Jessica Frances Dukes Talks ‘Ozark’ Season 4 and Maya’s Motivations [Interview]

When Jessica Frances Dukes got the audition to work on one of her favorite shows, she watched it all over again to have some new insight.

Dukes plays Agent Maya Miller on Ozark, a character who truly shakes things up during the first half of the show’s final season. I recently had the chance to chat with Dukes about her role, the important piece of advice she got from Laura Linney, and why fans should be excited about the final episodes of the series.

Dukes told me that she binged Ozark over again once she got the audition for Maya in 2019, hoping to see how she could find her place within the show.

“I think Ozark has such a tone to it. It has such a sort of just a rhythm to it and a musicality that I really wanted to figure out what the magic was if I could. Because watching it you just enjoy it. You’re not trying to replicate it, but going in for it you’re like, ‘Okay, well, I’ve got to find my instrument in this orchestra.'”

“I remember the audition. The trains were late that day, and in New York City, if those trains are late, it’s a wrap. And so I got to my audition literally right before, and I had my whole FBI gear that I was going to wear. I ended up having to go in the room in my street clothes.”

“When I got that call a month later, I was shocked. I was shocked, but Jason [Bateman] and Chris [Mundy], the showrunner, and a couple of other people that were some directors that season — they were just like the minute the camera came on they said, ‘There she is.’ And I was just so thankful. I just love Maya. I’m having a ball with her.”

Dukes said the best part of working on Ozark is “the amount of heavy-hitting brilliant actors there are involved.”

“I’ve learned so much,” Dukes said. “I came to set even when I wasn’t called, especially when it came to the technicality of how you shoot a show because I want to direct someday. I want to produce and I want to write. And I wanted to learn every single sort of department that I could while I was there, and everybody was so open to it. That was just awesome.”

In particular, she recalled learning a few things from Laura Linney, who plays Wendy Byrde.

“The first day Laura Linney said, ‘We mess up all the time. So let it go,'” Dukes recalled. “I think she was talking about the need to get it right because you get a bunch of takes. You’re going to try it a bunch of times. And the editor’s going to pick what they want to pick.”

“I remember this season that’s about to come out, we were on set and filming one of our scenes together,” Dukes continued. “[Laura] came in the room and she said, ‘I’m going to do this three ways’ and then walks out. And I was like, ‘Wait, what? Which way?'”

“And she comes in the room when they yell action. She does the scene one way. Then they yell cut, she goes out, she comes back in and she does it a completely different way. I have no clue what’s going on. I’m just reacting as Maya.”

“And then we finished and I went out where the cast chairs were and I said, ‘What was that? What did you just do?’ And she said, ‘Well, this is a moment in the show where anything could happen based off of this conversation. It could go left, it could go right. It could go straight. It could go back.’ And she said, ‘I want to give the editor options.'”

For Dukes, learning to let go in that way was an important lesson. “You think, ‘I just want to get it right every single take.’ You don’t think five different ways could be right. And that’s what I learned — to trust that.”

In the first half of Ozark Season 4, Maya and Wendy find themselves with a new common ground. 

“You have two mothers now,” Dukes said. “We’re now both two mothers trying to do what’s best for our family and ourselves as women that want some sort of power in this life, want some sort of clout in this life, want some sort of place to be our best selves. And even though Wendy makes choices that she makes and we all look at it sometimes and go, ‘What the hell?’ she really is trying to do what’s best for her family, and what’s best for herself, what’s best for her future. All of that. I think all of them are.”

“I think that’s why we love the show so much,” Dukes added.

“We find these people in these situations, and I think it helps us with the situations that we are going through in life. We’re currently in the middle of this pandemic, and when Ozark came out [with] the third season, it was right at the top of it when we were all in a place of — how do we maneuver with this new normal?”

“Every day is a new normal on Ozark. Every day, a rule changes. Every day, the power dynamic shifts,” she continued. “You have to do what you can to survive. And that’s really what everybody’s doing, including Maya.”

Maya does make some surprising decisions in Ozark Season 4, too, including taking matters into her own hands when she feels she has no other choice.

Dukes noted that at the end of Season 3, Maya is at a crossroads. 

“The FBI kind of wants her off the case. Marty wants her on the case. She is trying to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong. And the FBI is on four different pages,” she said. “So when we come into Season 4, we sort of find her in between a rock and a hard place.”

“She’s been working towards this case for so long and working towards taking down the bad since she was 15,” Dukes continued. “She’s a sort of crusader and she’s going to do what she feels best, even if it means going against what could be considered the right thing to do.”

Dukes also said that the second half of Ozark Season 4 was going to take the audience for quite a ride. And judging how the first half of the season ended, we’re in for some big surprises.

“I just couldn’t stop reading the scripts since they came in,” Dukes said. “We got the last four scripts all at the same time. And I think I almost threw them across the room because I was like, ‘What? What?!’ So yeah. I think the audience is going to have a great time.”

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Ozark is currently streaming on Netflix.

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