Marta Milans is excited to dive deeper into her M.I.A character’s arc in season 2 — and she has the perfect person she hopes will come play her onscreen husband.
“I don’t know why Tony Goldwyn is in my mind right now,” Milans exclusively told Us Weekly after the Peacock show premiered on Thursday, May 7. “Since we were just talking about Scandal, it has to be some WASP royalty.”
Milans noted that Goldwyn “is the epitome” of a perfect scene partner, adding, “Let’s call him.”
Created by Ozark‘s Bill Dubuque, M.I.A is a crime drama focused on Etta Tiger Jonze (Shannon Gisela), who seeks to avenge her family’s murder and rise to power in the Miami underworld.
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Milans, meanwhile, is related to the crime family responsible for Etta’s family being murdered — but she is trying to set herself apart.
“Caroline is not a criminal. She’s definitely on the edge. She is the daughter of a cartel leader but her dad made sure that Caroline would be the legitimate child — and he tries really hard to keep her out of that dark world,” she noted. “That is why I think her brothers have a chip on their shoulder about that and resent the fact that Caroline is the golden child. She gets sent off to university to get a great education. She comes back and she’s polished, well spoken and well dressed.”
Milans is meant to represent another side to the fictional crime family, telling Us, “She really carries that side very well. I think it’s fascinating to me to get to play that because she navigates both worlds very well. She does obviously walk over to the dark side later on in the season and you’ll see that. But until that moment, her ruthlessness and her hunger for getting her agenda and her goals executed will make her stop at nothing.”
The actress found it “really challenging and exciting” to play Caroline.
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“It also is hilarious to me because her brothers will be torturing and killing people and they’re all dressed in perfectly crisp white shirts. You’re like, ‘You might want to wear something darker.’ But it works so well for that side of the story,” Milans said. “But then to also cut to Caroline and her ridiculous mansion with her luxurious suits and shoes. It was a lot of fun to create her wardrobe.”
Milans continued: “The way she presents herself is very informative of who she is and I think that was very exciting. … We had a wonderful showrunner that was very adamant about creating back stories for characters and that was very helpful to us.”
While reflecting on the work that went into M.I.A, Milans credited the writing team for helping evolve the show, saying, “We did get a lot of information that we could build on that’s not necessarily in the script or that is not talked about on screen. But if you inform that and build that, that really shines through. That’s part of the reason why the characters are so fully formed. Even if they’re cartel leaders, there is a layered construct in those characters. That was really important to me to dive deep into that.”
M.I.A is currently streaming on Peacock.
