Katey Sagal Isn’t Your Typical Mom in Her New Show ‘Rebel’

From Peg Bundy (“Married… With Kids”) to Gemma Teller Morrow (“Sons of Anarchy”), Katey Sagal has performed strong-willed characters earlier than. However she doesn’t imagine she’s ever performed somebody like Annie “Insurgent” Bello.

“I do know I’ve performed some very arduous ladies, however she’s arduous for all the proper causes. Her reasoning is to empower folks to face up and speak,” Sagal tells Selection.  

Within the new ABC drama “Insurgent,” from “Gray’s Anatomy” showrunner Krista Vernoff and impressed by the actual lifetime of Erin Brockovich, Sagal’s title character is a blue-collar authorized advocate — who doesn’t really maintain a regulation diploma. Within the premiere episode, although, she throws herself up in opposition to huge company Stonemore Medical so as to combat for many who have been harmed by autoimmune signs from the corporate’s artificial coronary heart valve.

“She is incensed by the thought that anyone is getting screwed over and that no one’s seeing it or no one’s speaking about it or no one’s standing up and doing one thing,” Sagal says. “For my very own backstory for Insurgent, which I made up for myself, it is a person who most likely struggled with numerous injustice in her personal life and he or she acquired to the purpose of, ‘That’s not going to occur once more.’ So she actually has that voice for individuals who don’t really feel they’ve one.”

To raised perceive what her character could be up in opposition to, Sagal’s analysis course of for the function included finding out the Netflix documentary “The Bleeding Edge,” which means that medical expertise may very well be doing extra hurt than good as a consequence of company cover-ups, for-profit practices and too-lenient rules. She additionally dug into wider advocacy teams on the subject.

Sagal calls Insurgent “tremendous targeted on what it’s that she’s doing” and “very one-mind” with regards to undertaking her objective. On this case, it’s to get that valve off the market. In having such tunnel imaginative and prescient, she “doesn’t essentially keep in mind the sentiments of different folks,” Sagal continues. “She thinks, ‘Nicely, that is the best way we must always do it, and all people ought to assume the best way I do.’ The factor about Insurgent is she’s keen about what she’s keen about and on the expense of all the things else, in a manner.”

Though Sagal calls that Insurgent’s flaw, it’s additionally the place a number of the “humorous battle and the push and pull with the household” will come into play.

As a result of, for all of Insurgent’s “in your face” perspective, she doesn’t need to go at it alone. Not less than one in every of her ex-husbands (who occurs to be a police officer, performed by Matthew Glave) and one in every of her daughters (performed by Ariela Barer) appear keen to assist her out, whereas her son (Kevin Zegers) is more likely to come round. And she or he has a buddy in Lana (Tamala Jones), her investigator who’s each her former sister-in-law and an ex cop.

“To me it’s actually, actually attention-grabbing that her children have a chip on their shoulders about the best way that they had been raised — as a result of in so some ways they had been uncared for — however on the similar time, they’ve all gone into service work, the best way she has. In order that to me is an attention-grabbing dichotomy. Of their private lives they’ve positively struggled with a number of the stuff you battle with in case you really feel you weren’t being parented sufficient, however on the similar time, they admire her they usually’ve realized so much from her,” Sagal says.

Sagal admits she has needed to “put apart my extra maternal intuition” to embody Insurgent, who has a contentious relationship along with her children in lots of moments. “She doesn’t deal with issues the best way Katey would deal with issues, so I’m consistently having to place apart a few of my, ‘Nicely I’ll hearken to your perspective’ — as a result of that’s how I operate on the earth — and actually, consistently remind myself she has a factor about justice,” she explains.

Insurgent’s arduous edge could assist her keep steadfast in her mission, however her potential to snigger at herself is what is going to probably make her profitable, even when standing up in opposition to such giant, imposing entities, in response to Sagal.

“You say no to her and he or she’s going to return in by way of the facet door,” she says. “Insurgent will get herself in conditions and handles issues which might be messy, and the best way she bursts in on folks after they’re least anticipating, it has some humor to it as effectively. I believe that’s the best way she’s going to dodge the bullets of companies: she all the time has one other concept.”

“Insurgent” premieres April 8 at 10 p.m. on ABC.