MANILA, Philippines — Cinemax’s pulse-pounding and action-packed series Strike Back returns to television with a thrilling 10-episode fifth season installment airing Saturdays at 11 a.m.
For the uninitiated, Strike Back follows an elite team of counter-terrorism experts tasked with covert military intelligence and high-risk operations. The multinational special ops team is known only as Section 20. In the current season, Section 20 is restored in order to track down a notorious terrorist following a brutal prison break. The resurrected unit embarks on a lethal manhunt that will uncover a vast web of interconnected criminal and terrorist activity. The action-packed manhunt will take the unit across North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. From glitterati soirees to underworld cage fights, they will uncover a deadly conspiracy that threatens to overwhelm and change the face of modern warfare forever.
A brand-new set of actors joins the series this season armed not only with good looks and impressive resumés but hard-core training in physical combat and armaments as well!
Award-winning actor Warren Brown leads the new cast as Sergeant Thomas “Mac” McAllister, a man who values his word; physically capable and driven by a desire to avenge the team he’s lost. He’s easygoing, affable and utterly deadly.
Alin Sumarwata plays Lance Corporal Gracie Novin, a crack shot and ready-for-anything gearhead looking to make the step up. Genuine and honest to the point of bluntness, she’s the heart and soul of the team.
Daniel MacPherson as Sergeant Samuel Wyatt is a barroom philosopher who works best alone. Having been burned in the past, Wyatt has no intention of being dragged into a team situation. But what he wants and what he gets is rarely the same thing.
Roxanne McKee rounds up the new cast as Captain Natalie Reynolds who comes from a military family. She excels at psychological profiling and identifying weaknesses in others, although she may be blind to her own faults.
A brand-new set of actors led by Warren Brown (below) joins the series this season armed not only withgood looks and impressive resumés but hard-core training in physical combat and armaments as well! — Photo from www.Entertainment-Focus.com
The STAR met with the cast two weeks ago in Pasadena, California for two separate roundtables to talk about the series. The women were paired and so did the men. The takeaway? The actresses proved to be real badass and the men truly gentlemen.
They spent six grueling months of filming in various locations all over the world. They filmed in Jordan, Hungary, Croatia and London. They also had to undertake arduous training in hand-to-hand combat and the use of state-of-the-art weaponry to make all their stunts believable and the action sequences credible.
Roxanne and Alin were the first to join us for the roundtable interview and they were lively, cheerful and appeared like two best friends celebrating the end of a difficult and challenging location filming. They would laugh at all the hardships they experienced and would laugh further recollecting the particular incident of Alin breaking down to tears on their return to London and getting to dine in a fancy restaurant again.
“We had to re-assimilate normally because we’ve been eating out of plastic cups with our fingers!” exclaimed Roxanne.
“Sometimes, our fingers are full of gunpowder!” added Alin.
So in London, they went to a hotel to dine and Alin stood frozen when they reached the reception counter. Roxanne noticed that Alin appeared to be convulsing and crying. Worried, she asked Alin why she was crying.
Apparently, Alin just suddenly found herself in awe of everything!
“It…was…so…beautiful!” she replied. Alin recounted the incident and acted out in full dramatic voice how she uttered the four-worded reason why she found herself transfixed and unable to move at a hotel lobby.
But there was a reason why Alin (and Roxanne) found a newfound appreciation for the everyday things in life — fancy or not — and that was brought on by their extraordinary experience working on Strike Back.
They play powerful, strong women who go toe-to-toe with their male counterparts as special covert operatives who can physically take down a roomful of men and handle heavy firepower like they are out grocery shopping.
“That’s what we wanted to portray. You want to be able to show fully evolved women who are able to do everything, who encompass it all,” Roxanne said. “We are showing that your tools aren’t just your sexuality. It’s also your brain and it’s also your physicality and we’re really pleased to be a part of that on a show in this time frame with everything that’s going on.”
Alin added that in Australia, where her character is from, women have been allowed to fight in the frontlines with Special Forces operatives beginning in 2017.
Before the actual shoot and after their weapons training, a shooting competition was held among the cast. Can you guess who won best shot in the group? Alin!
“Alin took to the weaponry like a fish takes to the water, I think I can safely say that,” Roxanne proudly announced. “I think that’s something that a lot of men might think was unusual but for me, it was totally normal. I saw her before and after training. She’s exceptional.”
The cast trained for six weeks at King Abdullah’s Special Forces training in Jordan and they did live ammunitions training. “We did all the drills, driving drills…like what all Special Forces people go there to do. We got that opportunity, which was amazing!” Alin said.
When it was the men’s turn at the roundtables, we did not mention right away how Alin beat them at the shooting competition but they were game when we finally asked them about it.
“Ah, they brought that up, did they?” Daniel pretended like he was mad.
“Is this the one that Alin won?” Asked Warren teasingly. “Alin, at the time, on the day?”
“I was exhausted, I had a big meal that day on the set,” Daniel playfully added before commenting that, “Alin — I think everyone will honestly say that she was relentless in her training and in her gun training. Obsessively so! And I am sure I could hear her playing with her weapons at night.”
Warren was a boxer in his early life so he was already used to the demands and the physicality required of his role. “I was a professional fighter before and Dan was an Iron Man athlete,” Warren stated. “Often, you get roles that you are not required to bring other things. It’s like a straight acting job! For both of us, this was an opportunity to draw on those skills, a chance to do some fighting on the screen.”
But with all the training, Warren could only say, not complaining but “I have never started a job so exhausted in my life!”
Warren and Daniel, like their women counterparts, also bonded while filming the series. Daniel told us of the time after a chemistry read with Warren, when they went to a pub for a drink and he finally got to confess that he was big fan of Luther, the award-winning BBC series in which Warren co-starred with Idris Elba.
“For two days, I didn’t lead on to Warren that Luther was one of my favorite shows and he was one of my favorite characters,” Daniel revealed. “On the third day, we all went to the pub for a post-audition workshop, and we finally went to have a beer, and I was like, ‘I just got to let you know that I looove Luther!”
And after filming, if Roxanne and Alin bonded albeit with some comical drama at a hotel in London, Warren traveled to Los Angeles and hung out for a week with Daniel.
“It was amazing,” Daniel recalled. “We went to the gym, we did some hiking, we shot some guns, we drunk some beer, got to know each other!”
There’s an added treat for women viewers of the series. This writer has previewed the first two episodes of the series and, yes, it’s indeed thrilling and suspenseful but there’s another reason why women may want to make sure they catch up on this season right away. Warren and Daniel, in a rebuke to cliché storytelling, provide the sexy eye candy here that’s traditionally been the role of female characters in action-oriented series.
“I got told that everyone was going to do it and I haven’t seen a lot of it after those two episodes!” Daniel lightheartedly exclaimed. “The television landscape has changed in the world since the end of the previous Strike Back. In the new Section 20, the girls are absolutely badass, kickass characters! There’s a great dynamic between the guys and the girls and I think it’s going to appeal to a broader audience. I think the show has evolved as the landscape has evolved as well.”
“For fans of the show, the essential Strike Back DNA is still there. It’s still a high-intensity, high-octane action-adventure series with thrills, spills — all those great ingredients that made the show such a success before, I think, are still there,” Warren said thoughtfully. “But with this new dynamic, new faces, a new team, new villains, you know… Sure, we got our work cut out for us but we want to make it better. The scale of the show this season — it was incredible! The locations that we get to shoot in look fantastic so, (yeah) I’m going on record and say it’s better!”
Strike Back airs every Saturday at 11 a.m. with 10 p.m. encores. It is also streaming on HBO GO.