Frantic pace on set a walk in the park for the new Nikita

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Hawaiian-born actor Maggie Q is the latest to play Nikita.

Many actors -- particularly those accustomed to the leisurely pace of feature-film production -- complain about the extremely demanding schedule of working on a prime-time TV drama.

Maggie Q is not one of them.

"When I got (back) to America and they said, 'You're going to work 12-hour days,' I almost fainted," said the 31-year-old star of the new spy/action series Nikita, which premieres tonight at 8 on the CW network and has its Canadian-TV debut Sunday at 7 p.m. on Space.

The Hawaiian-born actress, who was born Maggie Denise Quigley, made a quick climb to stardom by appearing in Hong Kong-produced martial-arts movies, which tend to follow a somewhat different schedule.

"I had never worked a 12-hour day. I'd worked 16- and 18-hour days, every day, door to door. It didn't matter if it was a big movie or a small movie; we weren't spoiled. We didn't have trailers; we didn't even know what that was. I had a stool, a plastic stool, on the street. As actors, we'd sit on the street and eat out of lunchboxes.

"So I come back here, and you've got all these things... and it still blows my mind that I have somewhere to go when I'm not filming."

This is not, however, to suggest that this latest re-imagining of the Nikita tale is an easy gig, for Maggie Q or any of her co-stars. The series, which is basically a sort-of sequel to the 1990 French cult hit and the Canadian-made TV drama that followed, finds its title character going rogue, coming out of hiding to wreak vengeance against the now-corrupt government agency that took her off the streets as a troubled youth and turned her into a highly skilled assassin.

It's an action drama of the highest order, and it requires its cast members to run, jump, tumble and fight their way through very intense covert-intrigue storylines. There's also a fair amount of undercover, glamorously-in-costume spy stuff, but Maggie Q is quick to explain that that's not really her style.

"I've gotten to the point where I'm so used to being sweating and, you know, wearing pants and sitting like a guy in boots and the whole thing, that when I'm dressed up and people are touching me up and doing the whole (glamour) thing, I'm much less comfortable," she said in a recent interview during the CW's portion of the U.S. networks' summer press tour in Los Angeles.

"I like to wear less makeup and be tougher. The primping stuff, I think, is exciting for people, but it's less exciting for me. I mean, it's definitely fun, but I kind of like the low-maintenance stuff."

Nikita also stars Shane West (Once and Again, ER) as her former handler within The Division, who has now been ordered to hunt her down and kill her, and Lyndsy Fonseca (Kick-Ass, Desperate Housewives) as one of the next-gen involuntary recruits on the reluctant road to becoming an assassin.

After learning her martial-arts moves at the hands of Hong Kong legend Jackie Chan, who spotted her while she was working as a low-paid model in the Far East, Maggie Q spent the better part of a decade starring in Asian-made action movies before returning to the U.S. to take a crack at Hollywood stardom.

She appeared opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III and co-starred with Bruce Willis in Live Free or Die Hard before deciding to try her hand at TV-series work.

The small-screen days are longer. But for Maggie Q, not really.

"I'm very used to the pace," she said. "And I kind of enjoy focusing, getting it over with, getting it out of the way, and saying, 'Let's move on. Let's do something cool again. Let's get going.'"

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 9, 2010 E5