New Episode of "The Catch" + Exclusive Interview with Sonya Walger & Executive Producer Allan Heinberg

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This trip was sponsored by Disney. All opinions are my own.

New Episode of "The Catch" + Exclusive Interview with Sonya Walger & Executive Producer Allan Heinberg — ABC/Richard Cartwright

I hope you have been following along over the past couple of weeks and reading all of the great interviews and events that we have shared. If you missed them, here is recap: Read our Beauty and the Beast review here and you can also get a behind the scenes scoop from the interviews we shared with Emma Watson and Dan Stevens, Luke Evans and Josh Gad, and Audra McDonald and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. We also got to have a Q&A with ‘Milo Murphy’s Law’ creators and executive producers Dan Povenmire & Jeff “Swampy” Marsh. Read about our Beauty and the Beast experience at Williams Sonoma. We got to learn more about Season 6 of Baby Daddy + Q&A with Chelsea Kane, Derek Theler and Tahj Mowry. We got a sneak peak of Disney’s Tangled: Before Ever After + Interview with Chris Sonnenburg & Ben Balistreri. And top it all off we got a behind-the-scenes look at Disney’s Moana. It was such a great trip!

Today I am sharing our interview with Sonya Walger (Margot Bishop) and Allan Heinberg (Executive Producer) about ABC’s hit TV show “The Catch”. Before our interview, we were able to screen episode 3 of season 2, and I was just like “wow” the whole time. There are a couple of twists and turns that I didn’t predict and the storyline and action is supurb.

After we screen the episode, Sonya Walger and Allan Heinberg came down and talked with us about the show, what we can expect, and other juicy details! We asked Sonya “there’s so many twists and turns in the show. Is there one that surprised you?”

Sonya: Yeah, you haven’t seen it yet. [AUDIENCE LAUGHS] Yep, that one was quite a big one, too, I have to say.

Allan: But you knew that was coming. We played that a while back.

Sonya: …in season one, when you told me…

This makes me want to go back and watch season one again and see what I might have missed….

Next, we asked “So you’re now having to go to Alice and work for her, and from season one, there was everything with Ben and not wanting to. Is something going to happen to change that relationship one way or the other?

Sonya: I think what’s really fun is that Alice and Margot discover they have perhaps more in common than they thought, and there’s a sort of begrudging mutual respect while still there’s a lot of wariness. Margot is Margot , so you wanna be careful of that. Those beautiful therapy scenes that Allan wrote us in season one, Margot had this moment of realizing they were both betrayed by the same guy. They actually have all this common ground. That moves into season two where they realize they’re both strong, empowered, intelligent women who can go toe-to-toe, and neither one is gonna stand down. When they realize neither one is gonna stand down, they have to work together. I love the relationship. I obviously just love doing scenes with Mireille, so it was fun.

How long did it take to film the umbrella scene?

Sonya: So long. That was John Stuart Scott, our fantastic director who had done some episodes on season one, and that does them for several more on season two. One of the things we all love about John is he comes with such a game plan, he arrives so prepared. To do a scene like that with so much coverage, meaning you’ve got big, wide shots and close-ups, and you’ve got so many different angles, that you wanna have, not just to tell the story, but then to tell the story in an exciting way, that you want to have someone who comes in really mapped out what the day is gonna look like. And John is impeccable at that- really wonderful, and we are blessed with an amazing efficient crew. That said, it took forever. But he was great.

Allan: And you have to get it all before it gets dark.

Sonya: Right, so you’re up at stupid o’clock to get that ready.

We can all relate to having to get up early for something or other.

Where does the title, The Catch, come from?

Allan: For me, it was about love. You can’t have it all. There’s always gonna be a catch. The guy you fall in love with who turns out to be your soulmate- it’s also the guy who stole all of your money and is a career criminal. In love, it’s never the whole fantasy. There’s always something pulling you back down to Earth. I think a lot of us look at love as an escape from our daily lives. And the catch is that what real love is, is something, less romantic and a lot harder to achieve. And so that’s the way we’ve been proceeding. There’s always a catch with these relationships and how do you work it through it?

I love this. This is so true in real life and I love that they are incorporating it into this show because it makes it so much more enjoyable to watch and relate to.

Can you talk a little about the fashion?

Sonya: Isn’t it killer?

It really is.

Sonya: I tell you, it’s my favorite thing, going in for a wardrobe fitting, and that is not usually the case. Usually, you go to wardrobe fittings and there’s a tired lady who’s, like, hi, we don’t do black on this show, so here are the fairy pantsuits. That’s usually what wardrobe is like. When you go in with Peggy, and there’s a rack of the most exquisite dresses…

Allan: You guys met Peggy last year?

You can read about our set tour of The Catch here.

Sonya: She’s wonderful and has just the best eye. I think this is the fun of doing season two of the show. She knows my body better than I do, so the dresses are not ones that I would pick. I’m the mother of two- I’m lucky to get dressed in the morning. Just to be zipped into a thing with heels, and the hair, and it’s glorious. It’s glorious. And it just means by the time I’ve been through the works, Margot’s there. Such an enormous part of being a character is having the right look and jewelry and hair and makeup. It’s like zipping on a suit and then half your work is done, really, it’s an amazing…

Allan: I have to say the show is crazy. It’s just crazy in a great way, but it makes it really fun wardrobe wise. (In the season 2 premiere) you’re going to a high-stakes underground casino. (turning to Sonya he says) Or the Barbara Streisand outfit that you wore to the bank with the wig. She walks in as Barbara Streisand and I’m like, can we get away with…? Is it too much with the glasses and the lips? No, it’s not too much. It’s fine. Sex in the City was a bit like this, too, where we just kept pushing and pushing. Peggy has such a clear sense of the actor and the character, that it just is a delight.

Do we get a lot more of Gina in season two?

Sonya: Every episode. She’s in every episode. She’s fantastic. And she can wear clothes like nobody’s business.

There’s so many strong female leads. Are the guys starting to feel a little outnumbered…

Sonya: A bit.

Allan: I think when we brought Rhys on full time, Pete Krause was like we’re okay now. I’ve got my partner; he feels a little bit better, and now they’re sort of a comedy trio with Gina joining them this year. I think this year that’s sort of went away, but in the beginning, I think for Jay and for Pete, there may have been a lot of ladies. I’m not sure that our side is being represented.

Sonya: Totally fine with that.

She is so funny

What are the character’s involvement through the episodes? Are they changing a little bit from what you originally pictured?

Allan: I think they are. What’s interesting on the show is that the heroes and villains are so clearly drawn at the front of it, right? He’s a bad guy who took all for money. She’s someone who was victimized because she fell in love, and then it shifts so quickly so that even someone like Margot Bishop who kills people for a living- by her own admission becomes someone you actually feel for, and root for.

When I met Sonya for the first time, she was especially great because she got it immediately (her new role), and pitched me in that first lunch. What if the way that Alice and Margot finally meet is that Margot is pretending to be Ailce’s therapist? And I was like, I don’t know how to do that right now, but that is the best idea I’ve ever heard. And so I came back to the writer’s room with that idea, and they were all really eager for it to be in episode two or episode three. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The point I was gonna make is I said to Sonya at that lunch, your character is completely different.

Margot is barely in the pilot episode (2 scenes). I told her, you just have to trust me on this- this becomes your story. Your family becomes a huge part of what this is. The benefactor is gonna be either your mother or your brother, and trust me, it will develop. (turning to Sonya he said) I don’t know if you believed me, but you pretended to believe me. And sure enough by episode two, three, four, you just start to see it shift and grow so that it really in some ways becomes as much Margot’s show as anybody’s show.

Everything changed when Rhys showed up because they had a scene- a brother/sister scene where they were on the bed together, and it’s one of my favorite scenes we’ve ever done, and I just wrote a big four-page dialog scene just because I had John in my head. That’s when the show changed for me. You really have no idea when you start, the degree to which it can grow and change, and it has everything to do with your cast. Because if they weren’t capable of it, I wouldn’t be able to write to it. It’s very collaborative environment, and I’m constantly bouncing ideas off of them. Even in rehearsal (we are talking about) what’s working; what’s not working; call me; come to me; if you have a great idea, let’s do it.

Sonya: That is exceptional. That really, really is. I can count on no hands the number of showrunners that are transparent, and accessible. (Where they come to you and say) do you have a thought? Do you have an idea? What is it? I can understand because the trains have to run on time, and you’ve gotta keep things moving, but most of the time you get the script, and you say it verbatim. It’s a rare and great thing to work with somebody as collaborative as Allan which, which to answer your question again, is part of why the characters do evolve and change, is because there’s so much back and forth. There’s room to keep- you’re not, you’re not dealing with someone who’s just writing what they need to write. There’s actually room to see what you’re doing well and then write to that, you know?

This was a lot of fun learning more about the show from them.

If you are wondering what The Catch is about, or want to get a look at season two, here is a look:

If you haven’t started watching the show, I recommend watching season 1 (totally binge worthy) and catch up so you can follow along this season. It is a great show packed with mystery, laughter, romance and fun! In tonight’s episode, “The New Deal”, Con man Benjamin Jones has gone from committing the ultimate betrayal to performing the ultimate sacrifice, when he turned himself in to the FBI to save Alice from wrongful imprisonment. Now in jail, Ben is forced to reckon with his criminal past, while the team at Anderson Vaughan Investigations must come to terms with getting in bed with the bad guys. How will Alice and Ben game the system — and each other — to stay together and overcome their less-than-legal pasts?

“The Catch” stars Mireille Enos as Alice Vaughan, Peter Krause as Benjamin Jones, Sonya Walger as Margot Bishop, John Simm as Rhys Griffiths, Jay Hayden as Danny Yoon, Rose Rollins as Valerie Anderson and Elvy Yost as Sophie Novak. T.R. Knight as Tommy Vaughan, Gina Torres as Justine Diaz, Lesley Nicol as Sybil Griffiths, Jackie Seiden as Gainda Mangels, Jake Green as Seth Hamilton, and Jacky Ido as Agent Jules Dao guest-star.

Here are a couple of different sneak peaks of tonight’s episode of The Catch:
(Ben and Alice Sneak Peek – The Catch)