Elizaveta Neretin, who played Ukrainian double agent Oleksandra Balakin on Taylor Sheridan’s “Lioness,” says she isn’t surprised her character was killed off in the season 3 finale, which aired Sunday night.
In the episode, Oleksandra — who had been captured by American forces and recruited to help rescue Joe (Zoe Saldaña) after her kidnapping — is killed. Neretin told Fox News Digital she had a feeling it was coming even before Sheridan told her directly.
“I thought it was going to happen. So when he called, and he told me, I was like, ‘Yeah, I get it.’ I’m sad for Oleksandra and what Oleksandra represents, but I understand the choice. It does serve this. It serves to show how the whole system is. Like American or not American, the whole system and the people that work in the system. It’s all sharks, you know, so it just demonstrates how people are,” she said.
Neretin said she would have preferred a happier ending for her character but accepted Sheridan’s reasoning, arguing the nature of Oleksandra’s work made her death almost inevitable.
“I would love a different ending for her, but like I said, I understand why it had to happen. But of course I would have a good ending for her. I just wonder if being a triple agent, I think your days are numbered. I don’t think you can pull that off and live to an old age unless you give up on family you have, which I don’t think she would.”
She added that Oleksandra’s devotion to her country outweighed any instinct for self-preservation.
“If you give up on the family you have, perhaps you could find a way to hide somewhere, you know what I mean? But the way she fights for her country, I think she cares way too much, way more about that outcome than her life. I think that she made that decision a long time ago.”
Despite her feelings about the outcome, Neretin said she never pushed back on Sheridan’s decision or suggested an alternate path for the character. She described her only real input as a small detail about names.
“No, I didn’t challenge him. I just remember he shortened Oleksandra’s name a certain way, and I just suggested, I was like, ‘By the way, the short version of Oleksandra in Ukrainian is Alessa.’ And he was like ‘yeah, that works.’ I didn’t challenge him, it was very interesting, like he runs the show, you know what I mean? He’s the boss.”
Nicole Kidman, who plays Kaitlyn on the series, was asked separately by Entertainment Weekly whether her character carries any guilt over Oleksandra’s death.
“She absolutely has a moral code and conscience, but she always weighs it up against cost. At the same time, she’s not mired down in regret. She’s a move-forward person, in the same way that when people play sports, you don’t get stuck on a previous point. Because otherwise she can’t do her job; she’s rendered inactive and vulnerable then,” Kidman said.
Neretin also spoke about the unusual experience of shooting the show without seeing scripts for future episodes in advance.
“So we don’t have all the episodes right away. So that was an interesting process. Because this is my first big role, I didn’t know that that’s how he worked. So that part was interesting because I didn’t know. And it’s like, you’re waiting, and it feels like Christmas every time the episode drops. You’re like, Oh my God. And that’s all we talk about on set the next day everybody’s like, ‘oh my gosh did you see this?’ Yeah, people have bets going what’s gonna happen.”
A fourth season of “Lioness” has not yet been confirmed. Kidman said she believes there’s plenty of room for Kaitlyn’s story to grow if the show continues.
“There’s a lot. We’ll see where it goes, if we get to make a fourth season. It’s just so rich that there’s so many different paths that you can go down. The first season, you’re establishing everything, and the beauty of getting to do multiple seasons is that it becomes more deeper, richer, more complex. Taylor is such a strong writer that he can take things anywhere.”
