‘Leverage: Redemption’ Team & Returning Guest Star on Bringing Back [Spoiler]

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Leverage: Redemption Season 3 Episode 5 “The Grand Complication Job.'”]

As Leverage and now Leverage: Redemption have shown time and time again, the women? They get things done. Such is the case in the Thursday, May 1, episode, after grifter Sophie Devereaux (Gina Bellman) is kidnapped by the returning villain Bligh (Lucy Taylor), who then pits thief Parker (Beth Riesgraf) and Sophie’s stepdaughter Astrid against each other. (They are already long-time nemeses.) Bligh instructs Parker to steal a watch and Astrid to keep it from being taken, but what she doesn’t know is that when she had Sophie kidnapped, someone else was with her: fellow grifter Tara Cole! Yes, Jeri Ryan, who recurred during the original run of Leverage returns.

“It was such a delight to be there, and so when John Rogers and Dean [Devlin] asked me to do it, of course I jumped at it. This was one of my favorite characters I’ve ever gotten to play, and one of my favorite shows to ever be on was Leverage. So yeah, I didn’t even hesitate,” Ryan tells TV Insider. “It was an absolute yes, of course, I’d love to. And it was so much fun to walk on that set, see my friends, see so many of the crew who were there from the original show who were still there. It was just amazing. It was really, really fun.”

Ryan said yes without knowing anything about the episode. “[Tara]’s just cool. I just love her. She’s funny, she’s cool. She doesn’t get flustered. She’s a badass and you’re always something different. So every script it was, ‘Oh, what am I this week? What are we playing?’ Because she’s a grifter, so she’s always a different character that she needs to be to get the job done,” she says. That’s also what she enjoys so much about the show, as well as just how much “fun” it is.

Executive producer Dean Devlin notes, “She couldn’t be an easier fit,” adding with a laugh, “Partially it’s because she’s brilliant as an actress and partly because we’re all such crazy Star Trek fans that there’s a natural parallel. But it was so much fun to bring her character back. It’s a strange thing. It was well over 10 years that she had done that character, and yet on day one on take one, she was 100% back in that character. It’s like she had never gone away. And I attribute that to her as a performer, but also to our writers for really being able to capture the essence of who she was as a character and why, even though she’s a con artist, she’s very different than our team. She has a harder edge. She has a different cynical outlook, and she likes to win and not necessarily for the team.”

Sam Lothridge / Prime Video

Ryan agrees that it was “so easy” to get back into playing Tara, even though when she did, it had been 13 years since she last had. “I think personality wise, I’m a lot like Tara, so she’s an easy one for me to fall back into. We have the same kind of snarky sense of humor and a lot of similarities that way. So it really was getting back on a horse,” she explains, also attributing getting to work with her friends.

“It was so much fun,” Bellman raves. “Obviously it’s been a long time coming and our lives have evolved, and so there was a lot of catching up to do in our personal lives. But also at the same time, we had this sense of unfinished business, the fact that we had this great rapport that we never really got to play out beyond that one episode because the episodes that she was in, I only got to play one episode with her. So it did feel like all these seasons that had been unfinished business. So the fact that we got to play again this year just made it really feel very, very sort of rewarding, I think for both of us.”

As soon as Sophie is kidnapped and it’s clear that those who took her had no idea who Tara was, or they’d have taken her, too, the other grifter calls Parker. Riesgraf loved having Ryan back and working with her again.

“Jeri is a dream to work with. She is so fun. She’s super fearless. She’s badass. She does all the physicality really well. Effortless. She’s the kind of dream guest you get in and that you’re just like, ‘OK, ready to play.’ And she’s like, ‘Yes, and… Let’s go.’ And she just brings that kickass fun vibe and energy and obviously has a history with the show and the crew even. So it’s like an old friend coming home,” Riesgraf shares before turning it over to Aleyse Shannon since she loved how her costar played Breanna’s relationship with Tara.

Those two meet for the first time, and it’s established immediately that Breanna is a fan of Tara. “When she walks into the truck, just as an actress, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. Oh, wow,'” says Shannon. “Because on the one hand, Breanna has heard about so many of the cons that they’ve been on from growing up as a kid, but I have also, Aleyse, heard about the OGs that come through. I mean a [Jonathan] Frakes, a Jeri. And so it was great to work with her. She brings such clean, fun, fierce energy. She’s truly stone cold, incredible actor. And I really enjoyed my time with her on set.” She wants Ryan to return.

Sam Lothridge / Prime Video

And Ryan would be up for doing so, she tells us. “Absolutely, I would love to,” she says. “I’m always happy to revisit this character and these characters.” But she’s not going to even begin to suggest what she’d want to do if she did. “I’m not a writer,” she adds with a laugh. “I have certain talents. Writing is not one of them. I’m not on the creative side. They do a brilliant job coming up with things for Tara to do, and I’m thrilled to do them when they think of it.”

For example, this episode sees Tara pretty much do it all: grift her way through a party, which Ryan says is her favorite scene (“Those costumes, those wigs, all of it was just incredible”), steal the watch after crawling through vents and admitting they’re peaceful (“I don’t think they’re ever going to be a favorite of hers, but I think she gained a little appreciation for them”), and fighting off bad guys whom Bligh had sent to Breanna’s truck. She even got to say the iconic “Let’s go steal…,” and in this case, it was Sophie Devereaux.

The episode does make it clear how much things have changed since Tara was last around. After all, she and Sophie are talking about parenting when the latter is kidnapped. Devlin enjoyed getting to pair them up since most of the time in the original series, they didn’t share the screen other than a quick chat on a monitor (Tara took over as the team’s grifter while Sophie was away).

Ryan enjoyed seeing those unexpected scenes of the two talking about parenting “and being able to bond over that kind of relationship because that was so not part of their lives before” as well as “watching that maturity in all of their lives play out.”

As Tara says at the end of the episode, she and Sophie are ride or die. As was established on Leverage, Ryan notes, “They’re so different and their styles are so different and the way they go about things, but they’re so connected and they really love each other. It’s a really true friendship, and I love that. I love that they can just really be completely open and honest with each other and there’s no pretense and it’s just very genuine and very real, and they’ve always got each other’s back.”

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Tara is very much a lone wolf, and so it’s no surprise that she takes off at the end. But would she ever stay with a crew for good? “That’s a good question,” Ryan says. “I don’t know that Tara could. I think she enjoyed it when she was there for a limited time. I don’t know that she could do it long term. She is a lone wolf, and she really relishes her independence and doing things her own way, and I think it’s got to be in short spurts for her.”

During this episode, Parker and Breanna are the only members of the usual crew in town; Eliot’s (Christian Kane) in Pakistan, Hardison’s (Aldis Hodge) in Paris, and Harry’s (Noah Wyle) in Montreal. Breanna does bring up Eliot’s friend in Miami, Quinn, another hitter played by Clayne Crawford during Leverage‘s original run.

“We don’t want to pretend that this is a different universe. So these characters have continued, and sometimes we get to see them like Hurley [Drew Powell, who has returned on Redemption and is back this season], and sometimes we only hear about them like Sterling [Mark Sheppard] and even Quinn is still floating out there,” Devlin explains. “And it’s fun because the old fans of the show, they freak out when they hear this and they get excited. But even for new fans, it feels like an expanded universe that they want to know more about. So we like to put it in, but we don’t want to overdo it to the point where people feel like, ‘I can’t follow this. I don’t know who those people are.’ But I think the thing is, if you’re a longtime fan, there’s always great Easter eggs in the show, and then we try to do it in a way that doesn’t alienate you if you’re brand new.”

While Devlin would love to bring back every character, “I need some more seasons for that and more episodes,” he says. “Also sometimes, it’s just about availability. What are they doing? Are they shooting on another show? Can you get them to come? But yeah, there’s a lot of characters I still haven’t brought back. That top on my list is Wil Wheaton as Chaos. I’m desperate to get him back on.”

Leverage: Redemption, Thursdays, Prime Video

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