Olivia Benford is a complex woman who’s deeply in love, but struggling with the recent events of the future flash her, and everyone else on the face of this planet, saw in the new ABC series FlashForward. Olivia is played by actress Sonya Walger, who has guest starred on LOST since 2006 as Penelope Widmore, another woman deeply in love and struggling to keep that love intact. TVOvermind had the privilege to speak to Sonya Walger yesterday about her role on the show, and what we can hope to see as the mysterious series progresses at a rapid pace.

Read the full interview here at TVOvermind.com

If you thought Lost was a tricky show filled with twists and turns, FlashForward has a few mind games of its own to play. TVGuide.com sat down with a star from both ABC shows.

One of the many issues FlashForward raises is whether or not you can change the future. Sonya Walger’s character, Olivia, finds herself struggling to make sure the glimpse she saw in her flash doesn’t come true, because it would mean the end of her marriage to Mark (Joseph Fiennes).

What does the rest of Olivia’s flash forward reveal? Can her marriage survive these circumstances? Walger discusses that and more. First, let’s get the major Lost question out of the way …

TVGuide.com: All right, when are you returning to Lost?
Sonya Walger: No idea. Not a clue. I don’t even know if I’m in the last season.

TVGuide.com: Do you think Penny should die in the end?
Walger: Are you saying in a sacrificial way, Penny needs to die? I hope not because Penny’s so great. There would be mass outcry, but you know what, they killed off Charlie, so anything can happen. I feel like her dad should be the one to bite it. I am not kidding.

TVGuide.com: Were you nervous about joining another mythology-heavy show?
Walger: No, not at all. It’s funny, I didn’t even think of Lost when I read that script. It sounds bizarre or naïve, but I really didn’t. I read the script and I was so excited by the writing and by this character, by this woman who is complicated and says ‘I hate you’ to her husband when she means ‘I love you.’ She’s a professional and a surgeon and a mother. I didn’t see any similarities to Lost. I honestly still don’t. I see them as big shows that have one big exciting event, the catalyst that gets it all going with an ensemble cast. I see that, but after that they just part ways. There isn’t a mythology to FlashForward in the same way. There’s not codes to decipher … There’s not islands moving and polar bears and smoke monsters, that’s not in our show … yet anyway.

TVGuide.com: Did you ever work with Dominic Monaghan on Lost?
Walger: This is the joke of me being a part of Lost, I haven’t met three-quarters of that cast. I’m not kidding. I would be as star-struck as you would be if I met Matthew Fox. I actually only met Dominic on a photo shoot for FlashForward — that was the first time we met. He comes into play in quite a significant way in this show. I can’t really tell you anymore than that. He’s a good part of it.

TVGuide.com: We haven’t seen all of Olivia’s flash-forward. What can you tease about what we haven’t seen?
Walger: In the flash-forward, the bit that you have seen is that Lloyd [Jack Davenport] gets up from the bed and gets a text message from someone. The person he gets a text message from is very, very unexpected.

TVGuide.com: Can Mark and Olivia’s marriage survive this flash-forward?
Walger: Who knows? I think it’s completely fascinating that just the ghost of this might be what undoes their marriage, or it might be what strengthens them and keeps them together. It might be the tension of it alone [that] drives Mark to drink. It’s such an interesting idea that just the threat of something might be what leads you towards it. It may well be that they get to a breaking point and then say, ‘No, this isn’t happening to us. We’re going to make this work.’

TVGuide.com: Do you have any personal belief in fate?
Walger: I don’t really. The word fate doesn’t really mean much to me in some ways. I think we make our own. Minute by minute you decide who you are and who you’re likely to be. You make the choices hour by hour, just in the present. I don’t believe there’s some roadmap laid out that we’re headed towards.

TVGuide.com: Give us a nice tease for what’s coming up for Olivia.
Walger: She’s going to be forced quite soon to deal with whether or not you can change the future. She keeps being reminded — evidence keeps being presented all around her — that you can’t change it. Every time she thinks she’s seen the last of Lloyd and that she’s managed to avoid it, he keeps coming back.

Do you think FlashForward has more twists than Lost?

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking with actress Sonya Walger, the Argentinean/British star of ABC’s new hit series Flash Forward, which premiered last Thursday to an impressive 12.4 million viewers. Walger, 35, spoke to Vivo Por Tivo about her exciting new role, the difference between Flash Forward and Lost, her favorite books, and what it’s like balancing a brand new job with a brand new marriage.

Tell us about your Flash Forward character Olivia Benford.
Olivia is a trauma surgeon. She’s a dedicated doctor and the wife of Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) who is an FBI Agent. They’ve been married for seven years—maybe 8—and he’s a recovering alcoholic so he’s in a program—and they’ve clearly had some bumpy times in their marriage in the past. But they’re in a good place now. They’ve got a little girl named Charlie, and I think the condition is for as long as he’s sober, their marriage works. But she has said to him before that if he drinks again, she’ll leave him. With him being in the FBI and her being a surgeon—they are a busy couple.

What do you think draws Olivia to Mark?
That’s a good question. I think she loves what a good dad he is, and how devoted he is to Charlie. I think she feels very loved by him as well. She knows he battles with these demons all of the time and there’s nothing she can do about them. I think that’s the endless battle of being with anyone who has an addiction—it’s not about you, it’s about how much support you’re willing to give. So I think they have a real profound connection, but I think it’s been tested over the years.

I watched the pilot and I think Olivia may have some demons too. Does she?
That’s interesting. I think if Olivia has any demons it’s her work ethic—her completely massive focus on work. Maybe she’s taken that to an extreme in the past. Yeah, I’m sure she has some demons of her own.

Obviously, one of the great things about the show is its larger-than-life scope, but what do you think is the bread and butter of this show? Is it the relationships?
Yeah, it really is. It’s epic in scale, and as you can see from the pilot, its epic in concept. It’s shot like a movie, so I think it’s breathtaking how big it looks! But it’s really intimate in terms of where the drama is coming out of—the drama is really coming out of these relationships. We’re about to start shooting episode 9 and 10 this week, and watching what is really happening to Mark and Olivia because of what she’s seen and what he’s seen that he hasn’t told her—it’s so interesting. It’s not huge crashing events that are forcing them apart. It’s just the daily wear and tear of living with someone and wondering if you’re going to cheat on them.

The first episode was a little depressing. It seemed like the lives of these people were a little hopeless. Is this a show about hopelessness?
There’s so much hope in it! The pilot only focuses on a handful of people’s flash forwards. There are so many other characters that you don’t see in the pilot, but you start seeing in subsequent episodes who have flash forwards that you hope come true! It’s so wonderful what they’re seeing in the future. So that’s what has become so interesting is that everyone is wandering through the world, and some people are trying desperately to make sure they don’t happen, but others are looking for theirs to come true.

As you well know, Flash Forward has been exhaustingly compared to Lost. How are the two shows similar or different?
I think they are very different. I think they are similar in that they have an ensemble cast and that there’s one giant event that propels everyone into these different situations. But after that, I think we part ways quite quickly. Flash Forward doesn’t have this embedded mythology in the same way as Lost. It’s very human. What you will see from here forward are the ripple effects of everyone dealing with what they saw in a very human way. People are given the real time to come to terms with what they’ve experienced. It’s not a science fiction show. It’s much more grounded in human reality, apart from the flash forward, which is the only thing that you’re asked to buy into as an audience member.

You’ve done so many different kinds of shows, from Lost to HBO’s provocative drama Tell Me You Love Me. What attracts you to the roles you have played?
I really like investigating the things that make us human. I like playing interesting, complicated women. If there’s a common denominator in all of the parts I’ve played, they are all strong women in tough situations.

You got married in July, so congratulations! What is it like juggling a brand new marriage and a brand new TV show?
It’s a great thing! I thought it would be a lot to deal with. I’m loving both. I love going to work, and I love coming home. So I’m a lucky girl!

Your dad is from Argentina, right?
Yes, from Buenos Aires! He ‘s lived there his whole life pretty much. He married my mother who’s English and they went to England for a little while, and then they split and he moved back to Buenos Aires. I didn’t grow up there. They brought me up bilingual and I traveled back and forth there my whole life, and my Godparents and half my family’s there. So I feel English, but I also feel very Argentine.

Do you like Argentinean food?
I do eat empanadas, carne, chorizo. Everything! [Laughs].

In addition to being Argentinean, you are also very well educated! What was it like attending the elite Oxford?
That was magnificent! That was really some of the happiest times of my life I think. It was just wonderful. I studied English literature, and woke up every morning to read literature and in my spare time I was doing plays. I made wonderful friends there… I look back in sort of disbelief. It was a really privileged time.

What are some of your favorite books?
Oh, I am very old fashioned about my literature taste. I like Henry James. I like George Elliot. I like Dostoyevsky. I like the old people. I really do. I like people who write big fat juicy novels you can get completely lost in!

Do you have a specialty in literature or were your studies general?
No, we just started at the beginning and went through to the 1950s—when Oxford seems to think literature ends. We started with Chaucer and finished up with T.S. Elliot, I think.

Courtesy of Latina.com

Set Visit Interview: Sonya Walger and Zachary Knighton On the Set of ABC’s FLASH FORWARD

On the ABC television series Flash Forward, Sonya Walger plays trauma surgeon Olivia Benford, wife to FBI Agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) and mother to their daughter, Charlie. Olivia is also the the direct superior to surgical intern Bryce Varley (played by Zachary Knighton) who, before the black-out, was standing on the pier, ready to kill himself.

During a set visit to the multiple stages where they are filming the complex show, co-stars Sonya Walger and Zachary Knighton talked about being a part of the most talked about show this season.

Q: This show is not Lost, and anybody who’s seen the pilot knows it. Is it irritating that people keep bringing it up, or is it flattering?

Sonya: To be put in the same breath as Lost is a really flattering, fantastic thing, and I think we’d be blown away and elated if we had half the following that Lost has. It’s a great show, as is this, but they are very different. They really are. They share having an ensemble cast and having a great mystery at the core of it, but after that, they part ways, very radically.

Q: Will this show be as complicated as Lost?

Sonya: It’s certainly complicated, in that it’s sophisticated, but it doesn’t have the dense mythology of Lost. If you join in Episode 8, it will be very clear what’s gone on. Sure, there’ll be tiny details of people’s storylines that you’ve missed, but essentially, it’s clear. The world blacked out, everyone got a glimpse of their future, and everyone’s trying to deal with it. That will keep the story very simple to follow.

Q: When you read this script, were you more attracted to the concept of it, or that it’s such a character-driven show?

Zachary: For me, personally, it was the best pilot that I’d gotten a chance to audition for and read. I’ve been a huge fan of David Goyer’s for a long time. I’ve met with him on other stuff, like a couple of the Blade movies, and I’ve been dying to work with him. When I read the script, I just went, “This is one that I’m not going to get. There’s going to be somebody more famous than me that wants to do this part.”

I love Lost. I love the mythology of that show and I love the idea of big, character-driven dramas, and this show is so character-based. It gets to the depths of people’s characters because of what they’ve seen. Most people in the show have been shaken to the core with what they’ve seen, whether it be positive or negative. So, that was definitely a big attraction for me.

Q: Zachary, how quickly will viewers get to see why your character was going to kill himself?

Zachary: I think it’s a mystery. But, you’re definitely going to find out why he was on the pier, about to blow his brains out.

Q: Will viewers find out what his flash-forward was?

Zachary: Yeah. He’s changed. In the pilot, he’s on the pier, about to make a life-altering decision, and he comes out of it an entirely different man. You’ve got to have some hope. A lot of people are trying to avoid what they saw, but some people want to have what they saw occur.

Q: What’s it like to do the medical scenes? Is it like being in a different show?

Sonya: It’s fun. It’s not a medical show because it’s rare that we’re so intent on curing this particular patient. It’s always the DNA of everyone that had a flash-forward. It’s not going to be Grey’s Anatomy in this corner, CSI in that corner and Days of Our Lives in another corner. It’s always spawning off what the flash-forward was.

If we’re treating a victim, it’s often because they’re a casualty of the flash-forward and they got injured in the chaos that ensued, or perhaps they had a vision that then affects the diagnosis that we might or might not end up making. I’m fascinated by the technical jargon we have to master for that. We spent some time at Cedars-Sinai with a surgeon. It’s always fun to learn new skills and new vocabularies, but it’s always embedded in what these flash-forwards are.

Zachary: There are these different worlds, but all these worlds are going to intersect, at one point or another. So, the idea is that these people are all connected, much like we all are in real life, in some strange way. But, the interesting thing is that the paths cross.

Q: Were you surprised that Joseph Fiennes would do a TV series?

Sonya: No, honestly, I wasn’t, having read the pilot, and having seen just how good the quality of the writing is. As someone who is a veteran of now eight pilot seasons, I can vouch for how rare it is to come across a script that’s this good, or roles that are this developed and interesting. It often takes seasons to get characters that have this many quirks and flaws to them, so I wasn’t that surprised. I thought it was a plum role, for any actor. All of these roles are plum roles for any actor to get.

Zachary: Not to mention, it really feels like a movie, every week. It’s shot like a movie. It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like this on television. And, it doesn’t stop with the pilot. You can’t just do that to an audience. You can’t just drop these massive scenes, and this epic nature. If you took that away in Episode 2, the viewers would be upset. They’d feel cheated.

Sonya: Yeah, that’s true. It’s interesting because, every time a storyline seems to resolve itself, there’s another one sprouting. There’s just no containing it.

Q: Sonya, are you returning to Lost for the last season?

Sonya: I have no idea. I’m never told anything. Lost and I have an extremely flexible, loving relationship. When they call, if I’m around, I go.

Q: Would you like to go back?

Sonya: Sure, I’d love to go back. Honestly, my hands are full. This is a full-time, great job. But, I loved doing Lost and I’ve always loved being a part of it. I’d be sad to not sign Penny out, in some proper way.

Q: How strange was it when you found out Dominic was also on this show?

Sonya: Not that strange, honestly. Dominic and I never worked together on Lost. I only met him here. So, I think it’s much stranger for everybody else than it is for me.

Source: http://iesb.net/

Sonya and Joseph discuss FlashForward:

Hulu’s interview:

Zap2it’s interview:

Sonya talks about Olivia’s marriage to Mark:

ABC Source’s interview:

FlashForward is quite undeniably the most buzzed-about new series this season. With heavy comparisons to Lost, the drama charts what happens when the whole world blacks out for exactly 2 minutes and 17 seconds, during which time they experience ‘flash forwards’ of their lives six months in the future. The cast is aptly stellar, and includes Joseph Fiennes, John Cho, Lost’s Sonya Walger and her former co-star Dominic Monaghan. But could FlashForward really be the next big thing? We called up the show’s leading lady to find out more.

What can you tell us about your character, Olivia?
“She’s the main woman in the show. My husband is an FBI agent, played by Joseph Fiennes, who is put in charge of working out what happened. She’s a trauma surgeon in her own right so she’s working at the hospital and dealing with many of the casualties of the event and therefore many of the stories. She had her own flash forward which was very troubling – she sees the end of her marriage. She sees herself with another man; a man she’s never met before and she confides that in her husband. She thinks it will help by revealing that information to him, but it ends up making them both feel very unsettled. They have a child, little Charlie, who has also had a flash forward even though she’s only seven.”

Having worked on both Lost and FlashForward now, what do you make of the comparisons between the shows?
“I think they’re only valid in that they’re both big ensemble shows with one big concept or premise. But after that, they part ways really quite rapidly. FlashForward is definitely not a sci-fi show. It doesn’t have the mythology of Lost. We have one major event that happens that you are asked to buy into. After that, you’re dealing with very human ripple effects – how people deal with it and how they come to terms with it. There are six-and-a-half billion people that have blacked out, so that’s potentially six-and-a-half billion stories to tell! Believe me, we’re not telling all of them. But we’re about to start [filming] episode eight and I’m so surprised by how far the ripple has been felt.”

Are the FlashForward scripts kept equally as secret?

“These scripts are kept very, very secret. Each script has a watermark on it with your name. My script has my name on every single page, so if it was found in a trash can or on a website, it would have my name on it so it would be directly my fault if that script leaked. We have to hand our scripts in when we’re finished with them so that they can shred them! There is very tight security – they hand-deliever my scripts to my house as well. The essence of this show is the element of surprise and the gradual discovery of it, so it would be a tremendous shame if the secrets got out before the show had even launched.”

Will your involvement in the final season of Lost affect your role on FlashForward?
“I don’t know if I’m in the final season of Lost – no-one tells me anything! My hunch is that you’ll see Penny again because I can’t believe that they would just never refer to her again, but I have no idea. Luckily, they’re both ABC shows, so it’s in-house. I’m not being traded across party lines!”

When Lost ends, do you think fans of the show will jump on-board FlashForward?
“I hope so. I think Lost is like losing a friend or a relative or someone. You can’t replace it with another one. Lost holds a very special place in people’s hearts and I wouldn’t presume to say that FlashForward will replace Lost. I think it provides a lot of the same adrenaline and fascination and entertainment. It will help ease the pain of losing Lost! I think it will appeal to the very same audience.”

Do you think that’s why yourself and Dominic Monaghan were brought on board?
“It’s hard to say. On the one hand, I hope I was chosen because I was the best person for the part. I don’t think it hurt that I was on Lost and people liked my character and people want to see what else Penny is up to. And I think the same is true for Dominic. It doesn’t hurt that either of us were on Lost and it doens’t help that John Cho was on Star Trek. It doesn’t hurt that Joe Fiennes has done many great films! Any time you cast an actor, you don’t just cast that actor; you cast all their other performances as well. Nobody assumes that just because I’m in it, the whole of the Lost audience will watch it.”

How has it been working with Dominic again? How do your characters come across each other?
“It’s funny because I’m actually filming with Dominic for the first time – our paths never crossed. We had one scene together where I was on a small TV screen, so we actually shot that apart – he was in Hawai’i and I was in Broadway doing Frost/Nixon. We never actually met until he came to do FlashForward. This far, we still haven’t done a scene together! I met him on the set and we’ve hung out at some photoshoots but I’ve yet to do a scene with him. He seems great. I’m sure he’s a lovely guy!”

Did Robert J. Sawyer help with the show?
“His book was where the idea for the show came from, so [executive producer] David Goyer approached Sawyer to buy the rights and that happened very smoothly, but no – he didn’t help. He came to the set to visit and he loved the pilot, loved the script. He’s seen the pilot and he loved it. I gather if all goes well, Goyer has asked him if he’d like to write an episode of the show – assuming we go past our initial pickup of 13…”

Is the show quite similar to the book?
“It’s very, very different. It’s a good, fun book and it’s a great science fiction read but it’s not the show at all. They’ve taken the premise from the book to make the show but in the book, people have flash forwards that are much different – it can be like 60 years, not the six months it is in our show. You could read the book and have a good time but you wouldn’t find out much about our show.”

April 20 has been mentioned as a key date for the show. Can we expect a big, climactic episode on that date?
“I would imagine so, yes. But I have no idea! You’ll be fed stuff throughout the season – I think that’s what’s interesting about the show. You don’t have to wait five seasons to find out what’s going on! There will be mysteries solved all the way through. You’ll be surprised how quickly you get information about who’s doing what. It’s a very gratifying show.”

Source: Digital Spy

IGN TV: FlashForward has a pretty bold concept. What was your reaction to it initially?

Sonya Walger: Oh, I flipped for it. I thought it was just such an outstanding piece of writing. I rang my agents immediately and was like, “How do we make this happen? What do I have to do? I’ll audition for anyone you need me to audition for. I will jump through any hoops. I just want to play this part.”

IGN: How would you describe your character?

Walger: Olivia is a strong, complicated woman who’s a working mother. She’s a trauma surgeon and a loving wife. She’s devoted to her work and trying to make time for her kid. Olivia’s plate is full long before the flash forward happens I think.

IGN: [FlashForward Executive Producer] David Goyer has said he plays things pretty close to the vest as far as not telling you guys what’s going to happen. Do you try to get him or the other writers to reveal anything?

Walger: Not really, unless I really need it – unless I feel like I can’t play the scene without a particular piece of information. But otherwise, I’m very happy just to go with what I have. There’s enough on the page – the scripts are so well written. There’s plenty to play, without needing to pry more secrets out of them.

IGN: Now that you’ve filmed a few episodes, has it been interesting to see how they’ve begun to lay out these puzzle pieces, aiming towards the place we saw you in in your flash forward?

Walger: It’s wonderful. It’s so exciting. So exciting watching the show spread out in such unexpected ways. The ripple effect of these premonitions and where they take us is really wonderful.

IGN: On FlashForward, have you had any scenes with Dominic yet?

Walger: No, not yet.

IGN: Are you getting prepared for the fact that FlashForward is likely to be one of those show that will have fans asking so many specific questions?

Walger: Listen, if we have an 18th of the success that Lost has, it will be a lovely thing. I won’t complain! It will be great.

Read the entire article at IGN.