Samantha Richelle Talks ‘Almost Paradise’ and How Her Character Fights Against Gender Norms [Exclusive Interview]

With her roots cemented in Los Angeles, London, and Manila, Samantha Richelle is returning to the American scene with the much-anticipated new television series, Almost Paradise, coming to WGN America.

On Almost Paradise, Richelle plays the role of Detective Kai Mendoza, a skilled officer with the Cebu police department who finds herself working with recently retired US DEA agent Alex Walker (Christian Kane).

I recently had the chance to speak with Richelle about the new series and what we can expect from her character.

Something Richelle is proud of when it comes to Almost Paradise is the way it highlights the Phillippines. “This was pretty much the first and only show where you highlight the Philippines and where the Philippines is the main character of the show,” Richelle began.

“American TV has never really experienced the Philippines the way we showcase the island. And I think we show the beautiful parts of Mactan Cebu, and we show beautiful beaches [with] the beautiful resorts that we shoot at. And, and I just really definitely wanted to be a part of history.”

Working on the island was a highlight for Richelle, in part because of the location, but also because of the people she was working with.

“It’s just being able to meet everybody and be able to come together,” she said.

“We all only had each other when we were on this island shooting for the whole season. It was just fun because we got really close to the cast and the crew. Just being able to have a day of work and then go home and you’re still by the beach and still have a beautiful view. And the weather was amazing. So that was definitely a great highlight — to be able to come out of this project having new friends and just great experiences.”

Richelle also gave a few hints as to what we can expect from her throughout the season. While the audience will start getting to know Kai pretty quickly on the first episode, we’ll see more of her story as the season progresses.

“You’ll get to see more of her backstory in the next few episodes coming up, and Episode 6 is really interesting. It’s really about her backstory, her growing up, her as a teenager. You get to understand how she became who she is. After losing her mother, who was a huge community leader growing up, she sort of shook off her rebellious nature and become a community leader herself,” Richelle explained.

“Her mother’s passing basically shaped her future in the police force, and that was her homage to her mother. And you get to see how tough she is and why she became the way she is. She’s just constantly fighting against gender norms, especially working in the police force, which is a very heavily male-dominated, dominating environment. And also you see that obviously she’s the youngest woman in her division, in the position that she’s in. And yeah, it’s just fun being able to play such a ballsy character. She’s definitely the epitome of what women in power looks like.”

Of course, Kai is also forced to work with Christian Kane’s character, Alex Walker, which she isn’t necessarily happy about at first. But the dynamic between those two characters is also one of the fun things about the series.

“In the beginning, you see her very standoffish with Alex’s character because he sort of comes in and shakes her world a little bit, and then pretty much disrupted it and tells her how to do her job, basically. And that’s what Kai hates, and he’s pretty much everything that she doesn’t like in a person,” Richelle noted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs9PMQ3dsD4&t=10s

“It’s really interesting to be able to see that since she has no choice but to deal with him, because her boss — her chief of police, Ocamo, played by Noni [Buencamino] — he just constantly believes in his word over mine. Which is really interesting to be able to see Kai irritated in that sense. But yeah, you get to see a lot of back and forth banter between the two characters, which I think is really interesting and pretty funny to watch.”

“There are so many great episodes in the season and you get to see the characters sort of evolve together and you get to see Kai and Alex’s relationship together and I think it’ll be interesting for you guys to see how that relationship moves forward. There’s definitely crazy chemistry with Alex and Kai,” she continued.

“I think it’s fun to be able to watch that stuff. And, I want to be able to show you guys what the relationships do in the end. It’s always a great family in the end. It’s great to be able to see that later on throughout the season.”

Richelle also talked a bit about preparing for the role, including the fight scenes.

“I knew that the role had a lot of, needed a lot of physicality to be able to play Kai. We got to the Island — we had about a week prior to shooting. And we took that week to be able to do a little bit of fight training. We went to the shooting range a few times to be able to shoot properly or hold a gun properly, look like I know what I’m doing, basically,” she said.

“We had fight scenes pretty much every episode. I was able to take weekends off or take days off to be able to spend about an hour training and making it look like I know how to fight.”

Richelle also said she does as much of the fighting on her own as she can.

“I do get to do the fighting, but obviously we have a great stunt team that teaches me how to do everything. And you do have stunt doubles as well, if in case I don’t know how to do a move. But they’ve been so great so far, being able to show me how to actually make it look like I know what I’m doing. I tell the stunt guys, ‘If you can put me in, put me in.’ I want to be able to learn how to do it, I want you guys to be able to see my face and me kicking ass on screen.”

Something else Richelle said the audience can look forward to this season is seeing criminals come in from varying places as each episode tells a different story.

It’s fun because Dean [Devlin] actually likes to not make the bad guys the Filipinos,” Richelle noted.

“You get everybody from all over the world kind of coming into the violence. You not only get the Filipinos being the bad guys, you get all sorts of leading criminals coming into that Island to be able to do their crimes in Cebu. So, it’s not really just all the Filipino guys; you get to see a lot of people flying in, a lot of international criminal elites coming in, so that should be very interesting for you guys to watch.”

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Be sure to catch Samantha Richelle on Almost Paradise, premiering Monday, March 30th at 10/9c on WGN America.

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