I started dealing with weapons on the first show I ever did, The Inside, but I didn’t really do any physical stuff until Alias. I loved it and thought it was so fun and so cool. A fight scene is like a dance, you learn the moves and then run then run them all together, and the more you do it the more fluid it becomes. It’s a really sexy rough-and-tumble dance and I’ve been really drawn to it. People ask me about fighting in real life and, honestly, it wouldn’t look as graceful as it does in film and TV. Every role that I’ve done before this had a physicality to it and that really lends itself to preparing for Kiera. We’ve got a great stunt crew on the show so that helps a great deal as well. If you’re going to do fight scenes and stunts you’re going to need a team that knows what they’re doing.

Is playing strong women something that’s important to you?

It’s been kind of a happy accident, as I don’t think I was necessarily drawn to it initially. I had a couple of jobs that lent themselves to that and now I’m very drawn to it. There’s something really rewarding about playing a girl who can survive on her own, and who can do the fights and shoot the guns, but also at the same time still be a woman. Kiera is very much still a woman desperate to get home to her family and her son but she has this other side to her that I loved playing. It really puts women in the bad-ass role, and those great role-models are important for young women. There are a lot of characters for young boys to look up to and I think girls deserve that too.

It’s sadly unusual for a female character to be married with a child back home, can we expect a possible romantic storyline for Keira in present day?

I can’t really give away too much but I can say that, yes I am married with a child at the beginning, but there are certain circumstances that become known in the future that may make it acceptable for me to potentially have a love interest. You only see a little glimmer of it in season one so for right now that’s all I can say. It’s something I do want people to think about, though, because it lends itself to more questions in the first few episodes.