Chief Ross is now a series regular on the ABC Shondaland show, but the Broadway vet is popping up everywhere!
Merle Dandridge didn’t dream of being an actress. The woman we have come to know as Station 19’s Chief Ross was born in Okinawa, Japan, and moved around a lot as the daughter of a U.S. Air Force officer. But while she was in high school in Nebraska, a friend suggested drama class as an easy elective. It was there that Dandridge found her tribe, as she puts it.
“I really hadn’t been that social and was [sort of] raised as an only child because my half-siblings are so much older than me,” says Dandridge, whose Station 19 character was recently made a series regular. “[In acting] I found a community, something that drew my personality out and made me feel freer to express myself. Having grown up in very structured environments on military bases then in Nebraska, where being a person of color, let alone a person of mixed race, [I was] stifled. You’re often in survival mode in such a white, homogenous environment. It was as if my life switched into Technicolor in the theater department. I just felt like the railroad tracks were laid by God, and I just got on ’em and rode.”
Dandridge got a full ride to attend the Theatre Conservatory at Chicago’s Roosevelt University and honed her craft, kept disciplined, and allowed herself to open up spiritually, creatively, and dynamically through that work ethic. She went on to star on Broadway in now-canonical productions as Aida in Aida, Joanne in Rent, and the Lady of the Lake in Mike Nichols’ Spamalot. In 2003, she left New York City for Los Angeles and began booking small TV roles and voicing video game characters. In fact, it’s her 2004 voice-acting role as Alyx Vance in the video game Half-Life 2 that she has to thank for her current role as Marlene in the wildly popular HBO series The Last of Us, based on the video game in which Dandridge voiced the same character: The game’s creator and show’s co-creator, Neil Druckmann, was a fan of Alyx.
Over the past two decades, Dandridge has captured viewers’ attention regardless of if it was in a smaller role like Rita Roosevelt on FX’s Sons of Anarchy or a mainstay like Grace Greenleaf on OWN’s Greenleaf. And now, as Station 19’s mid-season February 23 premiere brings us back into the Seattle Fire Department, we find Chief Natasha Ross standing her ground and protecting both her own and her police counterparts in a tense and triggering sequence of events.
“I love being on a show that puts women in positions like the first fire chief of Seattle and highlights not just the female experience, but the Black female experience and what the stresses of that are and also what the triumphs of that are,” says Dandridge, who also co-stars alongside Octavia Spencer in Apple TV+’s important series chronicling Black and brown missing girls, Truth Be Told. “To be able to explore that with a studio so thoughtful and caring about women and the dynamic, wonderful, delicious, powerful goddess energy that we have in particular is what makes working on a Shondaland show so incredible.”
Given just how prolific Dandridge currently is in her career, Shondaland got on a video call with the actress to talk about the emotional Station 19 premiere episode, her process as an actress, and how much more there is to see of Marlene in The Last of Us. No spoilers, of course!
VALENTINA VALENTINI: First off, congratulations on being made a series regular on Station 19. You came on to the show in the middle of season five as a recurring character. What’s this journey been like for you?
MERLE DANDRIDGE: I feel like my experience with Station 19 has been one of reuniting with old family. The character felt so kin to me, and the cast felt so familiar, and I think they would say the same thing. I’d worked with a lot of crews before … but for some reason, it all just felt like going on a walk with old family members. To transition into a series regular felt like, “Oh, we’ve always been here; you belong with us.” It was something about the character, and how she fit in with the group, and how I related to her where it kind of felt like the missing link in the family.
VV: Who is Chief Ross? Or more to the point, what does she want, and what makes her tick?
MD: I love how they built her background with the military. It’s something that I related to immediately. I understood someone like that and their background immediately, that that was in her bones. She has a strong sense of right and wrong, of obeying a chain of command, and knows how important it is, as well, to push the envelope within this organization as a woman of color and as a woman, period. That’s something that was important for us to put into the zeitgeist — like it was important for the show to explore. For Chief Ross, it was important for her to make her parents proud as she honors her military and firefighter background. She loves this organization where she’s put down her roots and is wrestling with how to take it into a new era. Now that, directly juxtaposed to her heart and her humanity, is where the sizzle comes in. It’s where we get to see a woman walking out her real purpose and how that can sometimes rub up against who she is in her passion and her personal life, her womanly nature.
My mother comes from wartime, and we’ve watched our parents kind of balance what it looks like as women take over the workforce and still are mothers, wives, nurturers at home. It’s important for us to examine it because Ross is in a difficult situation — she loves profoundly, and she is also very passionate about what she does for work.
VV: That’s right where we left off at the mid-season finale in November — Natasha had told Sully [Boris Kodjoe] that as the first Black woman as a city fire chief, she could not risk that position to help him feel more secure in their relationship. And then, in this episode, Sully has apologized for making her choose. That’s the dream, right? To have someone tell us, “I will love you the way you need to be loved.”
MD: Absolutely. And actually, this is a conversation that Boris and I have about this. We hold the banner for our characters in terms of what kind of representation we’re putting out there. We continue to ask the questions “Does this resonate? Is this right?” And I think I was wrestling with a woman who is so decisive in her career but can’t quite figure out how to manage things personally. I feel like she wants to do the right thing; she’s by the book. What we came to is that this is how relationships are — sometimes they can be messy; sometimes we’re fighting with ourselves in them. This is all real for anyone who’s trying to weather uncharted waters in a relationship and career.
VV: There was another really big moment for Chief Ross in this episode where a few police officers have a young Black man held down on the ground and the aid car has responded to try and de-escalate the situation. What was your take on this scene when you read it in the script?
MD: As soon as I read it, I said, “Yes, we have to talk about this. We have to be thoughtful. And we have to honor this agony that is happening in our culture right now.” And what I loved about it was that it was not cut-and-dry — we humanized both sides of the argument. And the actual physical demonstration of Ross being willing to throw herself in the line of fire to protect what’s right and to protect her team was important to show in the character of Chief Ross, but it was also important to see the humanity in the other side. The choice to make one of the cops a Black female was pertinent and important … [long pause]. The pain that we have around this subject is unquantifiable. In doing this episode, we honored that and asked the questions, and I hope stirred people’s hearts enough to push healing from this forward [long pause]. My heart aches just thinking about it, but I think it’s important for us to put this out there and talk about it.
VV: Well, representation matters in media, as we all know.
MD: When I was in high school and went to the International Thespian Festival, and that was the first time I saw real Black representation onstage — Big River and Once on This Island — it gave me a vision for a career. Seeing it was seminal; it fertilized the ground in which I dug into and found this craft.
VV: Can we ask you about The Last of Us? No spoilers, of course. But the show has gotten really big, and people are loving it. What’s it like to be a part of it all?
MD: Oh, my gosh. The Last of Us is a legacy that I’m extremely proud of. I first met my character Marlene doing the video game about 10 and a half years ago. So, these stories have been in my life a long time, and I’ve done a lot of different versions of it, like a live stage fan event in 2014 and the follow-up game. Marlene has always been in my bones; I’ve been passionate about her and the storytelling for a very long time, so it’s really satisfying to see a whole new audience be deeply moved by it. You know when you have something in your heart and people don’t see it? And then suddenly it’s elucidated, and it’s on the outside, and you’re like, “This is what’s been in my heart the whole time!” That’s kind of what it feels like when I’m watching people be devastated and moved and delighted by all the things that I have been rocking with for so long. I think what people are connecting to most is the deeply human nature of the storytelling: It’s resonating, and it’s making people’s hearts crack open. I also love how much more of Marlene there is to come. She is a conflicting character, but …
VV: Isn’t everybody in it a conflicted character?
MD: That’s exactly right. And her heart and her passion and who she is, there will be so much more revealed. You know, you always do your work as an actor and think about why the characters are the way that they are and what experiences brought them to this place of astonishing, crushing decision-making, or this moment that will define them, and the ways my character is newly elucidated in the upcoming episodes is really, really thrilling.
VV: You have voiced a lot of video game characters in your career, actually. That’s an interesting niche to get into, no?
MD: Yea, it is. I love my video game characters! And I think what people are understanding with the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us is that there is a whole beautiful realm of storytelling within video games. The technology and how those stories are being told are constantly evolving. For example, one of my first games, I only stood in a voice booth by myself and would sit there and would express myself in the dark and in isolation. Then comes motion capture. Then comes different kinds of technology around motion capture that becomes more like theater because you have the suit on and you interact with other people to play out the scenes. So, as technology evolves, the way the stories are being told also evolves. Working in this field, you never get comfortable. You never are like, “This is exactly how I do this.” But the very essential nature is that the stories are wonderful in video gaming, and I have greatly loved how dynamic, diverse, and outside of my body I can be: I’ve played an old white lady, I’ve played a nun, I’ve played so many different things that I could never do in physical acting. And the fact that 10 years ago I was able to play Marlene being so much younger than she was in the story is kismet because now, in actual life, I’ve aged into her and can play her on the show.
VV: Do you play video games?
MD: No! [Laughs.] I played Ms. Pac-Man back in the day and Asteroid. But I can’t play a video game today to save my life. And I’ve worked on so many of them that it’s kind of a running joke now. But I will watch people play them! It’s hilarious because I do play the piano, I do have good hand-eye coordination, but I just cannot get the controller to do what I need it to do. Believe me, I have tried.
