Thursday Three with Maggie Q

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage month, so we’re spotlighting some of our favorite women on TV with that heritage. You can read all the entries in the series here.

Margaret Denise Quigley, better known as Maggie Q, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her father is of Irish and Polish descent and her mother Vietnamese. During her high school years, Quigley was a talented athlete and even scored a scholarship to a private university. She left Hawaii to earn money to help pay for university and ended up moving to Asia and pursued a career in modelling, which would eventually lead to a career in acting. While in Asia, Quigley became known as Maggie Q due to the fact that the audiences there had difficulty pronouncing her surname. During this time, Q also ended up being discovered by martial arts star Jackie Chan, who was looking for new talent to train and become the next generation of action stars. Q was one of those stars and ended starring in one of Chan’s films, Rush Hour 2.

Over the years, Q would go on to star in more blockbuster films including Mission Impossible III and the Divergent film franchise, but it’s her steady career on the small screen over the last eight years that she is better recognized for and includes these three big roles:

Nikita

In 2010, The CW premiered a show called Nikita, which was based on the 90s French film Nikita that then became a series called La Femme Nikita. Q played the title role, where her character was once part of a secret government-funded organization called Division that trained troubled youths and turned them into assassins. Q’s character left the organization and went into hiding after they killed her fiancé and now she’s back and hellbent on seeking revenge on them, even planting a protégé on the inside. For four seasons we watched Q kick butt and work to take down the key players of Division. Allies and foes would turn but throughout it all, we continued to be impressed by how tough, resourceful and skilled Nikita was. Clearly all those years of training paid off for Q!

You can check out our initial take on the show here, as well as our farewell to the series here.

Stalker

After Nikita was cancelled in 2013, it didn’t take long for Q to bounce back. The following TV season she was back on our screens in the Kevin Williamson series, Stalker, which aired on CBS. Here she played Detective Beth Davis who lead the LAPD’S Threat Assessment Unit, responsible for investigating stalking crimes. Davis herself was a victim of stalking. This psychological drama was not one for the sensitive and even this Nice Girl found it confronting to watch and didn’t make it through the first few episodes despite being a big fan of Q and Kevin Williamson. One thing’s for sure though, Q had established herself as playing strong female characters in her career. The show was cancelled after one season but there was something good that came out of the show – Q became engaged to co-star Dylan McDermott and the pair are still together today!

Designated Survivor

Q currently stars in ABC’s Designated Survivor, once again playing a character with authority as FBI agent Hannah Wells. After an explosion takes place at the United States Capitol Building and kills the President of the United States of America along with everyone else in the line of succession, except for the ‘Designated Survivor’, Secretary for Housing and Urban Development, Tom Kirkman, it is Kirkman who has to step up and take on the role of leading America. You can check out our original take on the show here.

Q’s character investigates the bombing but as the season goes on, she is convinced that there was a larger conspiracy involved and not all is as it seems. As she continues to dig deeper, she puts her life in danger but that doesn’t deter her from finding out the truth. Yes, Q has a tendency to play fierce, fearless and determined characters!  She ends up leaving the FBI to take up a post as the President’s special agent, advising and investigating classified matters. Sadly, it was announced last week that the show was being cancelled after two seasons so now we wait in anticipation to see what Q pops in next.

Follow Maggie Q on Twitter and Instagram.