Jennifer Carpenter: 'The Enemy Within,' An Exclusive Inside Look

There is an intensity, as well as a legitimacy, that actress Jennifer Carpenter brings to whatever role she plays, whether it’s Debra Morgan on serial killer drama Dexter, Rebecca Harris on the TV spinoff of the film Limitless, or, now, as Erica Shepherd in NBC’s The Enemy Within. The latter is actually different from the others as its puts her right in the center seat of the show rather than in the position of being a co-star, and has her deal with material that is possibly grimmer than anything she has in the past.

“Well, one does inform the other, right?” Jennifer proposes at the recent TCA session for the show. “Everything that has led up to this certainly informs Erica Shepherd, the character that I’m playing. It’s really not a laughing matter, what the show is talking about. She was the deputy director of the CIA, so she was the eyes and ears and the information that was going to be threaded through the most powerful players in America. So, again, it is not a laughing matter and it is a fight for her life. So it’s a heavy responsibility. In a strange way, having so much experience with eight years on a cable show, this show feels comparable to working in an environment like that, where the subject matter and the caliber of actors and writers and directors that we’re working with, it really feels like it challenges an audience in a way that they deserve to be challenged, because TV has changed the way it has in the last 10 years.”

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NBC describes The Enemy Within as a “character-based psychological thriller. Erica Shepherd is a brilliant former CIA operative, now known as one of the most notorious traitors in recent American history serving life in a Supermax prison. Against every fiber of his being, but with nowhere else to turn, FBI Agent Will Keaton (Morris Chestnut) enlists Shepherd to help track down a fiercely dangerous and elusive criminal she knows all too well. While Shepherd and Keaton have different motivations for bringing the enemy to justice, they both know that to catch a spy, they must think like one.”

For more on Jennifer’s views of the show, as well as series creator Ken Woodruff, just scroll down.

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Origins of ‘The Enemy Within’

Ken Woodruff, creator and executive producer of the series, discusses the origin of the show in an exclusive interview, commenting, “I’ve always loved the spy genre and appreciated it. I liked how smart the criminals are as well as the people who have to catch them. It’s a chess match as opposed to just brute strength. And it can be a little bit less linear than some other things. My thing is that there have been some great spy shows; The Americans was one of my favorites, but I come from a world of broadcast TV and procedurals. Things like Gotham and The Mentalist, the engine for both of them was procedural.

“I thought it would be really interesting to write a show about the people who catch spies,” he continues. “When I pitched it, I said, ‘It’s not really a show about spies, it’s about spy hunters.’ I started researching it and there’s a counter intelligence group within the FBI that is so secretive and some of the best people in the bureau come out of that. It’s like this real all-star team of investigators. As I did more and more research, I came to learn that the FBI estimates there are over 100,000 foreign operatives living in the United States. That just sent a chill down my spine. I couldn’t believe it.”

Setting Up the Conflict

Jennifer offers, “The Enemy Within explores American citizens who take on the role of protecting our way of life. The FBI works mostly within the boundaries of the United States in North America, and the CIA has a more global perspective. These two entities are incredibly powerful and knowledgable, but they oftentimes go head to head because their work interfere with the other’s ‘Greater Plan.’ The FBI’s Will Keaton specifically is made to employ the help of Erica Shepherd, which is complicated because Erica was the deputy director of the CIA before she was serving 15 life sentences for treason against the United States. She leads Keaton to believe that her reasoning for making the choices that she made was to save her daughter. And that may or may not be true. That’s sort of the crux of espionage and spy-hunting: who can you trust? And what sort of craftsmanship are they using to pivot you in one direction or another?”

It’s a Matter of Trust

Trust is a key word in this show. “In thinking about these operatives in the United States,” Ken explains, “I thought, ‘Well, who are these people? What are they doing?’ And that really became the engine for the series. As I kept researching, I realized our real strength is when you get past the first round of who these people were, you start reading in the second part of the documents about the lives that these people were leading. These fake lives. What really stuck out to me is the fact that I’m married, I have three kids, I have friends, I have coworkers. These people who were spies, they weren’t just hurting governments, when they were caught — or even when they weren’t caught — they were really ripping apart families and friendships.

“So you’d read an article about a Chinese National, for example,” Ken adds, “who was working at Boeing and stealing documents. On the surface that’s a crime and very dangerous potentially. Then you’d read the person had a family, had a wife, had two kids, volunteered for the PTA. And none of these people who were in his life even knew his real name. This is really on a universal level, because not everyone is a spy and not everyone hunts spies, but everyone has friends and family and colleagues. So the question becomes, can you really trust the people that you think you can? Can You trust your spouse? Can you trust your parents? You children? Your friends? Your coworkers? That’s the real electric current that we try to tap into on the show.”

Exploring Erica Shepherd

As Ken observes, Erica Shepherd was a very gifted, very skilled, very clever former CIA operative and deputy director of operations, which, he says, means that she was so good at it that she was placed in charge of an entire team. “But I also wanted to make her human and three dimensional, and a mother,” he explains. “For example, I have family in the military and sometimes they can be deployed for six months or a year at a time. I see the toll that that takes and the sacrifices they make. I just thought, ‘Let me do everything I can to this character to really test her love for her daughter.’ And that’s really, if I had to boil it down, what the show is essentially about at its core: It’s a mother trying to earn her way back into her daughter’ life. With that, the character came alive, because it’s one thing to say, ‘She’s a traitor and a bad guy,’ but it’s another if she did those acts for a good reason. And when your life is destroyed, there’s a freedom that you’re given. Everyone thinks she’s a monster and a traitor and hates her, so there’s nothing to lose at that point.”

The Idea is to Divide the Audience’s Loyalties

Closes Jennifer, “From week to week, living rooms may be split down the middle. One week you may be on one side of the couch, and the next week you’ll walk across to the other. You may empathize with Keaton, you may understand Erica’s strategy. You may empathize with Erica and switch next week. I think a lot of people will be hooked or lassoed by the idea that Erica did what any parent would do, which was come to her daughter’s rescue at any cost. At any price.”

The Enemy Within premieres on NBC February 25.