Red Widow premieres Sunday night, March 3 at 9PM on ABC. The series premiere goes on for two hours, and in it, we meet a woman named Marta Walraven, played by Radha Mitchell. Marta was born into a Bratva crime family, but rejected that destiny; instead, she tried to escape that life as much as possible, even though connections to it were always present.
Considering the title of the series, it probably should not be considered a spoiler that Marta’s husband, Evan, ends up brutally murdered, leaving her a widow. Tasked with protecting herself and her family, Marta ends up being forced back into the “family business,” and she might find that she likes it.
“She will discover things about herself which she doesn’t want to know. She’ll discover she has talents that she wished she didn’t have, and I think some of it, she’ll actually enjoy,” Mitchell told us when we caught up with her at a Red Widow premiere event earlier this week. The reasons she ends up embroiled in this situation will be revealed in the series pilot, and Mitchell did stress that Marta “will do anything” to protect her family, which includes three children: Boris, Gabriel, and Natalie. “She’s done everything she can to avoid that life and protect her children from any of the experiences that she had. It’s more than her worst nightmare when her husband is murdered in front of her son, and then she has the has this debt that she’s responsible for,” she said.
Now, she also has to deal with the possibility that her kids will figure out what their mother is up to… or worse, they may become involved. “She hopes to maintain their innocence, but it’s almost impossible, given the circumstances. Her son [Gabriel] wants to prove himself as a young man. I don’t want to give too much away, but he learns more than she would like him to know, for sure,” she said.
Another key relationship we will see in Red Widow is the one between Marta and her father, Andrei Petrov, who is played by Rade Serbedzija. “It’s a beautiful, intense relationship,” she told us. “Rade Serbedzija is one of my favorite actors. We have actually worked together before, in a film where he played my dad, so we had a strange connection because we’d done that. He’s a rock and roll actor, he’s an amazing man, and he brings a lot of gravitas to the role. He’s loving, open hearted, and intense, but really scary as the show goes on,” she teased.
“She’s a woman discovering her strength,” Radha Mitchell said when describing her own character. “She’s been complacent for some time, kind of hiding from the reality that her life has been subsidized by import/export and marijuana; and then when the reality hits her much harder than she could ever have expected, she has to wake up. She discovers a lot about herself and a lot about the people around her. The characters, their masks come off, as we learn about who they really are,” she revealed.
The shorter season for Red Widow gives the series a “cable vibe” and Mitchell seems pleased that the show had time to be developed.”There are no filler episodes,” she promised. “Everything that happens, is happening for a reason in the story. I think even the tone of the acting; it feels very real.”
Red Widow premieres Sunday night, March 3 at 9PM on ABC. You can see some images of the cast here and be sure to come back to KSiteTV in the coming days for some more interviews!
