Amy Aquino on her Falcon and the Winter Soldier role, Bosch’s final season

Amy Aquino made an impression on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier viewers as Dr. Christina Raynor, Bucky Barnes’ therapist. But the Marvel series was just part of a busy year for the veteran actress — on June 25, Amazon will premiere the final season of Bosch, the police drama where she stars as Lieutenant Grace Billets.

Winter is Coming spoke to Amy about what Dr. Raynor brought to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, her thoughts on joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what to expect from Bosch season 7, and wrapping up her role as Grace. Here’s what she had to say about both of these memorable characters.

Winter is Coming: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was your first Marvel Cinematic Universe role. What was it like to join the biggest universe in entertainment right now?

Amy Aquino: It was a little surreal, frankly. I’m not someone who is drawn to big action movies, so I was pretty ignorant. I didn’t even know it was a universe, for God’s sake. All I knew was that it was a really big thing and it was super secretive and I was very excited to do it. But I was totally unprepared for the level of the reaction—100% unprepared. But delighted, I may add.

It was great. On the set, I could have imagined people being standoffish because it’s such a big deal. They were not at all. The actors and the director and the crew were extremely welcoming. So, while it was scary to step into this world—or, I should say, universe—they helped me as much as they possibly could and it was a blast.

WiC: Dr. Raynor only appears in two episodes, but the role she plays is pivotal in helping Bucky understand himself and his relationship with Sam. How did you approach a part that didn’t have a ton of screen time, but what she did have was so important to character development?

AA: I approached the character the way I do any character. I have played therapists before, most notably on Felicity, where I spent a whole lot of time sitting across from that angel and helping figure out her life. In this case, the first episode therapy scene was actually one long, well-structured scene with a beginning, middle and end; it was just those flashbacks jumping in there and breaking it up to seem shorter. But when shooting it, I realized that I had to approach it as one continuous session, and I did.

I saw Dr. Raynor as very committed to helping this particular man. And I think that the fact that I, Amy, was coming in without a whole lot of preconceived notions about him—not having been steeped in the Marvel Universe—was actually helpful to me because I could, as Christina, be discovering who this guy is. Certainly she’s got history, because she has been his therapist for a little while, but I was still able to watch him and learn.

I saw that therapy session as a matter of life and death with him because of Christina’s history, because she had been in the military and had suffered from PTSD herself. And she had seen, in my mind, a lot of former soldiers suffering from PTSD, and she’s probably lost a lot of them—she knows how many don’t survive it. So she took it very, very seriously and was not interested in Bucky trying to derail it or hide because she knew what it was like. She knew where he was coming from.

WiC: Your Falcon and the Winter Soldier scenes feel so intimate because they’re like theater; just these characters in a room together. Was that how it felt to you, or how was it to film your episodes?

AA: The filming was extremely intimate. Just the two of us in this one room that was in this old abandoned office building. I walked in and I saw that incredible mural and the smoke in the air, and thought “Wow, we are entering this other place.” But it was just [Sebastian Stan] and me. And the camera aimed down from the side, directly over my head, which was fascinating. Their truly amazing director, Kari Skogland, was an enormous help and incredibly patient, and allowed it to be very, very intimate.

That was not shocking to me because I have done a lot of theater and I have not done big blockbuster films, so this is what I was used to. And I loved when I watched it that you had this extraordinary, small, static, intimate scene that is intercut with these big old set pieces of action and violence and crazy superhero stuff that Marvel is all about. I think that’s part of what made the whole series special.

I think it was a focus of this particular series was counterbalancing the gigantic set pieces that Marvel is so amazing at with the extremely introspective depiction of what’s going on in these people’s heads. The audience sees that these are in fact real people at the same time that they’re superheroes; they are dealing with demons and injustice that are both external and internal, and their own personal lack of confidence, fear, self-doubt and disappointments. So that juxtaposition, I think, is what made Falcon and the Winter Soldier so very engaging.

WiC: Now we get to go from watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to Bosch season 7, which is also the show’s final season. You’ve been with that show from the beginning, so what was the experience of living with Grace Billets for so long and then finishing her arc?

AA: Playing Grace over the course of seven years, helping be a part of developing the show and the world, was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, an extraordinary experience. This is one of the things that I miss about the theater in some ways, because you have like a month to figure out who the person is and then you’ve got a run during which you can dig deeper, where every night, you’re discovering new things.

With Bosch, the writing was fantastic and my cast members were so great that it was a joy to keep being able to discover new things about Grace and get her more and more in my body. And also, have Grace develop. We had enough time for Grace to go through personal changes and that’s kind of extraordinary.

WiC: The sixth season had her going through a sexual harassment vendetta. So where do fans find Grace in the final season? Does any of that follow her into season 7?

AA: We already kind of went there in the second season; you had the sexual harassment that was brought up. And then when they wrote last season, I was like, “Oh my God, maybe she really does have a problem. Maybe she needs to get some therapy!”  But this season there’s no evidence of that at all, which is great–neither from the department, nor from Vega. And in fact, she and Vega actually get to do some work together. They help each other because Grace herself ends up being the subject of harassment, which is a very interesting turn and not that unlikely to happen in any workplace that tends to be male-dominated.

It’s a really, really interesting season for Grace this year because she gets to do an investigation. We forget that before she was a bureaucrat and manager, she was a detective, and in this season she gets to show off some of her detective skills. She also reconnects with a lot of the women that she’s known and worked with before. This season is really about Bosch, and Jerry and Irving all at a crossroads, and Grace ends up at a kind of a crossroads of her own.  Everybody has these important decisions to make: are they going to go with what feels morally great or are they going to go with what’s going to work in the long run? And Grace is not immune to that.

WiC: As you look back on the character, what are some of the favorite moments that stand out to you from the series so far?

AA: One of my very first scenes, where I go up on the roof and find Bosch and take a cigarette from him, as if he’s not supposed to be smoking, and then end up smoking the rest of it; that was an idea of mine and I always loved how it turned out. Also pretty much every scene I ever did with Scott Klace. There’s just something about [his character] Mank that is indefinable. When we started working together, the very first time we did, it was like we had been acting together for our whole lives.

There were also the scenes with Bosch at various bars, when he and Grace would have some real talk. It was always wonderful having those moments where their history and their friendship would come out. Finally, Jamie Hector and I became very close, and would talk endlessly about life and compare our approaches to the work. In this season, we have a very nice moment where he comes to me and admits what’s going on with him. And there’s so much history to that moment. It’s not a big scene, but it’s a very sweet and rich little moment between us.

WiC: Is there anything that you want to leave people with, whether it’s related to Bosch or to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier?

AA: I’ve always felt an enormous responsibility during the run of [Bosch] to represent women in law enforcement. I’ve been living for 30 years just two miles from the Hollywood station, and [my husband and I] were actively involved with developing the relationship between the Department and the community. We got to know a lot of the officers, and the station itself, so to get this role—where if Amy picked up the phone to call for the police she would be reaching Grace Billets—is kind of an otherworldly thing.

Through the show, directly and indirectly, I’ve gotten to know a lot of women in law enforcement. I have developed such enormous respect for anybody who chooses to take this job, frankly, and especially for the women who do. I have to say, the women that I’ve met in law enforcement just rock. They have an amazing sense of humor. All of them. They are hilarious. So I’m guessing that’s a prerequisite.

Mitzi Roberts, who was one of our two technical advisors, held my hand through this whole thing. And in every moment, in the back of my mind was not simply “I have to do what Mitzi would do,” but, “I want her and my other female friends who are detectives and who are on patrol, I want them to look at what I’m doing and feel good about the choice that they made and feel like they’re being well-represented.”

I really do feel that most of the people I’ve gotten to know in law enforcement truly chose that path because they want to protect and to serve. The women, especially, seem like these fierce protectors. They want to take care of their community and I have such admiration for them. And so I just hope with the show that I have represented them with honor, because that’s what they deserve.

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