Cinemax's Jett is Carla Gugino's most Karen Sisco-esque part since Karen Sisco

The Hollywood Reporter

"From multicamera sitcoms to serialized dramas to creepy miniseries, family films to R-rated thrillers, supporting roles to star turns, Carla Gugino's career has been varied and difficult to pin down," says Daniel Fienberg. "For a small but knowledgeable subset of viewers, though, the actress' best work was on 2003's short-lived ABC drama Karen Sisco. I've always insisted that there's an alternate world in which Karen Sisco was a major hit and earned Gugino a handful of Emmy nominations, and yet another world in which the character's appearance on FX's Justified launched a lucrative spinoff. Instead, in our world, I've been left wondering why Hollywood hasn't found Gugino more parts in a similarly hard-boiled, tough-talking, Elmore Leonard-esque vein. Cinemax's Jett comes close." Written and directed by Sebastian Gutierrez, who's been in a long-term relationship with Gugino in real life, Jett "feels like an adaptation of a long-running franchise of crime novels that doesn't actually exist, filled (sometimes to excess) with suave crime lords, verbose henchmen, ambitious heists, steamy sex and unexpected double-crosses, and anchored by an enigmatic and intriguing lead character," says Fienberg. "Jett is probably a little too derivative for its own good, but through five of its first nine episodes, it marks another fun-but-not-too-deep entry in Cinemax's stable of expanded B-movie genre pieces. And it's a great showcase for Gugino."

ALSO:

• Carla Gugino saves Jett from its wild plot developments
• Jett is one of those cases where the actors outstrip the writing
• Creator Sebastian Gutierrez had Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin's most iconic roles in writing the Jett character
• Carla Gugino says she wanted Daisy “Jett” Kowalski to avoid the female anti-hero "double standard": “There are great women’s roles in TV, specifically right now," she says. "But the female anti-hero is still a bit of a double standard. There’s still this thing where a man can behave in an unusual way, or a way that might not fit societal norms, and you just go, well, that’s just how it is. But with a woman, you’re like, was she abused as a child? We need to fill this in. Or does she have some social condition? We need to give her an excuse to behave in what we consider an atypical manner.”