The world is run by the rich and powerful who take whatever they want without consequence, but the Leverage Crew has returned for an all-new high energy third season of Leverage: Redemption, determined to fight for those who have nowhere else to turn. This season they they head to Paris for a heist that leads them to fight a power broker stealing clean water from communities to make a fortune, as well as face off closer to home against a corrupt mayor who’s literally both the judge and jury of the town. They beat a cunning mark who finally catches up to them in the middle of a con, outwit a pool hustler with ties to international crime, and even bring down an industrialist exploiting child labor. Amid these high-stakes cons the team must also dodge a complex revenge plot from an enemy from season one all while navigating the shifting dynamics of their evolving personal lives.

SciFi Vision recently spoke with Christian Kane, who stars as Eliot Spencer, and Gina Bellman, who stars as Sophie Devereaux. The two spoke about the genre-bending third season, their fantastic costumes this time around, their love of acting, being directed by Beth Riesgraf, and much more.

Watch the interview or read the transcript below. You can now watch the first three episodes of the third season of Leverage: Redemption on Prime Video.

SCIFI VISION:   For people who haven't seen it, why don't you start by sort of teasing what's to come for each of your characters. We'll just go Christian and Gina.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   Well, you know, it's really Leverage: Redemption, right? Everybody's looking for redemption and stuff like this. I think this time, I think Elliot is - obviously I punch a lot of people, which is what he does. But I think he sits - it's very fun to watch, and everybody's going to go like, oh, he doesn't do anything, [but] he does a lot. He's watching people make decisions and deciding whether to chime in or not. I know that sounds boring, it's not, because I still beat the piss out of a lot of people. But at the same time, it's fun for me and fun for the character, because I get to watch people making choices, you know? And almost the same as Gina - with Sophie, but I'll let you take it from here.

GINA BELLMAN:   Yeah, I feel like everybody's in their groove this season. I don't know if you got that sense from it, but Sophie's in her groove. She's not giving herself a hard time. She's enjoying being in the driving seat, but she's also making time for herself and working on her personal relationships. And I feel like everybody is in the zone. And actually, it feels very refreshing to be able to do a season where there isn't massive angst, you know, and I really enjoyed that aspect of season three.

Did you get that sense watching it?

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, definitely. And I was gonna say, Christian, you talk about waiting and letting them do it. Obviously, other people [have fight scenes]. There's a lot with Beth [Riesgraf], especially. When they're doing their fighting and kicking people, do you feel like you're always giving them pointers and saying, “this is how you should be doing this,” because you've done it so much?

CHRISTIAN KANE:   It depends if I'm on set or not. If I'm on set.

[SCIFI VISION:]
I guess that's true.

GINA BELLMAN:   I had a little fight this year in the pool episode. And I asked him, I said to him, it said something like she hit someone with a pool cue. And I went to him and said, “I don't wanna just hit someone with a pool cue. Can you show me like a ninja move?”

CHRISTIAN KANE:   Well, you don't hold a pool cue like that. You hold it without here, because it hurts more.

IIt's like an Alan Rickman line. “Why a spoon?” “Because they're that small.”

And she took it like a champ. I mean, she literally, she did it. It was great.

GINA BELLMAN:   I wouldn't say like a champ. We had to go over and over and over and over it.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   I was trying to give her a benefit of the doubt. They weren't there…I mean, that's what we do for a living.

GINA BELLMAN:   He's very patient and it was a lot of fun. Yeah.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   It was good.

SCIFI VISION:   Great. Gina, your character gets a bit of a sort of love interest I guess this season. Can you tease anything about that? I know you can't say too much, but maybe a little bit.

GINA BELLMAN:   I think that Sophie is like ready to move on, dip her toe in the dating pool, see what's out there. [She’s] a bit worried about going online, because, you know, can she be her authentic self outside of this group? She doesn't even probably know who her authentic self is.

And then she's thinking, she's like second guessing, is anybody else out there being authentic on these apps? Then of course she does sort of have a little flirtation with someone, which is I think really lovely to see. And it was really lovely episode to kind of shoot and to see her like put herself out there a little bit, but not in a vulnerable way, in a way that's in her kind of power.

And then there's an episode where she goes on a date and she realizes that there's something fishy going on.

So yeah, it was really rewarding. Both those storylines were a lot of fun.

SCIFI VISION:   Now, Christian, talk about your, I forget exactly what his name is, but the cabin character. Talk about creating him, because that was hilarious.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   I was trying to think of a horror genre guy that I could play. And I just couldn't, I wrapped up about three people into it. I was very fortunate in my life. I got to do a movie with, how do I say this? With Freddy Krueger, Bishop from Aliens, and the T-1000. You know, it was Robert Patrick and anyway, and I sort of like did all that kind of stuff. And I couldn't really play Robert Englund because Robert Englund just made that character. So, I wrapped them all into one, and I really leaned into Lance Hendrickson a lot. What would Lance Henriksen do? A lot of Pumpkin Head. I don't know. I just thought it was so great of a script to have that happen.

And then Beth's counterpart on that. And so, I said, “I can't do it.” I literally said, “I can't do it.” How do I make this work? And I said, “let me lean into Beth being the main character of that and being the scariest character we've ever seen.” So, whatever I'm going to do, it won't matter as long as I try to make her character even more scary than me. And that's how I got out of it. It was actually by default. So yeah.

SCIFI VISION:   I was going to say, they're both creepy, but yeah, I guess hers was a little more creepy.

GINA BELLMAN:   I think my character's a little bit creepy too in that episode as the wellness guru.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   Yeah, because she's Charles Manson. I mean, we all got to play. Yeah, exactly. I kind of played Lance Henriksen in Pumpkinhead. You were Charles Manson and Beth was just Beth.

SCIFI VISION:   That's true. Other than that one, what was your favorite sort of genre-bending episode? There's quite a lot of sort of themed episodes this season.

GINA BELLMAN:   Absolutely, well, my favorite episodes are always Jonathan Frakes. I mean, you know, I'm sorry, Dean [Devlin], I love you to bits, and I love Mark Ruskin, but I just laugh so hard when I'm working with Jonathan Frakes, and I've got such a soft spot for him. And like that episode where we actually pull off a con in the future, I just thought it was just so fun. I can't wait to see it. I can't wait to see how it turns out, because the idea of like, trying to convince someone that they're in the future is just so bold, and it was so much fun to do.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   And it was, it's really - she's actually right about that. We worked with one of the best costume designers around, Nadine Haders, and I literally ordered everything I had off of Amazon. I just said, “I want this; I want this.” I created this whole thing that I had with toys and arms and all this stuff. And I said, “spray paint it all like punk,” like, what do you call it? Steampunk. And we got all that stuff, but I didn't know how it would look. And Jonathan Frakes goes, “You don't even have to act.” So, to get his approval, like she said, fantastic. But that was a lot of fun to do, just being - because we had two seconds of it, you know, and so it was like really fun. I don't know, how'd it work? You saw it.

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, it was a great costume. It was creepy.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   Did the damn thing work?

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, that was cool. Do you ever add things to the costumes like that or tell them kind of what you want?

[GINA BELLMAN:]
Who, me?

[SCIFI VISION:]
Yeah.

GINA BELLMAN:   Totally. I totally – and sometimes -

CHRISTIAN KANE:   We’d go shopping on the weekends.

GINA BELLMAN:   We’d go shopping on the weekends, and sometimes I'll have a completely different idea. I'll read a script, and I'm very close to Nadine. She's a great friend, but I'll call her up, and I'll say, “okay, so I'm thinking this for this episode.” And she'll say, “oh my God, that's the absolute opposite of what I was thinking.” And then we have to bring each other around. Sometimes she brings me over to her side. Sometimes I bring her over to my side, but it's a lot of fun.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   That's why she's so brilliant. And we worked with her for a long, long time.

SCIFI VISION:   That's great. The show is so collaborative. What was it like being directed by Beth? I know you guys have before, but I've never asked that before. What's it like being directed by a friend, I guess, I should say.

GINA BELLMAN:   It's definitely something you have to adapt to, because actors are vulnerable in the end. You do feel vulnerable, and you do look to the director for guidance. But we do look to each other for guidance even as actors actually, but it's definitely a different dynamic. But at the same time, I think we've always really encouraged one another in what we do. We've been vulnerable. I worked on the show when I was pregnant. We've all been working on the show when we're going through personal stuff. We've always backed each other. We've always looked out for each other. And I think that this was just another example of trying to raise each other up. Wouldn’t you say?

CHRISTIAN KANE:   Yeah, we always try to have each other's back.

SCIFI VISION:   Have either of you ever thought that maybe you should go behind the camera, or is that not something for you?

GINA BELLMAN:   No, I think neither of us want to.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   We love being actors.

GINA BELLMAN:   We love being actors.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   It's just one of those things. I don't know what it is. Listen, I would like to take a shot at writing.

GINA BELLMAN:   Yeah, I would love to be in the writer's room. Like that for me would be, if I lived in Los Angeles and John Rogers was like, come on, jump in the writer's room. I would literally, I would be so, so excited.

CHRISTIAN KANE:   But here's the thing. And let me put this out there. I've never been a director. I've directed probably a hundred fights. You know what I mean? I was like, “no, you got to put this here. You got to put this here.” I've even talked to directors in different situations.

You know what I mean? So, it's like, look, and I've directed this kind of stuff. I don't know necessarily everything to know about camera angles and shots and overs and all that, but I've directed a lot of this stuff. She has too with being an actor. She just has. I've seen her direct when she's not even, you know, telling the cameraman what to do. I've seen her direct. That's a true story.

But I tell you, I mean, I don't know. It's just something about, we've actually talked about this before. I just, I love being an actor.

And I don't know if it's because I'm so secure in what I do, or if I'm insecure with what I do, and I want somebody to tell me…I just, I really like being an actor. Directing, I tell you what, that's a lot of work.

GINA BELLMAN:   Yeah, so we're all exec producers this year, which was really nice to be able to get, you know, that recognition that we've, you know, been a part of the creative process of the show.