Zoe Saldaña is joined by Academy Award winners Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman in the Paramount+ military thriller “Special Ops: Lioness,” but these A-listers might be taking a back seat to the Canadian actress Laysla De Oliveira, based on De Oliveira’s brilliant and hardcore turn in the pilot episode. Playing a survivor of physical abuse who abandons her dead-end life in Oklahoma to realize the potential she once demonstrated as a high schooler, De Oliveira delivers a star-power performance. We can’t wait to see how this series plays out.
The latest blood-stained action series from the prolific Taylor Sheridan (“Yellowstone,” “Tulsa King,” “Sicario”) is pure fiction but is inspired by real-life U.S. military programs such as the counterinsurgency and cultural outreach effort known as Team Lioness. (The series takes the concept to next-level, combat extremes.) Saldaña delivers gritty and authentic work as Joe, the leader of a covert CIA organization that sends female operatives into undercover missions where they befriend the wives, girlfriends, mothers or siblings of women who have close connections to high-level terrorists.
