Tracy Spiridakos is back solving crimes this summer, with her titular role in Anna Pigeon, premiering on Friday, August 7, on USA Network. Spiridakos, showrunner and executive producer Morwyn Brebner, and director and executive producer Lea Thompson, who optioned the Nevada Barr books, sat down with TV Insider in our ATX TV Festival suite to discuss the new drama. Watch the full video interview above.
While Thompson originally had optioned the books for herself 12 years ago, she thinks that she was “waiting for [Spiridakos] because she is amazing and she’s perfect and she’s the perfect Anna Pigeon,” she shared. It’s also the right time to bring this character to screen, said Brebner, explaining, “I think that we’re all really trying hard to stay human right now. And I feel like this woman, this intrepid woman who Tracy plays, who solves crimes in the national parks and is a full human person who is about helping the underdog, feels like a really good person to be putting into the world right now.”
Anna Pigeon follows Spiridakos’ character, a former city slicker who becomes a park ranger and focuses on solving crimes that take place within national park grounds after a devastating loss. Spiridakos previously starred on Chicago P.D. as Detective Hailey Upton (now with the FBI, as revealed in her return for the One Chicago crossover in March).
“They’re both very intense in so many ways,” Spiridakos said when comparing the two characters. “They’re both very stubborn and need to get to the bottom of whatever the situation is and don’t easily take no for an answer. I think where they’re different is Anna, to me, feels lighter, even though she’s grieving and she’s going through some really heavy things that she’s navigating and she’s in a dark place in her life where we meet her. … You get glimpses throughout the season of the person that she was before, whereas I think Hailey was just this very intense person throughout.”
Matt Sayles
She continued, “Anna doesn’t take herself very seriously. And I think the curiosity is really distinctly different, too, where for Anna, she needs to know what the answer is and at all costs, she needs to uncover what it is, what the mystery is, even if it means she’s wrong. She doesn’t need to be right. She just needs to know what happened.”
When we find Anna at the beginning of the series, “she’s not thinking about maybe staying” in the park, Brebner shared. “She’s a gunslinger. She comes in and she leaves and then she gets involved in a mystery and it’s an occasion, I think, for Anna to measure whether or not she wants to move on or whether she wants to stay in this place.”
Anna will also have to contend with an adversary from the books, Jeremiah Paulson (Kim Coates). He’s “Anna’s kind of thorn,” teased Spiridakos. “He doesn’t respect the parks the same way that she does and have the same appreciation for all the animals and everything that’s in the parks, and that’s something that she comes up against throughout the season.”
While she’s going to have her hands full with crimes, don’t think that means she won’t have time for romance. “That is something Anna makes time for,” Spiridakos said.
The series will also explore Anna’s relationship with her sister, played by Tricia Helfer. “She’s the best,” raved Spiridakos.
“It’s a really beautiful, unusual relationship. I love stories about siblings and I feel like their dynamic, it’s like you see a side of Anna, the little sister side of Anna that is you only see when she’s with Molly and talking to Molly,” Brebner previewed.
There are 16 books in Barr’s series, and the first season adapts the first book, Track of the Cat. Then, “inside the season is [the 17th in the series] The Rope, which is Anna’s origin story and we sort of brought that into the present,” the showrunner revealed. The series is, in some ways “very faithful” to the books, especially to its spirit and tone.
Added Thompson, “Morwyn did an amazing job creating new characters because you have to have your regulars, your ensemble, and you really had to create those out of pieces of other characters, but just out of your own fun imagination and the ensemble is quite spectacular. The actors are just so fun and [Spiridakos was] such a great leader with them.”
Watch the full video interview above for much more on Anna Pigeon from Tracy Spiridakos, Morwyn Brebner, and Lea Thompson.
Anna Pigeon, Series Premiere, Friday, August 7, 10/9c, USA Network
—Reporting by Avery Thompson