‘Stranger Things’ Star Reveals “There Wasn’t a Lot of Oversight” When Filming This Iconic Sci-Fi Crime Drama [Exclusive]

Stranger Things‘ fifth and final season let Cara Buono be a badass as Karen Wheeler. After years of being the supportive mother to Mike, Nancy, and Holly, she finally got her hero moment, using a wine bottle, some oxygen tanks, and a bit of quick thinking to give the Hawkins kids a fighting chance. Yet, well before she was fighting off Demodogs in Indiana, viewers saw what the actress was capable of as the more sinister Martine Rousseau in another must-watch show of the 2010s, Person of Interest. On the side of the dangerous, super-intelligent AI Samaritan, she was less a warm presence and more of a cold, calculating, Terminator-like operative, taking out any threats to the machine’s existence. It required Buono to learn a few things to sell her presence as an elite killer, but according to the actress, the set was the perfect, laid-back place to learn under creator Jonathan Nolan and showrunner Greg Plageman.

Buono recently took part in a panel at Fan Expo Portland moderated by Collider’s Maggie Lovitt, where she was asked what she remembered about being part of what was, at the time, a pop culture event. Before Nolan would go on to create the also-buzzy Westworld with Lisa Joy and work on the current Prime Video megahit Fallout, he delivered a twisty experience that turned the case-of-the-week procedural formula into a prescient exploration of the morality of surveillance and privacy and the dangers of A.I. At its center was the reclusive billionaire Harold Finch (Michael Emerson), the creator of the Machine, used by the U.S. government to find the would-be perpetrators of acts of terrorism before they act. He recruited John Reese (Jim Caviezel), a presumed-dead CIA operative, to be his field agent to stop the predicted homicides and other criminal acts that were deemed unimportant.

“That was a cool show,” Buono said when the topic came up. Of all things, the most memorable part of Person of Interest for her as an actor on the series for nine episodes, was how the set operated. She recalled how, by the time she joined in Season 4 with the team starting to pivot to work on Westworld, the cast enjoyed a slightly more hands-off experience that let the actors run wild with the material. It proved to be a boon for Buono, who had no combat training of any kind before being tasked with playing an elite killer:

“I was on the fourth season, and I played an assassin who was sort of robotic. And I had never done anything like that. I never did hand-to-hand combat, or like guns — so many guns! That was just… you know what was funny? That being the show’s fourth season, and the showrunners were starting the show Westworld, it was sort of like they let us just play. There wasn’t a lot of oversight. I remember I went for gun training to learn how to do this gun thing, and I got to set, and it was a totally different gun. I was like, ‘Hey, I don’t know how to use this.’ They were like, ‘You’ll be fine.‘ And then I got to lead a whole bunch of people in a scene for a fight, and they were like, ‘You’ll be fine.’ I dunno, we all have weapons we were shooting, so it was, like, just fun. And they just let us do things like that.”

Cara Buono Fondly Remembers “Blowing Shit Up” in New York’s Fanciest Store

Beyond the relative lack of oversight, Person of Interest afforded Buono some other unique opportunities that other shows couldn’t. She not only got to take charge of some massive action sequences, but also experience some in prime New York City locales. One of her fondest memories involved filming in one of the Big Apple’s landmark luxury stores, a fortunate opportunity that only arose out of some confusing circumstances. “And I remember we shot — so there’s this store in New York City called Bergdorf Goodman,” Buono continued. “It’s like fancy fancy, and they let us film in there. A big shootout scene. Like, Macy’s said no, Bloomingdale’s said no, but Bergdorf Goodman said yes?“

The Bergdorf Goodman backdrop only made the experience all the more remarkable, and she couldn’t help but revel in the joy of wrecking the high-end department store without a care in the world as Martine. “And I was like, ‘Ah, I’m shooting in like the fanciest store in New York City. We’re blowing shit up.'” Even though her time was comparatively short in the five-season sci-fi series compared to Caviezel, Emerson, Taraji P. Henson, Amy Acker, Kevin Chapman, and Sarah Shahi, its tendency towards fun and thrilling storylines made it stand out in a career that, for the Emmy-nominated Buono, also includes Mad Men, The Sopranos, and, of course, Stranger Things. “So it was stuff like that. I don’t know; it was like, ‘Is anybody watching what we’re doing? Does anyone care?’ But it was fun.”

Person of Interest is currently available to stream on Prime Video. Stay tuned here at Collider for more updates from Fan Expo Portland.

Release Date

2011 – 2016-00-00

Showrunner

Greg Plageman

Directors

Chris Fisher, Richard J. Lewis, Fred Toye, Jeffrey G. Hunt, Stephen Surjik, Kenneth Fink, Stephen Williams, Helen Shaver, Alrick Riley, Charles Beeson, Kate Woods, Kevin Bray, Stephen Semel, Jeff T. Thomas, Sylvain White, Alex Zakrzewski, Brad Anderson, Clark Johnson, Colin Bucksey, David Semel, Dennis Smith, Félix Enríquez Alcalá, James Whitmore Jr., Jeffrey Lee Gibson

Writers

Jonathan Nolan, Denise Thé, Greg Plageman, Amanda Segel, David Slack, Melissa Scrivner-Love, Dan Dietz, Sean Hennen, Lucas O’Connor, Patrick Harbinson, Michael Sopczynski, Nic Van Zeebroeck, Tony Camerino, Andy Callahan, Ray Utarnachitt, Sabir Pirzada, Ashley Gable, Amy Berg, Jacey Heldrich