As sultry and seductive Sophie Devereaux on TNT’s Leverage, she is the best actress ever – when it comes to breaking the law. But in real life, her portrayer Gina Bellman works at being the best when she first auditioned for the part.
“I just wanted to be this fantastic, consummate professional and was having dialect lessons and had a coach come to the set and work with me at lunchtime” the 43-year-old British beauty stated in her interview with USA Weekend on July 3-5 during Independence Day.
Best known overseas in the BBC series Coupling, Leverage is Gina’s first taste of American success. The series, returning for its second season this Wednesday at 9pm, follows ex-insurance investigator Nathan Ford (Timothy Hutton) and his team as modern-day Robin Hoods for the Great Recession. His merry men — and women — consist of smooth-talking hacker Alec Hardison (Aldis Hodge), tough-guy mercenary Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane), quirky thief Parker (Beth Riesgraf), and Bellman’s sizzling grifter Sophie, who also has heat and romantic tension with Nate.
As Leverage Consulting & Associates, they help those that the law failed to do: taking down those above the law such as the mob and others who used and abused their power on the innocent.
Since its debut late last year, Leverage has been a solid performer for TNT in the 18-49 demographics, and was nominated for two Saturn Awards. The show’s first 13-episode season is set to debut the day before the season premiere, which is this Tuesday with audio commentaries from the cast and crew, deleted scenes, and much. (Catch my review at DVDivas.net)
Besides moving to a new night, the series has recently moved to Portland, Oregon to shoot season two — picking up where last season off, with the team planning to go their separate ways after getting revenge on Nate’s former employer. In the season opener, Nate is now sober and gets the band back together in taking on the Irish mob (a sneak preview of is found at http://www.tnt.tv/dramavision/?oid=44201&eref=sharethisUrl). The following week, the team will step into the ring to take on a crooked fight promoter, as their cases will be based on current events like the Bernie Madoff case, and Jeri Ryan will guest star in a future episode as a con artist.
Gina, who is expecting her first child, told USA Weekend that for this season, she decides to focus on the mark – meaning the scam. “I think that maybe makes it a little more interesting, if some of my accents are not perfect. She [Sophie]’s not schizophrenic.”
