Piper Perabo & Chris Gorham Q&A
By n/a
Source: Female First (UK)

Piper Perabo has swapped the big screen for TV with her new actng project Covert Affairs, which is heading to Really later this month.

The series has already earnt her a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as she teams up with Christopher Gorham and Kari Matchett.

- Piper, we know you from the likes of The Prestige and Coyote Ugly, and Chris, people will recognise you from Ugly Betty, Jake 2.0, Felicity. How does Covert Affairs feel different?

CG: For me, it’s successful. That’s the big difference. It’s the first show I’ve been on that’s lasted for more than two seasons. I’ve never gone beyond two before.

It feels great to break through that barrier. It’s not just great because we get to keep making it, but I’m so happy it’s with this show because I’m so proud of it.

There’s just a lot to like about it, from Piper’s character, which is the backbone of everything that happens on Covert Affairs, but we’re also very ambitious visually and emotionally.

- Piper this is your first major TV starring gig. Is that something that you have always aimed for?

PP: I never even considered it because since I’ve first started I’ve only ever wanted to do theatre. Film sort of dropped in my lap and I stayed there because I just kept on getting work.

As the film industry changed after the writers’ strike, there weren’t as many interesting parts around – the studios were being safer – so I started to think about television, but it had to be with the right part.

- Your executive producer is Doug Liman, who also worked on the Bourne trilogy. How does his input affect the show?

PP: The fact that he was on the series made me want to do it, because I knew the action wouldn’t be corny or half-assed. Not only has it exceeded my expectations, but Doug flies out to production for all the action sequences and weighs in a lot with ideas.

Not just in the ways to shoot it but ways to make the action unexpected and to add in obstacles you wouldn’t have thought of. He’s really a genius at action, and he’s very involved in the shooting and production of the action sequences.

- Piper, Annie is quite a ballsy character, but her vulnerability often comes through too. How much fun is she to play?

PP: It’s really good fun to play. That combination of ballsy and vulnerable gives you permission to jump out of a plane one minute but admit you’re scared to do it. Usually in characters it’s one or the other – damson in distress or a superhero.

To be a real superhero like a police officer or a fireman or a CIA agent, yeah it’s great to steal the Ferrari and drive through Zurich, but it’s also terrifying. To get to play both sides of that is really interesting.

- As you say, Annie gets to drive fast cars, jump off tall buildings, blow things up and wear fabulous disguises. Any favourites/horror stories?

PP: There are so many issues having to do stunts in fabulous clothes!

CG: It’s like when the director says: can you move faster? And Piper is wearing a dress that is skin tight, comes up to above her knees and wearing eight-inch heels!

PP: A couple of times I’m behind a car and I’ll take my shoes off and run in tip-toes. The heels make it very difficult. This season we really start to aim outside the box – we’ve done horse-back riding, motor cycle chases – trying to pick and outfit that you can straddle a motor cycle on.

I tell you, it’s hard to get on and off the thing fast! One of the things we discovered in the first season was that figure skaters wear really tight costumes but also wear these super-thin gel pads that mould around the body.

So we started to order every shape of figure-skating pad out there to put into Annie’s dresses. Because when Annie gets into fights in a skin-tight dress, the pads have been very helpful.

- How physical is the role, in terms of injuries etc?

PP: I have broken bones during stunts. But at the end of day everyone is really safe, and I have ice packs and arnica and a bottle of Jameson in my trailer.

Bumps and bruises are part of the territory, so if you don’t get any I think you probably weren’t in any of the fights enough. I broke my leg in the first season and broke my finger in season two.

- What are you aiming for in season three?

PP: Literally no broken bones!

- Chris, your character Auggie is blind. What’s the hardest thing in playing a blind person?

CG: It requires a completely different type of focus. I have to stop paying attention to what I’m seeing visually and re-train myself into react to the things you hear.

It affects every part of my physicality when I’m playing Auggie, because you have to react to hearing a sound by not seeing and looking where it comes from, but reacting to hear what it is.

All these little details have to be right for it to be convincing. If it’s not convincing it becomes offensive to the thousands and thousands of blind people out there.

-Piper, you’ve been Golden Globe nominated. How was that?

PP: It was really exciting! It was super-exciting! I didn’t expect it at all and I didn’t know the nominations were coming out that day, so I was renovating my kitchen. My new refrigerator was coming, so I had to get rid of the old one and was cleaning it out.

So there I was half in pyjamas, half in overalls, sitting on the floor when I got the call. When you get a nomination like that the press starts almost immediately, so my publicist told me that hair and make-up would be round in 40 minutes and then I was to be at Associated Press right after.

I was like: er, they’re like delivering my new refrigerator! So I ran off and threw something on, and by the time I got back hair and make-up had arrived and so had the refrigerator man. So it was appliance man and hair and make-up person all in the kitchen together!

- Our nearest comparison, Spooks, has just finished and during its time it was responsible for attracting to new recruits to MI5. What kind of feedback has Covert had?

CG: I ran into a couple of FBI agents who love the show, which I thought was funny.

PP: You know, there was a screening at Langley for our CIA contacts and anyone else who wanted to come. Most of them liked it, but not all of them. I think they were jealous of my shoe collection!

The UK premiere of Covert Affairs, is new and exclusive to Really, Mondays at 9pm from 7th November (Sky 248, Virgin 267 and Freeview 20)