Morena Baccarin’s latest role might be one of the best and most intriguing of her career. The actress has become a fan-favorite for turns in shows like Gotham, Homeland, Firefly, and V, not to mention a co-starring role in the ultra-popular Deadpool film franchise. Now, with NBC’s hit series The Endgame, Baccarin is leading the charge as Elena Federova, an international criminal who is constantly seven steps ahead of everyone else. Elena is cunning, calculated, and surprisingly passionate. She feels like a character Baccarin was born to play, and it’s easy to see just how much the actress is loving bringing her to life.
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With The Endgame due to return to NBC with new episodes on April 11th, ComicBook.com spent some time talking with Baccarin about the new series and the challenge of making such a meticulous character so interesting.
“It’s a bit of a trap because of course, you don’t want that to be that all-knowing person who always knows what’s coming up. But I think because she has a big plan in mind, it’s really fun because she gets to drill out little bits of information at a time,” Baccarin said. “But yeah, I get to mess with people and just watch what happens. It’s kind of an amazing fun part.”
Elena is quite different from many of the other characters Baccarin has played over the years, which is one of the main reasons Baccarin has so much fun playing her. The Endgame offered her a chance to do something new.
“I’d like to think I’ve had an eclectic run,” the actress explained. “It’s that’s the best part as an actor, to get to transform that way. And also when you know it’s a little challenging and you’re not sure what you’re you’re going to do, I feel like that’s when you’re in the right zone, because you’ve got to do something different that you’ve never done before. She’s got elements of other parts and people that I’ve played, but this is a whole new beast. It’s really fun to do.”
Part of what makes The Endgame work so well is Baccarin’s on-screen chemistry with Ryan Michelle Bathe, who plays a government agent named Val Turner. Elena and Val are equals and there is a lot of respect between the two, even when working for opposite sides. The battle of words and wits between Baccarin and Bathe is the key to making The Endgame such a compelling thriller.
“I think the sparring is exactly what we’re doing and you have to have mutual respect for each other when you’re doing that because you know you have a worthy opponent,” Baccarin said of Bathe. “And I think that that’s what makes this relationship really work is that we can match each other and she’s smart enough. She falls for some traps, but not others. She’s smart enough to figure out kind of how I’m giving information and how to put the pieces together. And I think hopefully, as the show goes on, you could see these two people get closer and closer, maybe closer and closer in the same side.”
Unlike many of her other roles in the past, Baccarin doesn’t speak with an English accent on The Endgame. Elena is a woman of the world and so many cultures are present in her unique accent, including Baccarin’s native Brazil.
“I worked very hard at it. We were also trying to figure out, we wanted to make her very authentic and not just a broad strokes character,” she told us. “I asked them to use me being Brazilian because I felt like that would lend a lot of credibility and authenticity to the character. I was trying to figure out, how do I marry these two cultures together and make it not feel forced?
“She’s got this background that is a Brazilian mother and she’s lived there and has spent some time there in her life. And you see that coming up in the show in flashbacks. And then I wanted to make her Eastern European accent kind of a mix of a lot of different countries and also add a little bit of, ‘I went to school in England,’ kind of thing to it.”
You can catch Morena Baccarin as Elena on The Endgame, returning to NBC with new episodes on April 11th. The first six episodes of the series are available to stream on Peacock.
