While Americans were looking for a president who could inspire hope, so were the producers of "24." Last season's leaders ran amok, and the show's writers wanted to shake things up with someone who could stand up to Jack Bauer.
Fortunately for them, stage veteran Cherry Jones, best known for her Tony Award-winning performance as a stalwart nun in John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt," had just become available.
"Any time someone offers a middle-aged actress the part of the president on a beautifully produced show, you're going to say yes. It's irresistible," said the 52-year-old, husky-voiced actress. Even if madame president will inevitably need to lean on Bauer? "Well, I like underdogs who are up against it. I love playing decent people put in impossible situations, wrestling with their souls."
As President Allison Taylor, Jones will have more than her soul to wrestle with in the show's Season 7 premiere tonight on Fox. From the outset, it seems the odds are stacked against her character.
A military intervention to prevent genocide abroad soon morphs into a calamitous national-security situation -- one whose resolution would typically fall to ace operative Bauer. But CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) has been disbanded, and its onetime hero is standing trial for his unorthodox, often ultra-violent methods of protecting the country.
Meanwhile, in the midst of that international crisis, the new president must deal with a personal one as well. Her son is dead, an apparent suicide, but the tragic event has sent her husband on a mad chase to find a possible murderer.
If that wasn't appealing enough to the actress, the show itself returns as something of an underdog. Coming off a year-and-a-half absence -- and a sixth season widely criticized as punchless -- the show's creative forces are eager to demonstrate the former Emmy Award winner is back on track.
By landing Jones as their female commander in chief, it instantly energizes the program, said the producers, by allowing them to explore gender role reversal, establish a formidable foil to Bauer, and anchor the show with a sturdy actress.
"You believed her immediately as president," executive producer Evan Katz said of their first meeting.
Howard Gordon, also one of the show's executive producers, recalled that even in small movie parts like "Ocean's Twelve" "she had a toughness that wasn't forced."
