Toni Trucks says she takes female representation on SEAL Team personally because she knows “women are often forgotten” when it comes to seeing women in the military.
On SEAL Team, Trucks plays Lisa Davis, who has been a key female character on the series from the beginning. She’s also a character who has evolved in some major ways over the course of the series. But now nearing the end of the show’s fifth season — the SEAL Team Season 5 finale airs this Sunday, January 23rd — Davis is in a bit of a difficult spot when it comes to her career.
I recently had the chance to chat with Trucks about how her character has evolved since Season 1, the importance of female representation on SEAL Team, and the creative ways the show hid her pregnancy this season.
Trucks said she feels that Lisa Davis has “evolved multiple times and continues to do so,” since Season 1. “Lisa started out as the Intel officer — really more logistics. So I was packing the parachutes, and reading, getting drone footage.”
“We continue to see even now in Season 5, this hunger for upward mobility and for more responsibility. And so every season, she clicked up. The second season, she was able to go into Officer Candidate School, which was such a big thing. And then graduate to being the official Intel Officer for the team. And now we find her in Season 5 doing this fellowship with the DoD,” Trucks said. “She just keeps pushing the limit as to where she can be the most effective, and trying to just be more brave in her responsibilities.”
Trucks also believes breaking out of her comfort zone makes sense for her character.
“For a long time with Lisa Davis, you saw her seeking comfort and stability [within] the team, because her own home life was so tumultuous that she just really was hanging on to them with bloody fingernails. And now, I think she’s seeing that there’s a price to pay for that, and where else can she be effective? So it’s a fun adventure and journey for her.”
Of course, we also know that Davis’s career could be in jeopardy because of the paper she’s written for her fellowship, which discusses lessons learned from Afghanistan and how to better protect the country’s warfighters.
“I think that she keeps thinking of what am I really doing, what’s my bigger purpose here,” Trucks said. “I think what she’s seeing is that although Lisa Davis is a person that loves to color in the lines and follow rules, there are things that can be done better. You hear her again and again throughout the season keep saying we need to prioritize our warfighters over warfighting. And that we’re not doing a good job of taking care of the human beings behind these initiatives, behind these larger goals, and that’s the travesty.”
“Even the fact that Commander Blackburn doesn’t like it is devastating for her because I think she’s just thinking ‘This is a no-brainer. Everyone’s obviously going to agree with me.’ And they do not,” Trucks added. “The only reason she went on this mission [in Venezuela] was to try to save her butt and do something that would maybe give her a little bit of a leg up if she is to ultimately get in major trouble for this paper that she’s written that is bringing everybody under fire for how they’re treating the special ops.”
Trucks also discussed the importance of female representation on SEAL Team, and the influence she’s had over making sure that representation is authentic.
“I welcome any more women on this show. I was able to go on USO tours and engage with the military in a lot of different ways since working on SEAL Team, and I really feel such a responsibility and pride about representing them week after week. So I think it is of the utmost importance that we continue to show women in this space,” Trucks said. “I’m all about seeing women in the military reflected on our screens because it’s so impactful to the audience members.”
“I think when people think about the military, they tend to think about men, which is not correct. And so we’ve had days on set where I’ve come and I’ll be like, ‘This feels weird in here — what’s happening?’ And I’ll be like, ‘Oh, there’s only male extras.’ On our worst day, we should always have at least 20-25% women in this room, no matter what. I was like, ‘We need to see the women.’ They’re there. They’re in high ranking, high stakes, high level, dangerous jobs. There is no reason that we shouldn’t see them. So I’ve really celebrated when our show shows the female pilots, the captains… They’re to be found and they’re to be highlighted.”
