Strike Back star Alin Sumarwata on Novin’s tumultuous season

Before the Strike Back season finale, Alin Sumarwata dishes on playing Gracie Novin as TV’s most fearless female had an unpredictable season.

This season of Strike Back ends tonight, and that’s probably a relief for Gracie Novin. TV fans have seen Alin Sumarwata’s character reach a breaking point on the Cinemax series, and it’s all coming to a head now.

If Samuel Wyatt got all the emotional problems in Strike Back season 6, Novin had the physical ones. She was put in so many crazy predicaments this season, all while still trying to get the chip off her shoulder from what happened last season.

Alin Sumarwata joined Hidden Remote to look ahead to the season finale, discussing just where Novin’s mind is at going into this final showdown and what it’s been like for her to take the role to new heights.

Preview the Strike Back season finale with Alin in our interview below, then don’t miss the finale itself tonight at 10 p.m.!

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Hidden Remote: Where is Novin’s head at going into this finale? Because it seems like she’s the most angered by everything that’s happened this season.

Alin Sumarwata: The team have gone through gauntlet hell to retrieve those pesky missile launch keys. To save the boss, Mac [Warren Brown] as team leader makes the decision to pass them over to the very person the world would dread for them to be in the hands of.

It’s an incredibly high-stakes human dilemma with choices that could lead to catastrophic results. I’m sure she’d love to ride away in a Jeep or another sea plane and never look back at this point, but you know she would never do that.

She’s all in and will support the team under Mac’s leadership—but never without the odd ticked off snark or two!

Overall, is she emotionally okay? There’s the scene earlier in Strike Back season 6 where she talks about how Jensen’s death still affects her, so with everything that’s piled on now that’s a lot of weight.

Just because she keeps barreling on, doesn’t necessarily mean her emotional problems have gone away or have gotten easier. There’s another heartbreaking moment in the finale when she’s faced again with her worst nightmare—and that is the reality of losing someone. Losing someone she’s worked with and has come trust. She knows it’s part of the game she’s in, but that doesn’t make it any easier when you’re actually faced with that horrible heart-wrenching moment.

Do you think she’d ever quit? Especially now that she’s seen Wyatt walk away and can see that it’s possible to leave Section 20?

No, she doesn’t really have anything to go back to. “Home” is not a good place for her. Going into the army was initially an escape, but now she’s found her purpose in the Section, in the army, in doing these missions and that’s what she’s addicted to.

Unlike Wyatt [Daniel MacPherson], she doesn’t have that choice, and that’s what is so heartbreaking about Wyatt’s situation. I actually cried when I first read that part in the script during the long one-take sequence [in “Episode 59”]—where she’s wrapping him up, cleaning his wounds up and saying how happy Mac was when he left and him coming back broke his heart. She’s speaking from her point of view as well.

They would have both been so pleased for him to find a new life outside of the crazy world they’re in. The fact that he had that option and took it, they genuinely felt “Wow, good for him.” It was heartbreaking for them both when Wyatt came back. It’s not that they don’t want him on the team but it just shattered their hopes that he couldn’t find peace at home outside of the Section. It’s a really heartbreaking reality for all of them.

On a lighter note, Novin’s love-hate-whatever it is now relationship with Katrina Zarkova has been fun and complicated and sort of the comic relief of the season. How fun was it to play that with Yasemin Kay Allen?

it was so much fun to play these really opposing characters, forced into a situation of having to work together. [Showrunner] Jack Lothian really gave us some great duo material—the sea plane escape and “Shoot the bomb?!?” are definitely amongst my favorite moments.

Yasemin is fantastic on this show; I’m so proud to have her on board. She is intelligent, empathetic, quirky cool, and these are just some of the layers we see in Zarkova too. When you have a character that is unmistakably so kick-ass, yet played so beautifully vulnerable, it wins you over from the get-go. Perhaps it doesn’t win over Novin at first, but certainly the awkward dynamic and conflicting situations makes it fun to watch.

Novin has gotten thrown into so many odd situations this season. The sea plane is one, she ends up in prison—what was the most surprising for you when you read it?

Often the biggest action sequences or setups in Strike Back are blurted in one simple sentence, in the script. Last season it was something like “Novin fights off bodyguards down the corridor and jumps out of a window.” This year it went something like “Novin takes the fire hose reel and leaps off the building to safety.” I had to read that over three times to be sure Jack wrote what I actually read.

Novin seems to be a useful character vehicle to move the story from A to K, let’s say, when you need the situation to go a bit further than B—of course in the most bizarre way. I’m not quite sure why this is. I guess she is just bizarre.

But some of those situations have been pretty awesome, too. In episode 5, she had that great fight with Gabriela, the arms broker, who was played by your own stunt double.

That’s Jade Dre who was my stunt double from the end of last season and all of this season. We’re all big fans of her; she’s a highly skilled martial artist, and it was Jack’s idea to put her in the show and for us to fight one on one. It was really exciting for me because we are always training together, we are always rehearsing Novin’s choreography together.

She would teach me my parts and then she would practice with me by being my opponent…so we are very familiar with each other’s movements and know how we work well so it was such a treat to be given that opportunity to fight her as a real on-screen opponent.

Then Strike Back gives us that massive one-shot in episode 9. As an actor, what was it like to play that huge scene? And are there any other moments that stand out to you?

it was so fulfilling. The two years of training we’ve had on the show, on and off, it all came to full use that day. We didn’t have to think about movement and tactical principles; they were all ingrained. We were able to focus on how to best place ourselves in relation to the camera, to tell the story with utmost regard to safety distances of firing weapons, eplosives and pyros around us.

Working with Tom Wu, who played Laoshu, was a massive honour. He is a real-life badass ninja on and off-screen. I did enjoy watching back the Zarkova and Novin fight in the carpark as well.

The shooting day with [Jamie] Bamber in the pool room was one of the best days I’ve had on the show. He basically had to do all the hard work. (laughs) Jokes aside, it was a lovely scene to work with Jamie and to peel open more character layers than usual for Novin. That dude is quietly becoming the ninja of the season; we’ve seen him make wonderful use of humble apparatus around him and the snooker room won’t disappoint.

We know that Strike Back season 7 will be the last, so are there any requests that you have for Gracie Novin next season?

A freaking J-turn! How hard could it be? (laughs) You know how many times that’s been cut out? That’s been cut out more than my character’s backstory. And the funny thing is we’ve got so close to doing it every time. We were scheduled to do it when we arrived on location one day and the blockades were up all over the street. The Malaysian council decided they needed to do road works that day and production weren’t aware.

The J-turn was supposed to happen when Novin drives Mac and Connor Ryan, one of my favorite guest characters played by Aidan McArdle, to safety right after they jump out of the building and Mac gets hit by a car.

I’d love to do another one shot, in a full-fledged combat warfare scenario with a hundred-plus enemy soldiers. One can only ask, right?

But the one thing you don’t want is for Novin to be promoted. You actually argued against that this season.

I’m happy for Novin never to be promoted. I’m sure she’d be great as Sergeant for a day, but ultimately she just wants to blow s–t up and walk away and not really be responsible for anything else.

I love the way Jack wrote that in. They told me at the start of the season that Novin had to be Sergeant; there were some opinions about how she couldn’t be Lance Corporal in a Special Forces unit. I wasn’t keen on the change for her character, and I spoke to our military adviser Paul Biddis to get his input on how we could keep Novin as Lance Corporal.

He came up with numerous and funny backstory ideas of how it would actually work in real life—how you can be Sergeant in the Special Forces and then demoted afterwards, just so we could keep Novin as a Lance Corporal.

So when you look ahead to Strike Back season 7, and back on season 6, what do you think? It’s been a fairly short ride, but it’s already been very satisfying.

I’m really proud of this season. I think we have accomplished a huge amount. I’m really grateful for all the support and comments of encouragement from fans. I just don’t know how much more we can push this thing to be any bigger; I mean this one was pretty big. (laughs)

But like with anything, you hope that it just keeps getting better. Now that the audience have a good grasp of the characters and their relationships, I think we can push and create something truly kick-ass.

Strike Back airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on Cinemax. For more on Strike Back and other Cinemax shows, follow the Cinemax category at Hidden Remote.