{"id":613472,"date":"2026-07-31T13:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/613472\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T13:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:31:15","slug":"zoe-saldana-credits-lioness-creator-taylor-sheridan-with-knowing-how-to-write-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/613472\/","title":{"rendered":"Zoe Salda\u00f1a Credits \u2018Lioness\u2019 Creator Taylor Sheridan With Knowing \u201cHow To Write Women\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">As Lioness reunites with her pride for a third season, Zoe Salda\u00f1a is grateful to get to reprise a well-written character.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Oscar-winning actress, who stars as CIA agent Joe McNamara, praised series creator Taylor Sheridan for knowing &#8220;how to write women&#8221; and characters that &#8220;defy gender and race&#8221; on the Paramount+ series, which returns Aug. 2 to the streamer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><strong>More from Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;I do believe that Joe could&#8217;ve been a man. We&#8217;ve seen various stories of men like Joe,&#8221; she told <a data-ylk=\"slk:People;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/people.com\/zoe-saldana-praises-lioness-taylor-sheridan-gender-fluid-characters-12031217?taid=6a6bb2e306e58b00011d4897&amp;utm_campaign=peoplemagazine&amp;utm_content=new&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">People<\/a>. &#8220;And Kaitlyn [played by Nicole Kidman] could&#8217;ve been a man, the same way Westfield [played by Michael Kelly] could&#8217;ve been a woman, Kyle [played by Thad Luckinbill] could&#8217;ve been a woman. These are incredible complex individuals [and] any actor who challenges themselves can rise to that occasion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Salda\u00f1a added that Sheridan&#8217;s skill for crafting characters of any experience &#8220;is what makes a really good writer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;When you write something so incredible that it kind of defies gender and race, and it&#8217;s just about the merit of that human being, I feel like you give yourself the opportunity of a wider range of actors that can come in and sort of vie for that part,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;I have a great deal of respect for men that really know how to write women and I think that Taylor gives himself enough credit.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"&lt;span&gt;Zoe Salda\u00f1a as Joe and Nicole Kidman as Kaitlyn in 'Lioness' (Ryan Green\/Paramount+)&lt;\/span&gt;\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"640\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/deadline.com\/3cdbc7adcfc7812849dc9d993f3aaf42.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Zoe Salda\u00f1a as Joe and Nicole Kidman as Kaitlyn in &#8216;Lioness&#8217; (Ryan Green\/Paramount+)<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;I&#8217;m happy to say that, after playing one of his female characters for three seasons, I&#8217;m incredibly honored that he wrote Joe as a woman,&#8221; added Salda\u00f1<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Jill Wagner, who plays Bobby, noted that Sheridan &#8220;puts a little bit of himself in each one of these characters. Like, I see Taylor in almost every single character. That&#8217;s something he does naturally.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Salda\u00f1a joked, &#8220;Oh great, so he writes himself? Here I am thinking he writes great women!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Starring and executive produced by Salda\u00f1a and Kidman, Season 3 of Lioness sees hidden networks, foreign operatives and personal betrayals collide. Joe (Salda\u00f1a) walks the line between duty and home as unseen forces circle her world. Patterns appear where they shouldn&#8217;t, names vanish, and paths rearrange. Guided by Kaitlyn (Kidman) and Westfield (Kelly), Joe confronts enemies operating in the shadows, leaving her to reckon with a war that now reaches into every part of her life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><strong>Best of Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Sign up for <a data-ylk=\"slk:Deadline&#039;s Newsletter;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/cloud.email.deadline.com\/signup\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Deadline&#8217;s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on <a data-ylk=\"slk:Facebook;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/31XsHSx\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>, <a data-ylk=\"slk:Twitter;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2TkcoeG\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>, and <a data-ylk=\"slk:Instagram;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2TntOHq\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Lioness reunites with her pride for a third season, Zoe Salda\u00f1a is grateful to get to reprise&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[265],"tags":[18,117,19,17,258920,258921,94879,216701,10420,15624,128,73461],"class_list":["post-613472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-joe-mcnamara","tag-kaitlyn","tag-lioness","tag-michael-kelly","tag-nicole-kidman","tag-taylor-sheridan","tag-tv","tag-zoe-saldana"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117014842520086638","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}