know everything in the village or the community. We do.

Q: It’s a real strength. Tell me about the physical preparation because you can’t ignore that.

Laysla: No, you can’t.

Jill: Bobby’s a beast. Bobby took me two years just to get her baseline. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done physically. There’s a lot of protein that goes into that diet, but she needed to look capable. She needs to look like she can pull those men out of any trench. Her physicality was really important to me.

Laysla: The cool thing about coming back for a third season is you know what to expect, so you can start preparing months earlier. You can start eating differently, upping the protein, working on your abs—you can really get a head start.

Jill: And we have a great trainer, Duffy. He’s a force of nature. I think he sent me a video the other day of himself doing 30 pull-ups.

Q: I was going to bring you some Tim Tams from Australia, but I thought they probably weren’t on the meal plan.

Laysla: It’s our time off right now! We love candy.

Jill: We love our snacks.

Laysla: We love Sour Skittles. We’ll have them in our pockets and our trainer will be like, “What are you doing?” We sneak them.

Q: You’ve been working alongside Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman, who are not only Oscar winners but also executive producers. What do they bring to the set?

Jill: Zoe, Nicole and Morgan are obviously amazing actors, but they’re also great human beings. They believe in us. When you’re in scenes with them, they make you better because you’re constantly trying to keep up. It raises the bar.

Q: Jill, how did you come to play Bobby?

Jill: I wasn’t necessarily hand-picked by Taylor – I kind of fought my way in.

Laysla: Well, she did come up with the idea for the show with her husband, so that’s a good start.

Jill: We brought the concept to Taylor, and I said, “Look, here’s the deal. I just want to play a girl who runs with the boys. Just give me that.”

Boy, did he ever. He gave me a version of that character I didn’t even see. I didn’t know if I could play her until I cut my hair. The day I did, I called him and said, “I finally see her. I get her now.”

He said, “I knew it.”

I was going through my own emotions because I didn’t know if I could play her.

Q: So many people have stories about Taylor Sheridan individually crafting characters for them. Where does he find the time?

Laysla: Watching him on set is incredible because his mind moves so quickly. It pushes you—you have to be three steps ahead of him.

Jill: We’re also lucky with the directors we have, like Michael Friedman. I always say he’s Taylor’s right hand. He shoots like him, edits like him and understands Taylor’s vision because they’ve worked together for so long.