Cruz ended season one on a very uncertain note. Was it always made clear to you that she’d be coming back?
I’m going to be honest with you. We sign the contracts that we sign going into the show, so I had no idea that I wouldn’t be coming back for season two until I got a call from Taylor [Sheridan] at the end of the strike, and he explained the new storyline — which completely made sense. It makes for a much more interesting show to watch when it is a different mission and recruit every year. Of course, Laysla the actress was a little bit devastated, but Laysla the artist understood. And it was a very beautiful conversation with Taylor, because he changed my life with this job.
But after he was done writing the third episode, about six weeks later, he called me back and he was like, “You’re not goin’ anywhere.” [Laughs] Which was a great call to have, as well.
Why did Taylor struggle with writing this character back into the mix?
At the time, he didn’t know how he could bring Cruz back in a meaningful way, and he didn’t want me to miss out on opportunities. He said, “I’m going to let you go, because I don’t want you to just be a side character. I don’t want to do that to you.”
It’s a very intriguing way to enter the story, halfway through a season . . .
And I think, also, the way things ended for Cruz, she does need that time off. So, yes, she’s deployed off the coast of Somalia. She’s also doing a lot of soul-searching, she’s trying to understand this geopolitical world and how she fits into it. With last season’s mission and how she fell in love and how all that ended, I don’t know if she completely agreed with what she did. But at the end of the day, her country is her biggest love. So, she’s really trying to understand the intricacies of that. She’s become a lot more, I would say, “book smart” this year. I was like, “Ooh, Cruz has been studying! I need to catch up to Cruz.” It’s a beautiful thing to see. I also think she starts to understand Joe [Zoe Saldaña] a lot more, which is a really beautiful thing in her journey.
The entertainment world can be such a rollercoaster of near-constant rejection. How do you, personally, cope?
I wish I had a great tip for that. The only thing I keep thinking of is . . . you know in Finding Nemo, where Dory’s like, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming?” That’s what I think of when I think of acting. The highs are so high and the lows are so low. You really need to find ways to ground yourself — whatever that means for you. Find the people that you love and hold them close so that your happiness is not just dependent upon if you’re working or not, or if people think you’re popular right now. Because that will always be a rollercoaster.
On that note, do you have any really horrifying audition stories?
Horrifying? Gosh, I probably have blocked those out . . . I think my favourite audition story is for Lioness. It’s not horrifying, it’s exciting because I ended up getting the part. But they flew me out to the set of Yellowstone while [Sheridan] was directing an episode, and I had to perform the entire first episode [of Lioness] for him on the set of Yellowstone, in between him directing. Like, two chairs, out on the field, in front of everybody [laughs]. If you could get through that, you could get through anything . . . But it was electrifying. That scene where I’m running from my abusive boyfriend in the first episode of season one — performing that live on the set of Yellowstone really gets your heart racing. I felt like it contributed to a good performance.
The season finale of Special Ops: Lioness streaming on Sunday, December 8, on Paramount+
MEMORABLE ROLES:
Following guest spots on iZombie and X-Men spinoff The Gifted, this Toronto-born actress got her break in 2020 on yet another comic book series — Netflix’s Nova Scotia-shot Locke & Key, where she played duplicitous underworld fiend Dodge for parts of three seasons.
CURRENT GIG:
In 2023, De Oliveira landed her biggest role to date with this military thriller from Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan. Flanked by the likes of Zoe Saldaña, Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman, she plays Cruz Manuelos — a patriotic but troubled U.S. soldier tapped by the CIA for a shady undercover mission. Season two opened to find her character in the wind, with Lioness boss Joe (Saldaña) getting her claws in another recruit (Genesis Rodriguez). But midway through the year, Cruz made a surprise return to the pride.