In Apple TV+’s action-thriller Echo 3, Jessica Ann Collins plays Amber Chesborough, a gifted scientist whose kidnapping prompts a Taken-style crisis across the Colombia-Venezuela border, amid a war zone. Which is a far cry from the real-life Jessica, whose crisis today centres around the still-stressful, but thankfully more everyday business of childcare (her nanny is sick, she explains apologetically, as she’s forced to take our Zoom interview from her car minutes after doing the school run).
For someone who has forged a career playing everyone from a CIA Analyst (alongside Jessica Chastain, in 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty) and an assistant state attorney (in an episode of The Good Wife) to a psychopath serial killer (in CSI), Jessica is notably more playful and jovial in conversation than her on-screen alter egos would suggest, relaxing swiftly into our interview despite the stress of her morning.
She’s also clearly on a high from the series release, too – a project where she worked once again with Zero Dark Thirty producer/writer Mark Boal for the first time in a decade. She also speaks on her on-screen rapport with "beautiful" co-stars Michael Huisman and Luke Evans. In conversation with GLAMOUR, Jessica Ann Collins goes into detail about the production of Echo 3, filming in Colombia (and taking her kids with her!) and the kind of roles she’d like to take on in the future.
Hi Jessica! Congratulations on your starring role. What was the high point?
It was a huge adventure just to be in South America for that stretch of time. Working with Mark Boal was a definite high point, given the level of quality he brings to his projects. It was amazing to be working on something where you felt completely trusted by the filmmaker and the writer. Also the character [of Amber] was incredible and she has a huge journey, enduring a lot as she goes along that arc. As a performer you feel riveted by those types of characters that go through an entire life experience on screen.
How did you prepare to play Amber, a scientist researching an addiction treatment with a brilliant, unique mind?
Well, I definitely did research into psycho-pharmacology, to get an idea of what it would be like to have a scientific interest in those areas. Which involved mostly a lot of reading – trying to fill my head with scientific thoughts. Otherwise, it was about reminding myself to be present with this part. Mark and I both agreed that we wanted to present Amber as this ‘anti-damsel’, and someone who performs behaviours that aren’t quite logical – the ones you wouldn’t anticipate. So most of my preparation involved trying to think outside of the box, about how I could I push this character to have more illogical choices in the moment – I would come up with ideas of how to perform a certain scene, and choose the third idea I’d have. For instance, there's a beautiful scene in episode two where my character meets these two girls who are running this guerrilla group. The obvious choice is to portray my character as someone wrapped up in fear, but instead I decided to push back. I thought, what if in this moment where it could quite possibly be life and death, what if [Amber] got angry and mean instead of fearful? I played a lot with pushing myself through what might be a trope as far as performance.
It looks distressing – not to give too many spoilers away for would-be viewers, but your character gets kidnapped and tied up at one point. How did you navigate those scenes?
I just tried to be in the moment as much as possible. In those stressful moments, I feel like Amber copes by disassociating. So I let myself go to the opposite places internally, you know, that when things got really tough, like when she's tied up outside, I'm thinking of other things in my mind and letting that harsh experience be forgotten about. That's how I moved my way through those terrible places.
How did you recover from the emotional toll of those scenes?
Well, I brought my two toddlers to Colombia for the duration of filming there – so they made it easy. They were enrolled in a Spanish speaking school in Bogota, which was amazing because it dropped me directly into the culture in a way that I don't think I would have experienced had they not been with me. Yeah. And it ended up to be really special. Their Spanish is amazing – sometimes they speak to each other, and I’m like, ‘What?’ Having them there meant I did not have the luxury to linger in the head space of my character. It would have been unfair to them. When I came home, it was an immediate switch into something else: I built a lot of Lego and played with Play-Doh, and that helped tremendously.
Psychedelic therapy – which is one of the themes of this series – has become a huge topical in the past year, with an increasing amount of research supporting its usage. Did it influence your personal opinion around the usage of psychedelics?
The use of psychedelics for mental health is certainly part of our dialogue right now, so it was interesting to see that reflected in art. I don't know if, personally, I came out on it one way or the other, only to see that it does have an effect in trials and the data supports that they can be very beneficial under certain conditions. So it is interesting to read about the ways in which mushrooms or whatever can benefit people.
What sort of training did you have to do for the action elements of this show? Did you learn how to like, fire a gun, that kind of thing?
So, in episode five I scaled down this three-tiered waterfall, after breaking out of this prison that I'm being held in. Throughout the filming I really did try to keep up with the boys, with Luke [Evans] and Michiel [Huisman], who were so buff and so in shape. I felt like I owed it to the feminine piece of this story to be strong. So I was exercising a lot just to keep myself in good shape to be able to climb around and be suspended off of cliffs and things like that.
So you actually did your own stunts – not a stunt person?
Oh yeah! I even did a 30-foot jump off of a cliff. It was really fun, but I'm very adventurous, so it was natural for me to hop into that.
What kind of preparation were you doing, work-out wise?
I have two toddlers, so that's a workout, just like lifting them up and down and all of that stuff. When I could, I was squeezing in home workouts wherever I could. There was no gym or trainer involved, but I had fitness bands and I was just on the floor doing pushups, I was doing squats, I was hanging off of trees, I mean, whatever I could. I did swimming too.
What was it like working with Luke Evans and Michael Huisman?
They're beautiful actors, beautiful people. We got close on this because we were in Columbia for close to nine months, in remote places. We got along personally, and I think that fed directly into what we were doing on screen. It was an important element and I think important to all of us that we felt like we enjoyed each other.
How was filming the wedding scene together, which occurs at the start of the narrative before Amber gets kidnapped? That must have been a serious contrast to all the action-packed scenes.
That was the hardest part for me, honestly. People think it would have been, say, picking up a scorpion or something like that. But finding Amber's joyful happy place ended up being the real struggle! But it was nice to start the journey filming that scene – which we did at the beginning of filming, to mirror the chronology of the series – because that was a time for us to get really close.
The series – which has been compared to the film Taken – is about a rescue mission. Who would you put in charge of leading your own rescue mission in your life?
Myself! I think I could do it.
Finally, you've played many heavy roles like lawyers, investigators, serial killers, scientists… Is there a type of role that you would like to do in the future, that you haven't done yet?
I like being surprised by what comes along, and there's something very exciting about not anticipating that. But I do think it would be interesting to get my hands on a comedy script…
The final episode of Echo 3 is out on Apple TV+ on Friday 13 January. All other episodes are available to stream on the platform.
