Over the past 13 years, Piper Perabo has starred in a wide variety of films including "The Prestige," "The Cave," "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Coyote Ugly" in addition to her first Broadway play, "Reasons To Be Pretty."
In 2009, Perabo was cast as the lead of the new USA Network series, "Covert Affairs." In the show, Perabo portrays Annie Walker, a young and inexperienced CIA agent who is thrust into field duty before her training is complete. Christopher Gorham, Peter Gallagher, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Anne Dudek, Kari Matchett and Eion Bailey round out the cast.
To promote the debut of "Covert Affairs" on Tuesday, July 13, Perabo recently spoke with the press about the challenges of her new role, her training and preparation and what fans might see in the series down the line.
Q: How was the role of Annie Walker brought to you? And how was she tailored for you specifically in development?
Piper Perabo: The way that the role came to me was I was doing a Broadway play, I was doing Neil Labute’s new play, "Reasons to be Pretty," and we were almost done with our run and I was reading movie scripts and I wasn’t finding anything that was really speaking to me and my agent suggested that I read this. And I hadn’t thought about doing television, but when I read it, it kind of changed everything for me. She’s such a powerful character, she’s so smart, the action is so intense, and I really thought it would be fun to do.
Then I met Doug and I went to the CIA and I started creating the character, and I met the creators, Matt Corman and Chris Ord, and we did a lot of talking about how – because the pilot is Annie’s first day at the CIA. And so as the show continues Annie’s really a rookie, and so what she excels at and what she isn’t very good at, I think is in some ways tailored to me. I really like driving. I really like action. I really like stunts. And those are things that I haven’t gotten to do in the past and so when I told them that all of a sudden that stuff started getting more and more intense and more creative. And Doug has been very active in ramping up the action sequences for each episode we do, so I think in a lot of ways the action was even kicked up a higher notch because I was so excited to do it.
Q: This is your first starring role in a TV show. Were you nervous when you started? And did either Chris or Peter or anyone else really give you any advice since they’ve starred on shows before?
Piper Perabo: Yes, both of them did, actually. Both of them are so talented and successful and confident with their work on television and they understand the speed of it. You shoot television much faster than you shoot a film, and so you have to have a certain fluid quality to the scenes and be able to change them really fast and be really confident about your choices, because there’s not always time to try it ten different ways. I think our director took a real cue from that in how confidently they approached a scene and they really know how they want to do it. I’m really lucky to have both of them on the show.
Q: Do you have any special plans for the premiere night?
Piper Perabo: The premiere night, I’m going to be shooting actually. We’re trying to work out this — I don’t know if I’m telling you secrets that I shouldn’t be telling you. That’s another thing I don’t know about television, I don’t know how to keep a secret. But there’s a really intense action chase that we’re going to be shooting on Tuesday night in Canada, so I won’t be watching it. But I have two brothers, and they are having a party for the premiere where everyone has to come as spies in trench coats and sunglasses. So, they’re representing the premiere party aspect for me.
Q: Your co-star Chris Gorham suggested that we ask you about your day at the CIA and how you took notes there.
Piper Perabo: Oh, that’s interesting. Yes, Doug Liman, our executive producer, was in the middle of editing "Fair Game" when I got cast in the pilot, which is the story of Valerie Plame Wilson, so I knew he had contacts down at Langley. And I asked him if he could get me an introduction so that I could go there and see what it’s really like and talk to real people who do this for a living. So he did, and this sort of shows my naiveté, but I brought a notebook with me so I could take notes. I had a lot of questions that I wanted to ask.
When I got there they told me, of course, you can’t bring a notebook into the CIA. [Rule] number one is [don't] take notes in the secret agency. I said, “Oh, okay when we get inside could I have some paper and a pen?” And the agent who was taking me around said, “Sure, but you have to leave it inside when you leave.” Of course you can’t take notes out of the CIA either. I said, “Well, how am I supposed to keep all this information?” He said, “You have to be like a spy and remember it.” It was interesting that before I even got inside you can feel how tight and secret the whole world is. It was an amazing day. It started there and it was incredible.
Q: Did you get any special fight training while you were at the CIA?
Piper Perabo: The fight training that I went through to play this character wasn’t at Langley. They go to the farm to do their fight training and I wasn’t able to go there. The fight training that I did was with our head of stunts, and they hired different martial arts and hand-to-hand combat teachers.
So, first, the creators and Doug sat down about what kind of style of fighting Annie would have. Doug is a real fan of close hand-to-hand combat that you shoot on a steadicam, the way that Jason Bourne fights, but you have to tailor that to a woman because obviously when I’m fighting a man, if we’re going to keep it real, which is what we’re going for, Annie Walker isn’t a super hero, then you have to find styles of fighting that could give her an advantage and make it plausible that she can win or at least hold out in some of these fights. So we ended up with Krav Maga, which is Israeli army style of street fighting, and Wing Chun, which is a martial arts that was developed for women. So we were working for weeks and weeks on that and training on that, I was training on that before we started the pilot.
When I went to Langley a lot of it was really I couldn’t train there and they can’t really show me the technology they have. So a lot of that day was about asking the agents about their personal lives, because that they can sort of share, they’re not telling me their real names anyway. So, does your boyfriend know what you do, and what kind of car do you drive, and how much do you make; those kinds of questions are really important when you’re creating a character, and they were really forthcoming with that kind of information.
Q: Can you tell us about the time you spent with Valerie Plame and how that helped shaped Annie's character?
Piper Perabo: Valerie Plame was our consultant on the pilot, which was incredible to have her insight, because since she’s no longer in the CIA and because of the way she left it, she is more willing to share things than someone who’s from the agency can’t really talk about it. Also, just being on the ground, she can walk through the set of the CIA. We were shooting a scene that had extras, there’s an induction ceremony situation, and there were extras that came in to the CIA and in their wardrobe they had purses, but that’s impossible because you can’t carry anything in or out of the CIA, so having Valerie around to continually say well, these are the kinds of ID cards. And another thing was the CIA is a giant office, like any other office, and so there are reams and reams of paper. They’re can’t be regular trash in the CIA because obviously that paper is carrying all kinds of top secret documents, and it’s not just shredded at the CIA, it’s all burn bagged. So then all the trash cans were taken out and all the burn bags were brought in so everyone has burn bags under their desk. It was just again and again her attention to detail that was really, really helpful.
Q: What's like working on the set with a really high caliber cast?
Piper Perabo: It’s going really well on the set. Sendhil Ramamurthy joined us for the season, and Sendhil, Chris Gorham and I really get on like a house on fire, which is good because a lot of times when we leave the CIA those are the people I’m leaving the CIA with to go abroad. It’s really long days because the action sequences, if you’ve ever been on a set where they’re shooting action, it takes a long time. It goes in really long pieces so that you can get the angles you want and that everything is safe, and so I’m really lucky that I really love the people that I work with, and it’s not bad doing a 17 hour day with these guys.
Q: Are there any guest stars this season that you've particularly liked working with?
Piper Perabo: Eriq La Salle did an episode and I really liked working with him. I watched "ER" a lot, especially when I was in college studying acting was when "ER," I’m sure you remember, they did that episode once that was live and they did it live on the East Coast and live on the West Coast. As a theater student we all sat down as actors together and watched it together, the East Coast one and the West Coast one, and it was so cool and it was so brave and it was so exciting. So I wanted to really pick his brain about that and about how you shoot for such a dynamic emotional one-hour drama, and he was so patient and generous and also just a really good actor.
Q: In the pilot we see a lot of different sides to Annie, including her vulnerable side and her tough side. Is there more about her that we don’t know yet?
Piper Perabo: There’s a lot about her that you don’t even know yet. Annie’s whole family life and also what happened in her relationship is still to unfold. And actually going back to talking about Valerie for a second, Valerie was also really generous with me about emotionally the toll that it takes keeping all those secrets from your family and your friends. And I think that her personal story that she told me was also very helpful in kind of folding into Annie’s secret and how that plays out in her relationship with her sister and her family. So as Annie weaves the lie that she has to tell so many people, the secrets start overlapping and overlapping, and it just gets very complicated.
Q: Were there any film or TV characters that influenced Annie's development?
Piper Perabo: There were two. One is the original "La Femme Nikita" that Luc Besson did. I thought that film was a great balance of the pressure of the job and the real emotional pull that it takes. Also, I loved how he handled action with a woman and I just think that movie is so beautiful and she’s so strong, and it just was a big influence on me for Annie.
Then Lee Miller, who was an artist and a war photographer, she was a beautiful journalist who put herself in the middle of these battles in order to take photographs. So I had read a lot about her and how she maintained her integrity and still was a beautiful woman amid the battlefield, and I thought that was really inspiring thinking about Annie.
Q: At this point in the series, what are Annie's strong points and shortcomings?
Piper Perabo: Definitely language is a strong point for Annie. Then she has things that can be both a strong point and a shortcoming. Annie’s a little bit of an adrenaline junkie, and so that can help sometimes but it also can take her off track. She’s also quite a flirt, and so although that can get her in the door at some of these embassy parties, I think she can be a little distracted by all the beautiful men and she’s not always paying attention to the mission at hand, depending on how handsome the guy in the tuxedo is. Hopefully that won’t get her into too much trouble. I have that problem as well, so I can really sympathize.
Q: On "Covert Affairs," we see Annie at home with her family showing a different side of her personality than when she's at the CIA. Is it fun to play with that dichotomy?
Piper Perabo: It is. The actress who plays my sister who doesn’t know what I do for a living is Anne Dudek, who is on so many television shows I can’t keep track. But she’s a really great actress and she’s very aware of the kind of balance that I’m trying to strike between my relationship at home with her and then my relationship with work. She and I have worked a lot on that and what our family is like and who our parents were and how we deal with each other, and as the season goes on we spend more and more time together. You get a glimpse of her in the pilot, but you see a lot more of her as the season goes on. She and I have worked a lot on that, about what it’s like at home for the Walker sisters.
Q: You've mentioned how physical your role is. Do you do your stunts yourself or do you have a stunt double?
Piper Perabo: No, I have a stunt double. I have different doubles because not everybody can do it this way and as the season continues Annie is getting wilder and wilder and the stunts are just getting more and more intense. I think each director is trying to top the last one, so we keep having to find some girls who can do things that I [can't] do. So there are definitely multiple pinstripe suits for certain days on set.
Q: If "Covert Affairs" runs for several seasons, how will your character adjust to essentially being a much more experienced agent at that point, since a lot of the show seems to be based on your inexperience right now?
Piper Perabo: That’s a really interesting question and that’s come up with me and the creators already. It’s funny that you noticed that. Because one of the things that I really like about Annie is how inexperienced she is, and obviously the longer we stay with her, the more she’ll gain.
What’s fun about being an inexperienced CIA agent is that you don’t follow protocol because you don’t know it. So that comes up again and again with Annie, is that it’s not that she’s particularly flouting authority, she just hasn’t had the training to know how she’s supposed to do it. So she has to come up with her own ideas. I hope that Annie will be successful enough that eventually she’ll be allowed to give it a little bit looser range, because the creativity that the writing department continually comes up with as to how Annie solves a problem is really fun to watch her do. Hopefully even with her experience she’ll just get better at creative solutions, but not necessarily become an expert.
Q: How do you feel about the constant comparisons between "Covert Affairs" and "Alias"? Do you think that will help or hinder the show?
Piper Perabo: When I first got working on ["Covert Affairs"] and I was speaking to actor friends of mine about what the show was about and how I was going to create the character, people said, “You should watch 'Alias.'” I had never watched the show, don’t ask me how I missed it, so I got the pilot and I watched the pilot and I thought it was genius. I didn’t really want to watch anymore because I don’t want to in any way imitate what Jennifer [Garner] was doing and I want to make sure that Annie is her own woman and dealing with her own world. But I thought that what I saw of the work on that pilot was really exciting and the fight sequences were really dynamic and she was just a really powerful, smart, intuitive woman who can make decisions on the fly, she’s brave, and she’s still a real person. I think those parallels can be drawn to Annie.
I think in our show, though, you see a lot more of the real life of a spy, what kind of car you drive and what it’s like when you get home at night after you’ve just been chasing an assassin all day. So in that way I think we are really different. I think that if people come and watch our show because they like Alias, then that’s great, but I think they’re going to get to see a much bigger world than they saw and so hopefully they’ll keep watching.
