Fire Country’s Diane Farr discusses Sharon’s emotional affair with Liam and the turning point ahead
The actress dives into what Liam means to Sharon what she hopes viewers don’t take away from the storyline.
Liam (Jason O’Mara) was not a welcome surprise in Edgewater.
Fire Country picks up right where it left off with Sharon (Diane Farr) having to explain who Liam is to her husband Vince (Billy Burke). Turns out the two bonded cutting line while Sharon was away, but their time together felt more romantic to Liam than to Sharon. After the two men spend the night in jail after a fight, they have to work together to save Sharon and more than a dozen other people during a severe fire. While she is able to drive everyone to safety, it’s clear Sharon has to work on her marriage with Vince because she shared something with Liam even though it wasn’t physical.
Below, Farr talks to Entertainment Weekly about Sharon’s emotional affair with Liam, what getting to play the character means to her, and what’s ahead on Fire Country.
DIANE FARR: I was a little nervous. The world is not usually that forgiving of women having needs outside of marriage, children, and maybe earning a living. Then when it was going to be Jason O’Mara I was like “Oh my God, he’s so dreamy” and he’s never gotten to use his real accent on screen ever, so the Irish of it all made it very exciting.
It’s clear that he and Sharon have very different takes on the time they spent together. What does Liam mean to Sharon and what did their time together mean to her from your perspective?
Sharon may have been a little bit of denial over what an emotional affair is. What she needed was a friend and Sharon is the kind of person that is better friends with a guy, so she was looking for a friend and found someone close enough to her husband with a slightly different vibe.
Our writers really touched on this thing. That women can make friendships that are asexual and often when you do with a guy there must be a sexual nature because they’re sharing intimacy. That any form of intimacy is then translated into something sexual. The writers are really hitting this gray line that I hope Sharon doesn’t get hung for because it’s about what is missing from her marriage.
Sharon and Vince end the episode in a much better place. At this point, what work do they have to put in to continue to keep moving in a positive direction?
In season one, the thing I said all the time was [Sharon’s] actual primary commitment was to Bode (Max Thieriot) and the person she had to hide that from was Vince because your primary relationship is supposed to be your partner. The truth of season 2 is she’s getting down to the core of “I didn’t do my son any favors by doing that. How much can I lean into my husband?” Getting called out in tonight’s episode is sort of a gift, but now she’s got to be more vulnerable and figure out who they are to each other if not just somebody’s parent or parents of this firehouse.
What was it like filming that fire truck scene where Sharon is trying to drive everyone to safety through the fire?
The fire truck scene was hard on every level. There’s two guest stars who come up and they are so ready to do everything and people in the back are on top of each other. We were in there for 12 hours. The camera just kept moving around us the whole day in the fire truck. There were six scenes and I could not get them in my head. I don’t work really hard at learning lines, but I spent the whole weekend.
It was a terrific idea to put [Vince and Liam] next to each other to see who actually works for [Sharon]. One was a fantasy and one reality, and when my life is in jeopardy who am I going to trust? There was so much going on there emotionally and physically.
Sharon has stepped away from a leadership role to get back in the field. What does that change say about where Sharon is as a person?
It’s making [Sharon] look honestly at where she is here. It becomes easier to be the boss if you’ve been the mom and the parent for a long time and you know the answer of how to do things. Sharon has to get in there and do the actual job and catch up to the fact that her body’s older and has been through a lot. Her priority isn’t necessarily to save the people in my family, is she interested in the work for the sake of the work? It’s pretty effacing and there’s an amazing thing that happens in midlife when you start saying, “What is the actual point of why I’m here? If I’m over the halfway point in my life, what do I want to do with the second half?” I’m grateful to see where she ends up, but it’s a fun ride letting her figure it out.
This character is such a gift as an actor to play at 54 because she’s a fully realized person. She’s not just somebody’s mom or just the boss. The pilot was one of the best written pilots I’ve ever read and I didn’t see the ending coming. The trap would have been if [Sharon] was just the boss sitting in an office giving them directions, but our writers gave me the chance to be a flawed human. It’s not only that they let me be a peer with my romantic interest, the article’s talking about age gaps hurting women, but also hurting the show because woman are much more developed and can speak up for our characters. We just don’t get to see it enough for women my age. This is how we replicate it. When one couple in their 50s is working hopefully next season we’ll see another. Each time we give television permission to let someone else be of interest, then it opens the arena.
What’s ahead on Fire Country?
This whole season is about redemption and each of these characters are figuring out their thing. In 204, there’s a chemical fire and then in 205 the whole town gets put under this microscope. We really get back to that idea of this was a family drama and not just the Leone family, but the family of this town and how they’re also interconnected. The episode feels like a turning point for who they’re all going to be going forward. It’s the most exciting episode I’ve shot yet.
