Detective Charlie Crews' (Damien Lewis) good looks and wealth make it hard for women to resist him.  However, there are two ladies who have managed to keep themselves from falling for Charlie, and they are none other than his partner, Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi), and their tough lieutenant Karen Davis (Robin Weigert).

Dani and Karen, two of the female central characters of the new NBC drama, Life, have not succumbed to Charlie's charisma for two very different reasons.  Dani knows Charlie, who returned to the force after spending time in prison for a murder he did not commit, is different and simply wants to understand him.  Karen, on the other hand, dislikes and distrusts Charlie, and does not appreciate the fact that he is back on the job.

For Weigert, the idea of playing an unpleasant character like Karen made her uneasy at first, but after filming several episodes of Life's first season, the 38-year-old actress says she is gaining a better sense of Karen.

"I have trouble engaging someone without some element of supplication," Robin Weigert told Zap2it's Jacqueline Cutler.  "I'm always hoping I will be liked, and she is not this way at all.  I am finding how to sit comfortably in that authority and not be a martinet, finding a way to own it.  Who I have looked to as a wonderful example is the Helen Mirren character in Prime Suspect."

While Robin Weigert has turned to other media to help flesh out his/her character on Life, Lewis prepared for his role by reading Joseph Wambaugh's cop novels and going to the decommissioned prison Kilmainham, where inmates were beaten, starved and shot.

He visited other prisons as well, noting that many of the convicts had haunted looks.

"So many of them have a look in their eye that something has died," Crews told Cutler.  "They're trying to keep at bay a rage against the world."


-Lisa Claustro, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Newsday
(Image Courtesy of NBC)