‘True Lies’: Steve Howey & Ginger Gonzaga on How CBS Series Differs From Movie

Steve Howey and Ginger Gonzaga in 'True Lies'
Q&A
Alan Markfield/CBS

Whether or not you’ve seen the 1994 film of the same name (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis), chances are you have at least an idea of the concept behind CBS’ new drama True Lies: A housewife finds out that her husband has been lying to her for years and is actually a spy, then she joins him on his job.

Now, Steve Howey and Ginger Gonzaga take on those roles as Harry and Helen Tasker. And while he names the original as one of his favorite movies (“I was well aware of the shows that we were trying to fill”), it was new territory for her. “I hadn’t seen the film. I don’t watch things. I did see Severance though,” Gonzaga admits with a laugh. “I just treated it like it was a spy show that I didn’t know anything about.”

Howey and Gonzaga introduce their True Lies.

Could there have ever been a good time for Harry’s lie to come out?

Ginger Gonzaga: A good time to find out that your life is a whole other thing? [Laughs] I don’t know. Maybe in a therapist’s office. Maybe in couple’s therapy with a mediator to help me process the insanity of it all. Definitely better than getting shot at at the same time or being tied up.

Steve Howey: I think actually if Harry revealed that he’d been lying for 17 years about being a spy, it would’ve been on the helicopter because —

Gonzaga: We’re trapped?

Howey: We’re trapped, and you’re up in the air and “what do you mean you can fly helicopter?” That would be probably the best time.

Now Helen’s also lying to the kids, and that’s kind of on Harry she has to do that.

Gonzaga: It is.

Howey: For the protection of the children, though. For the protection of the family.

Gonzaga: Yeah. It’s like when I was talking to my friend the other day about how I’ve been in social settings where someone I know is actively cheating on their partner and they bring the person in my presence and I’m like, “I don’t want to be involved in this lie. I know your girlfriend, so now because you’re doing this, when I see your girlfriend, I have to be complicit and I have to feel like garbage.” I feel like for Helen, it has that same energy of, “I don’t want to lie to my kids.” Helen’s also a bad liar. She’s not trained in it.

Steve Howey and Ginger Gonzaga in 'True Lies'

Alan Markfield/CBS

What surprises Helen the most about what she’s seeing from Harry now?

Gonzaga: It’s all very shocking, but at least I’m impressed by it all. It’s fun. It has to be exhilarating for Helen, and it’s cool to see my husband do all these things. It’s almost like I misjudged him. He did such a good job of playing this computer salesman that I almost took him for granted or didn’t know how much he had to offer. It’s like, “oh, my guy’s super, super special.” And so is Helen. Her special abilities are tapped as she is forced to become a spy, so it wakes that up in her.

And for Harry, is there a weight off his shoulder now Helen knows, though now he has to worry about her being involved?

Howey: Yeah, in the pilot, we have that scene with Beverly D’Angelo, Trilby, that Helen’s going to start her training and then they’re going to give her a new identity. Ginger has a great reaction, like, “What, wait, what was that?” Harry already knows that now that she knows she’s going to be a part of the team. I wish Harry had more of a “wait, this is terrible, a terrible idea” because his whole life was set up having her not know. Harry loves his family, loves his wife, and I think there was a system there. He had everything compartmentalized and that was his sanity. Now it’s a whole new thing, but I think [having the truth revealed forms] a bond.

Speaking of the helicopter, there’s a great moment where Harry asks Helen, “Are you alright?” And then she says, “well, that’s one way of looking at Paris.” There’s the Eiffel Tower in the background, and I give this little smile. That for me was the genesis of their relationship: She cracks a joke, they almost died, escaping in a helicopter that her boring computer salesman husband is flying.

But yeah, anytime you hold onto a lie, it’s a lot of weight, so he definitely feels better. And now we’re lying to the kids, but who doesn’t lie to their kids?

What other secrets will be revealed?

Gonzaga: It is interesting to find out who Harry has had to work intimately with, to see how good he is at lying or even people in our neighborhood… In the pilot, we have Mrs. Myers [Deneen Tyler] babysitting our kids and it’s like, oh, I just thought she was like a cat lady and what else is she other than just a really good spy babysitter?

Howey: Harry finds out that your former boyfriend was named Harold, and he’s straight out of Yellowstone with spectacles. Handsome Harold.

Who has an easier time adjusting to Helen being part of the spy work?

Gonzaga: Definitely not me.

Ginger Gonzaga and Steve Howey in 'True Lies'

Alan Markfield/CBS

Howey: This is getting bit by a vampire kind of thing. So now that you’re in the know, you have to be trained. You have to go through the basic operations to be a spy, but it’s all about protecting the family. You can’t go back to your normal life again. That’s what was cool, I think, about our show is that we were trying to make it our own. We were trying to do our own thing — piggyback from the success of the movie and the story of the movie — but make it into our own television version of this chaotic married couple with a family. It’s more of getting into that world than so much of the world of the movie. And it was a blast.

My finger’s better. I broke my finger, you can kind of see it, snapped it on a stunt. The show was so hard. It was real physical, careful what you wish for because you just might get it, and I got it and it was so much fun. But thank God for Ginger Gonzaga. She made me laugh every day. One of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life. She lost her voice. She did an entire episode mouthing the words, and then she had to go back and dub it in ADR.

Gonzaga: I just dubbed it the other day.

Howey: How long did that take? That was the entire episode.

Gonzaga: It was supposed to take three hours or something, and then I was supposed to do another one and I was like, I’m only doing this episode. It’s too long.

Helen knows languages. In what other areas might she start surpassing Harry in Omega?

Gonzaga: Helen just brings such a different skillset. I get to mine a lot of comedy with Helen’s ways of solving things, both because she’s different and because she’s untrained. But I think one of Helen’s superpowers is — and maybe a curse, I think, as you’ll see in Episode 4 — her empathy. She can really see people and feel for them, but sometimes that’s naivete. There’s a lot of times where I think Helen does have a quirkier idea and it’s overlooked but then it does pan out, or I’m really wanting to be part of the team once I think I’ve worked hard enough to deserve that and it takes a while for parts of the team to accept that. The more they accept Helen being part of the team, the more she’s able to shine because her ideas are heard, like any woman in a job.

Now that they’re both involved in Omega, who has an easier time balancing their work and home lives? 

Howey: It’s harder for the family because instead of Harry just going out for the “convention” and having to stay the night, now Helen and Harry are gone. There’s a lot more Mrs. Myers taking care of the kids.

She’s so fun.

Gonzaga: She’s the best, Deneen. She’s such a light and she’s so funny.

Howey: The most amazing voice. We have a lot of amazing voices. But I think it’s harder for the kids. I don’t know, I assume maybe second season we’ll find out that they’re little spy kids. But yeah, that was the routine: Dad would be gone at a computer sales convention and Helen was back home taking care of the kids, justifying why dad’s always gone. Now mom and dad are gone.

Gonzaga: You’ve been a pro at it. But now that we’re both busy, we both have too many jobs, I can’t really hold it down at home like I normally would’ve. So I think you’re forced to have more work than you normally have with the family stuff.

Howey: He handled it for almost two decades. But to go back to your previous question, Helen does have the opportunity and definitely the intellect and the capability of taking over and being a better spy than Harry. Maybe not on the physical jumping through windows and kicking butt and all that stuff, but you’re only like, what, 95 pounds?

Gonzaga: I’m five-foot-three. He’s six-foot-five. I joke that She-Hulk was hard because I’m always looking up at someone six-foot-seven, and then I just graduated to a show where someone’s six-foot-five. So is Omar [Miller]. It works for Helen, but I wonder what will happen to my neck.

Howey: But Ginger is one of the biggest among all of us. Even in her tiny little fun size frame, her energy and her presence is huge. I fed off that energy daily. I needed it.

Gonzaga: Yeah, we were lucky on this show that we did crack each other up all the time and we crack our crew up. The vibe is so nice with our group. It’s very rare. It’s very special. So I’m very grateful for it. … We’re constantly trading who is the straight man and who’s goofy. It just lends itself somehow on this show to being like that. No one’s always Jason Bateman from Arrested Development. Sometimes one person’s goofy and the fish out of water or then the other person’s the straight man. It’s really fun and a treat when I get to be the straight man and watch Howey be funny.

True Lies, Series Premiere, Wednesday, March 1, 10/9c, CBS