Michelle Forbes Talks ‘Berlin Station,’ Wearing Heals On Set, Edward Snowden [VIDEO EXCLUSIVE]
EPIX Television Critics Association Tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel - Arrivals
Featuring: Michelle Forbes
Where: Los Angeles, California, United States
When: 30 Jul 2016
Credit: Charlie Steffens/WENN.com
Michelle Forbes stars, along with Richard Armitage, in Berlin Station, the new espionage-themed show premiering on EPIX.
MICHELLE FORBES VIDEO EXCLUSIVE
Forbes takes the helm of the the CIA’s Berlin branch as Valerie Edwards, a no-nonsense administrator and chief of the station, who finds herself in the midst of crisis. Following a series of dangerous information leaks at the hands of a spy, Edwards must find a way to grapple with the unraveling of the branch and the compromised safety of her agents, whose lives are now at stake. “Everybody is scrambling and it’s absolute mayhem and chaos because there is a whistleblower who is dropping leaks,” she revealed exclusively to uInterview. “That [the spy] is really changing the landscape and the face of our particular station, and we never know where the next hit is coming from.” The state of the station leads to United States based CIA officer, Daniel Miller (Armitage) to take up an undercover position in Berlin, desperate to find the leak. Forbes revealed that this wasn’t her first time working on a show that dealt with espionage; Armitage also has spy “experience,” but she stressed that the nature of whistleblowing has changed drastically in the years since. “It’s a very different world today; we’re looking at different issues, different problems, different obstacles, different threats,” she confessed to uInterview. “So, the fact that we get to explore this in such a profound way and what it means to all of us, as citizens, as people who work at the CIA, what it means to everyone, I think is a highly, highly important subject right now.” Playing a CIA Chief is not without its pitfalls, but for Forbes, the most difficult part of production wasn’t the heavy subject matter or closeness to reality: it was wearing high heels. “You don’t see a lot of people in heels in Berlin because those cobblestones are really treacherous,” she joked. “It is ankle-breaking terrain, even in flats.” So what about real governments leaks? Valerie Edwards, as someone trying to stop the dissemination of classified information, undoubtedly hates whistleblowers. Forbes disagrees. “I think whistleblowers have become a really important part of our society and our modern society, and I think we are quite aware that our governments are not always led— and the institutions of our government are not always led—with the greatest of integrity,” she asserted. “I consider their exposing corruption to be one of the greatest patriotic acts there is.” Berlin Station premieres on EPIX on Oct. 16.