Carla, the character played by red-hot Tricia Helfer on the second season of USA’s slick action drama “Burn Notice,” is so mysterious that even the actress doesn’t know exactly who she is or what she does. What Helfer does know is that Carla has Michael Westen, the lead character, a former spy played by JeffreyDonovan, by the balls.
When first we met Westen last summer, he was in Miami without much memory of how he got there. He quickly discovered he had been “burned”: completely cut off by the CIA, with no access to money, passports or weapons. To raise funds, he began helping people in trouble, while in his spare time he sought information on the people who burned him.
“She’s the public face of the organization that burned Michael and they are trying to recruit him to their organization by blackmailing him,” says Helfer, 34. “She’s going to stay mysterious. We’ll find out more about her as Michael finds out more about her, but she could hold the key to his burn notice.”
Carla isn’t the first tough broad played by the former supermodel. Her most recent claim to fame was portraying the ever-reincarnating, platinum-haired Cylon Number Six, a robot with feelings, on “Battlestar Galactica.” Just prior to the premiere of “Burn Notice,” Helfer was finishing up the show’s finale in Vancouver, relatively close to Helfer’s childhood home on a farm in Donata, Alberta, Canada.
“The last episode of a show is always crazy because there’s so much written to end the series and you want to get it all in, but in a normal episode’s time frame,” says Helfer. “At the same time, we’re all feeling mixture of emotions. Still, I’m happy the show is going out on a strong note rather than with a whimper.”
Once she finishes her “Battlestar” filming in cool, green Vancouver, she flies down to steamy Miami to shoot some more episodes of “Burn Notice,” for which she has signed on for seven episodes. After that, she returns to the home she shares in Los Angeles with her husband, radio network Westwood One Chief Strategist Jonathan Marshall, to play a forensic psychiatrist on Fox’s new show, “Inseparable.”
Helfer’s getting used to playing a woman who gets what she wants.
“Carla and Number Six are similar in that they are both very intelligent and very strong women. But I think my ‘Battlestar Galactica’ character is a little more vulnerable, which is odd because you are talking about a robot,” she says.
It’s early yet but there could be a little chemistry between Carla and Michael, a top-notch spy that Donovan plays with just the right mix of nonchalance and MacGyver-like competence.
“Carla isn’t exactly Michael’s favorite person because she’s kind of controlling him and he’s not one to be controlled,” she says. “But if it did go down that route, it would be a ‘I love because I hate you’ kind of thing. I could definitely see them being attracted to each other because they are both the type of people who would want to be challenged.”
“If things do head in a romantic direction, fans can be sure it won’t go over well with Michael’s violence-prone ex-girlfriend, Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), who aims a fist at his face or a gun at his knees when she’s unhappy with his behavior.
Still, Carla might prove even more difficult for Michael to handle than Fiona ever was.
“She’s pretty intense at this point,” Helfer says. “I see Carla as feeling like she’s at the top of her game and feeling a little invincible because she’s so trained and so good at what she does.”
BURN NOTICE
Thursday, 10 p.m., USA