Hilarie Burton Shoots to White Collar Series Regular

When news broke last week of Hilarie Burton‘s promotion to White Collar series regular, I was over the moon! I’m looking forward to seeing all that her character, Sara Ellis, can bring to the team if we knew that she wasn’t going away. We already know that she is smart enough to exchange quips with Neal Caffrey, and win. She has also earned Peter‘s respect when she was able to arrange things, using her connections, that the FBI couldn’t. She’s fresh and sassy and her screen time is compelling.

In a recent conference call with Hilarie, she talks about why Sara is such a great addition to White Collar. “Yes, I think she has a lot to offer the FBI team as a whole and, being the new kid at work I also have fun bringing what I have to the table to help these guys out, because they are, they’re really wonderful people to work with. I think what Sara has going for her is that she’s not confined by the boundaries of working for the government. She gets to be a little bit more creative in her research methods or her repo methods as opposed to the boys who have to answer to Johnny Law. So, yeah, I think she has more freedom and I think she can use that gray area to help these guys that she’s clearly drawn to, whether it’s Peter as a mentor and friend or it’s Neal as an adversary, who is also really attractive.”

It’s pretty obvious the way that sparks flew between Sara and Neal, but will she be his new Kate? “There is an element of discovery with each other,” Burton explains, “so I don’t want to say that we’re going to rush into falling in love and being together in every single episode right away, but I know that the Sara character is very, very curious about him, begrudgingly perhaps.” Personally, I think Sara is a stronger challenge for Neal than Kate was. We’ll see how that develops.

Hilarie Burton was a fan favorite from her “One Tree Hill” days, so they are all very happy to see her as a series regular again. Sara is definitely no Peyton. “Oh my god, she’s so different. I think I’m much more self-conscious playing Sara because she’s so far removed from Hilarie Burton. I could go to the creator of One Tree Hill and tell him stories from my high school experience and he would integrate those into the story line and so I always felt very connected to that character. This character has a history that is so different from mine and a frigidness that is so far— I mean —I’m a little bit Vaudeville and, and Sara Ellis is very high end Broadway. And so having to class it up, is very fun for me, and I think it’s helping me become an adult.”

White Collar has some pretty strong female characters in the form of Elizabeth, Diana and Alex. What is it about Sara that puts her on par with these women? “I think what my character brings that’s a little different is that I don’t have any tie to the FBI. Marsha’s character, Diana, works for the Bureau, Tiffani has to kind of mind her p’s and q’s because she’s an agent’s wife. I can do whatever I want. The difference between Gloria’s character (Alex) and I is that she’s a criminal and I’m not. I can kind of walk both lines. I can walk into the FBI office, I can also walk into a seedy underworld, so there’s a duality in Sara that I think opens a lot of doors for the characters.”

Hilarie gives us her final thoughts on Sara: “I think the core of Sara Ellis is that she is a good person and she believes in right and wrong and she has morals. I think she genuinely cares for the people she cares for and I think you’ll see that in her friendship with Peter. I think she respects him so much. And it’s hard to enter her world because she has a lot of defense mechanisms up. But once the audience does enter her world, I think she’ll be a very likable person for them.”

Catch Hilarie burton, regularly now, on USA’s White Collar, Tuesday nights at 10/9 central.