Michael Kelly on ‘Lioness’ Season 3 & Sharing the Screen With So Many Oscar Winners

The third season of Lioness is just days away from premiering on Paramount+. The action-thriller series, from the Taylor Sheridan universe, spans the globe as the CIA’s special task force hunts down political targets, with Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña) leading her squadron into dangers unknown. Calling the shots for the Lioness program is a top-tier team of civilian leaders, including the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations, Byron Westfield (portrayed by House of Cards alum Michael Kelly).

When we last saw Byron, he’d just thrown up in the head of a jet after witnessing the cartel operation end in abrupt and very violent carnage. It wasn’t the gore or the intensity of the moment that unsettled him, though; it was the fact that all of that bloodshed wouldn’t really make a difference.

Is Byron’s moment of self-doubt going to linger in the next season, though?

Michael Kelly told TV Insider, “Byron’s always going to carry the weight of what he does with him. I think there are moments in what these people do for a living that, sure, they have that feeling that everything they’re doing is going to change nothing. But at the same time, as we know from history, many of the things the CIA has done has completely changed history, from ending wars to whatever. That’s part of the job, and I think he knows it. It’s happened to him before, and it’ll happen to him again.”

Still, the sight of a man murdering his own brother, however vile a criminal he may be, does take a toll. “It is a reminder that, like I said, sometimes you’re going to change the world, and sometimes you’re not. Yeah. And it’s just the brutal truth of what we do, what these characters do, and what the real CIA does. It’s just part of the game.”

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The second season of Lioness lifted the veil on Byron’s non-work life as well, and while Kelly can’t disclose whether we’ll see more of his home life, he does say, “I can tell you that doing that was incredible because my daughter played my daughter… My real-life daughter was one of the girls in that, and that was to me one of my greatest days in the show — one of the most stressful, but also one of the greatest.”

One thing we can count on for certain is that Byron will continue to have to make impossible calls alongside his fellow luminaries — particularly, Secretary of State Edwin Mullins (Morgan Freeman), Clandestine Service supervisor Kaitlyn Meade (Nicole Kidman), and, of course, Joe herself.

Ryan Green / Paramount+

That experience of sharing the screen so often with that trio throughout the series, for Kelly, was a heavy lift that’s since gotten much lighter.

The actor explained, “In the beginning, it had to be one of the most intimidating things I’ve ever done because I’m sitting at a table with, at the time, two Academy Award winners, now three Academy Award winners, and it’s intimidating as all get-out. And now it’s just, it can be intimidating, but it’s fun. You’re doing it with the best of the best, and just to try to hang with those guys. It’s everything. As an actor, you’re just like, ‘Wow, I’m truly doing it with the best there is,’ and that’s all you ask for, man. You know, it’s funny. All of us, me, Zoe, Nicole, Morgan, we’re all Gemini, and the three of them are left-handed, and I said, ‘Oh, that explains the Academy Awards. Yeah, there it is.’ We all had a good laugh. I was like, ‘We’re all Gemini, but three of you have Academy Awards, and you’re all left-handed. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I should switch to my left hand.'”

Lioness, Season 3 Premiere, August 2, Paramount+