PRIME SUSPECT: Maria Bello & Alex Cunningham on Being a Woman in a Man’s World

Maria Bello is lost. We’re halfway through a conference call with the star of NBC’s version of Prime Suspect and executive producer/writer Alex Cunningham when Bello interrupts a question to say, “Alex, I’m lost on my way to work.” Listening to the pair handle this minor crisis is a real world example of how well they work together.

Indeed, it sounds like the two women are totally in sync as they answer questions from reporters about the American adaptation of Prime Suspect. The inevitable comparisons to the Helen Mirren/BBC original don’t phase them in the least.

“I didn’t really care what the title was when I read it,” Bello says of the script. “I like to say that Alex and I are playing together. It was such incredible writing and I hadn’t read a woman like this on television before who was so complex and strong and quirky and self possessed and just knew I wanted to do this show. It could have been called, you know, Arlington.”

Bello’s Jane is similar to Mirren’s in that “she’s hard core, she’s ambitious, she’s unapologetic, she considers life to be a meritocracy, and she’s flawed and she has her own issues that, after a while, are going to get in the way of her succeeding, including her personal life,” Cunningham reveals. We will see Jane in a relationship with a man, trying to balance that with her career, although Cunningham suspects that “we can’t have it all.”

“It’s been 20 years since the original,” muses Cunningham. “It was breaking new ground in so many different ways like in the portrayal of a woman cop, a woman cop in a position of power, a woman trying to sort of break a glass ceiling in a male dominated world. It’s 2011, working in the police department is different and you have recourse whether or not you choose to use it. There’s more female detectives even though there’s not nearly as many as TV and movies make you think. We have to figure out a new way to tell that same story, which I think is easy because, you know, at the end of the day it’s a procedural.”

The boys’ club aspect of the role is one that appealed to Bello and will be a consistent issue for Jane as she deals with working in that environment. With so many men in the cast as well, it’s something of a boys’ club on set, although Cunningham says Bello holds her own. “Maria is also a very blunt, ballsy girl from Philadelphia, so I’m sure there’s probably moments when she says things that the guys react to like I don’t know how I feel about that,” she chuckles. “I think sometimes she probably scares them, so it’s a good energy.”

Prime Suspect premieres on NBC Thursday, September 22 at 10/9c.