990101vpi

BACK WITH GUNS BLAZING: "NIKITA" PROMISES A PLOT TWIST OR TWO IN ITS THIRD SEASON

The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)
01-01-99
By Daily Break, page E2

COMMENTARY
Mention of Xena comparing her with Buffy and Nikita as "women who kick butt and drive up ratings". Peta Wilson (Nikita) is also quoted as saying "[I]t's great to have female action heroes on TV who appeal equally to 12-year-old girls and 70-year-old men."

EXCERPTS

PRIMARY SOURCE

    HELLO, 1999. Hello again, Nikita. Love the leather.
    Peta Wilson, the Emma Peel of this decade, returns for a third season of
''La Femme Nikita'' Sunday night at 10 on USA.  
    Expect two jolts. Nikita's Section One bosses decide she's expendable and try
to eliminate her with an air-to-surface missile strike. Boom! Nikita discovers
that her mentor/lover Michael has a wife and son. Secret exposed!
    Nikita escapes the trap set for her by the cold fish who run Section One,
surviving to help make the West safe from terrorists. With pistols blazing,
Wilson confronts bad guys based in China and financed by the North Koreans.
    She crashes through a window to escape their gunfire. She pounces on the
roof of their car to stop them from fleeing. Go, girl!
    ''I do the majority of the stunts and most of the fight sequences,'' Wilson
says. ''I'd do more, but the producers don't want me hurt for the next
episode.''
    Cable cuts deeply into broadcast TV's prime-time audience with such edgy,
original programming as ''La Femme Nikita,'' based on the 1991 French film. It's
heroine as reluctant assassin, played by a stunning blond in pigtails who says
she gives Nikita two qualities: power and vulnerability.
    ''My character is an angel running with wolves,'' Wilson, an Aussie, says of
Nikita's role with the we'll-gladly-kill-a-few-innocent-people-to-save-a-million-others gang of Section One.
    And the cool clothes? ''I love our costume designer. I trust her implicitly.
She gives me exactly what I think Nikita should be wearing. I like hiding my
identity in the clothes.''
    Upcoming plot twists: Nikita learns that Michael's father-in-law is a
terrorist; Nikita meets the mother who abandoned her; Section One delves into
cloning and mind control.
    Nikita, Buffy and Xena: The women who kick butt and drive up ratings.
    ''I think it's great to have female action heroes on TV who appeal equally
to 12-year-old girls and 70-year-old men,'' Wilson says.

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