Hilary Swank Introduces Her Journalist on a Mission in ‘Alaska Daily’
Q&A
In her last TV series, 2020’s Away, Hilary Swank played the commander of the first crewed spaceflight to Mars. With ABC’s new drama Alaska Daily, she’s another woman on a mission. Swank stars as hard-hitting New York journalist Eileen Fitzgerald, who comes under fire for an alleged error in her latest exposé — and for her brusque treatment of coworkers.
A few months later, a former colleague, Stanley Kornik (Scandal’s Jeff Perry), offers her a job at his Anchorage newspaper. He hopes she’ll be able to break an important story about missing Indigenous women. (Series creator Tom McCarthy’s got cred: He won an Oscar for co-writing 2015’s Spotlight, about investigative journalists.) The gig will be harder than Eileen thinks. She has to (gulp) work with someone — ambitious young reporter Roz Friendly (Grace Dove) — get locals to talk to an outsider and deal with a police department that’s iced out the paper.
Here, Swank spills.
(Credit: ABC/Brian Bowen Smith)
Why do you love playing characters up against brutally tough odds?
Hilary Swank: I admire and am inspired by people who persevere through adversity, time and time again. I’m blown away by their grace and resilience. Eileen doesn’t suffer fools. She speaks her mind. People will probably feel like, wow, I wish I could say that! Sometimes she could have a little bit of a filter [laughs], but I connect with her strength.
How did you get into her head?
Tom knows a lot of journalists. We picked their brains. Quickly they were picking our brains. You don’t even know you’re being interviewed. I used that.
As a stranger asking a lot of questions, does Eileen face threats?
She gets this [anonymous] phone call and she’s told that she’s not welcome. It’s not like they have big security at the paper. Her safety’s on the line.
Given all the changes in her life, how is Eileen’s mental health when we meet her?
When you have been in a career for a certain amount of time, and suddenly the thing that defined you, that you love the most, that you get respect for, isn’t yours anymore — who are you? What are you? That is anxiety-provoking.
The show films mostly in Vancouver but also in Anchorage. Is Alaska what you expected?
I’d been before, when I filmed [2002’s] Insomnia. My husband just turned 50; he wanted to go to Alaska. I love it. I thought Alaska would be like Washington state, where I grew up, all these evergreens. But in that northern part, there are no trees — it’s tundra. It’s another world.
A world with lots of news stories?
We have eight journalists, so different stories are unveiled — even some lighter ones because the paper covers everything.
Will Eileen have time for any romance while she’s in town?
In the pilot, Eileen meets somebody. Let’s see where it goes. We’re gonna find out together!
Alaska Daily, Series Premiere Thursday, October 6, 10/9c, ABC
