As it premiered this weekend, Special Ops: Lioness Season 3 dives into artificial intelligence, modern warfare, and some of the franchise's most emotionally intense missions yet. Off screen, however, the cast found a very different way to decompress: a playlist that bounced from Bad Bunny to Beyoncé's country era.
The unlikely musical mix became part of the behind-the-scenes atmosphere as the cast filmed the latest installment of Taylor Sheridan's hit Paramount+ thriller, which returns with a bigger geopolitical scope while continuing to follow the CIA's elite Lioness program.
"We have very different music," Laysla De Oliveira, who returns as Cruz Manuelos, told this reporter while sitting alongside co-star Jill Wagner. "I listen to pop, rap, hip-hop, and she listens to country music."
The differences didn't last long.
De Oliveira admitted that working alongside Wagner gradually changed her mind about country music after months of filming.
"When I started the show, I thought I didn't like country music," she said, recalling how Wagner introduced her to Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter and artists like Kacey Musgraves. "Now I'm home and I'm listening to that song every day."
For Wagner, the genre has always shared something in common with acting.
"Country music is storytelling," she explained. "It's the same thing as film and TV shows. I sit with them in their story."
Still, with a cast that includes several Latina stars, one question naturally came up: Did Latin music ever take over the set?
"Oh, honey," De Oliveira laughed. "There was a lot of Bad Bunny. A lot of Bad Bunny."
The answer reflects the increasingly diverse ensemble that Sheridan has assembled for Lioness. The series is led by Zoe Saldaña, whose Dominican and Puerto Rican heritage has made her one of Hollywood's most recognizable Latina actresses. Season 3 also features Génesis Rodríguez, the Miami-born actress of Venezuelan and Cuban descent, alongside Brazilian-Canadian De Oliveira, creating one of the most prominent Latina ensembles currently leading a premium action drama.
Lioness Season 3 brings back the series' veteran ensemble, led by Saldaña as CIA officer Joe McNamara, alongside Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Kelly, De Oliveira, Wagner, Dave Annable, LaMonica Garrett, and Rodríguez. The new season also expands the team with Ian Bohen as Grady, a seasoned Delta Force operator and K9 handler who joins Joe's Quick Reaction Force, while Lev Gorn and Elizaveta Neretin enter the story in mysterious international roles. Created by Taylor Sheridan, the Paramount+ thriller continues to blend espionage and battlefield action with the personal toll carried by operatives and military veterans, many of whom return this season facing a dangerous mission connected to Russia's war in Ukraine.
While the music behind the cameras may have been lighthearted, the story unfolding in front of them is anything but.
Season 3 pushes the franchise deeper into today's geopolitical realities, incorporating artificial intelligence and emerging military technology into the narrative as the CIA's covert operations confront an increasingly complex battlefield.
For De Oliveira, the direction felt like a natural evolution of Sheridan's writing.
"Taylor is so in tune with everything and really inspired by current events," she said. "It didn't really surprise me. I was just excited to learn."
Wagner agreed, saying AI has become impossible to ignore when telling stories about modern conflict.
"I don't know how you talk about modern warfare without going into AI and all of the things because it's here," she said. "And it's just going to get more interesting as we go down the rabbit hole here in the series."
The actress believes that willingness to evolve with world events is one of the reasons Lioness continues to resonate with audiences.
"The series can go as long as Taylor wants it to because there's so many interesting..." Wagner began before De Oliveira jumped in laughing, "She keeps saying the series can go on forever."
The intensity of Sheridan's scripts also means the cast has to find ways to disconnect once the cameras stop rolling.
"My soul [goes] on a wild, wild ride," De Oliveira joked about filming the new season. "I need a vacation after it."
The emotional demands are matched by the physical ones. Cruz continues to evolve beyond the fearless operative audiences first met in Season 1, while Bobby remains the veteran tactical leader whose calm presence anchors the team through increasingly dangerous missions. Both actresses said balancing the emotional depth of their characters with the physically demanding action sequences remains one of the biggest challenges of making the series.
Between explosions, tactical drills and emotionally charged scenes, the cast found common ground in music, even if their playlists looked nothing alike.
Some days it sounded like Nashville, others like San Juan, and somewhere between Bad Bunny, Beyoncé and country music, the cast of Lioness found the perfect soundtrack to survive one of television's most demanding productions.
