Tonight’s new episode of Nikita marks the long-awaited return for two of our favorite characters: Owen (Devon Sawa) and Amanda (Melinda Clarke). We spoke to the cast including the beautiful villainess this past summer and talked about Nikita’s new threat.
“Nikita’s got a villain in this season that’s unlike any villain we’ve had,” says leading lady Maggie Q of Amanda. “Percy had an agenda and his agenda was always his number one priority and Nikita was someone who got in the way. With Amanda, this is pure hatred and vengeance. Amanda doesn’t have any other cause. Amanda wants to hurt Nikita and hurting Nikita, as everyone knows, means hurting the people around her and that’s not good for Nikita and I don’t think she realizes what’s coming.”
In the Season Two finale, Percy had fallen to his death at the hands of Nikita. Along with the mourning of Percy, Amanda’s portrayer, Melinda Clarke, has hopes for this season that her character doesn’t lose her humanity.
“My number one hope is that [the writers] don’t ignore all of the character development that we had with Amanda,” Melinda says. “We saw her being a human being. We saw her empathize with Alex, we saw that her heart was broken by Nikita, we saw her affected by Percy. As screwed up messed up as it was, we saw that she really had a heart.”
“I think that Amanda needs to ultimately be affected because Amanda didn’t want Percy to die,” she adds. “In fact, the reason why he was alive [that long] was because of Amanda and he could’ve easily been executed. Amanda always saw her relationship with Percy as this equal partnership and they were gonna rise. His tremendous psychotic ego took him to this other level and left her behind and so that was the first betrayal in season one and no matter what, she couldn’t bring him back. It was that kind of longing. Then of course he dies at the hands of Nikita, ‘That’s not cool. That’s my man. If he’s gonna die, I’m doin’ it.'”
Melinda also talked about the brilliance of the end of Nikita and Amanda in Season Two’s “Power” episode where the words, “I let her live,” were said by both about eachother, though each had different feelings about it: Amanda’s filled with hatred and anger, whereas Nikita’s was more positive.
While Nikita is in a better place with those she loves around her, Amanda’s headed in a different direction and Melinda likens her character to one of the most evil villains in movie history. “Amanda’s going to a deeper, darker place like Voldemort,” she says. “She’s out there building up her power and sneaking around, so she’s a little snake out there. I think she’s off her meds this season.”
Don’t miss the return of Amanda on tonight’s Nikita at 9|8c on The CW!