Joanna Going discusses, 'Kingdom,' being a mommy and actress and women on television

Known for her role as First Lady Tricia Walker in the popular Netflix series House of Cards, Joanna Going took on a character that was a complete 180 degree turn from that with her stint as reformed drug addict and absentee mom Christina Kulina on the DirecTV series Kingdom. Kingdom premiered in 2014 and has thus far gotten good reviews. The first block of episodes from season 2 aired  in September 2015 and the second block of season 2 episodes just premiered on June 1. TheCelebrityCafe.com's Jorie Goins was able to speak with Joanna about her character Christina's progress thus far in the show and what the rest of the second season has in store for her.

TheCelebrityCafe.com:  I did some research, I watched trailers and featurettes and interviews with some of the cast and yourself, but just for our readers who may not be familiar could you tell us a little bit about your character in Kingdom and what she's been doing up to this season?

Joanna Going: I play Christina Kulina, she's the estranged wife of Alvey Kulina who owns and runs the Navy St. Mixed Martial Arts gym, and we have two grown sons, Jay and Nate, and they are both fighters, so it's a fighting family. But Christina was away from the family for quite some time -- she's a heroin addict. When we first met her in season one she was working as a prostitute and over the course of season one Jay pulled her back into the family so she's now living with her sons and still struggling with her addiction issues.

TCC: Right, and Jay is the one son that has the closer relationship to her. Nate, if I remember correctly, barely remembers her at all?

JG: That's right. Jay can remember a healthy mom. He actually had his mom and dad for a while and for Jay, it was kind of a driving force in the first season to get his mom back, to get her back and get her healthy and everything will be okay. This damage that was done to the psyche of a young boy that I think has carried him into adulthood and he's still trying to heal his family and he's taken this on as his mission on himself and it's really heartbreaking because he can't kind of move on in his own life until he deals with his mom. But they're very close. They're both addicts, they're very codependent, Jay and Christina. They have a deep understanding of each other and just a familiarity and a humor and a deep love of each other, but that is not always healthy for either one.

Nate on the other hand was a baby when Christina left the family she is sort of in awe of him, of this young man, and he definitely seems the healthiest of the family members. Nobody really knows what's going on underneath, Christina sees into him a little more. She has a good instinct for people and she's lived with a lot of people and she's very accepting. I think she knows a little more about what might be going on with Nate, but she's not going to pressure him about it because she is a bit of a stranger to him, but she just stands in awe of this child who is this young man now. She is very proud of him, but I think she's also very intimidated by him. I think out of everyone in the family she's most intimidated by Nate and his opinion really strikes her to the core.

TCC: And so aside from her husband and sons who else does Christina interact with the most during the series?

JG: Her world is pretty tight, mostly with the boys, and occasionally Alvey, and that's a very combustible relationship. Then once in a while I get to work with Kiele Sanchez who plays Lisa, and I love our scenes because we're the two main women of Alvey's life and while there's suspicion -- Lisa has a healthy suspicion of Christina -- Christina looks at Lisa and thinks she's just a goddess. She says to her that you're doing what I was doing, but you're doing it better in terms of being with Alvey and trying to keep things together in the gym, and I think Christina really admires Lisa and in a way would like to be friends with her but Lisa is very wary of Christina and her addictions and her dangerous poor choices.

TCC: Right, so obviously you can't give away too much because the season has not premiered yet, but what can you tell us about how Christina has developed over the last season and a half, what changes has she gone through and what can we expect from her during the second half of the second season?

JG: Well, we saw Christina trying to walk the straight and narrow. She got forcibly detoxed by her son, Jay, she was locked in a room and now there's this naive notion that, "okay everything's going to be okay between her and Jay," but as most people probably know, that there's a lot more to dealing with addictions than just getting it out of your system, getting the heroin or whatever it may be out of your system. So in the last episode we saw her making an effort to fit into a productive life at least with what she could qualify for, which was not very much, she was working at this dead end job, that was a job that high school kids do and it wasn't satisfying and it wasn't ...feeding the need she has for attention and for danger. And all of the characters in this show are people who are driven to live out there on the edge in some way and driven by some kind of addiction whether it's chemical or emotional and so now we see, in the upcoming episodes we're going to see her take a different path on the road to sobriety and dealing with her addiction and she enters rehab and we'll see how she deals with that. It being Christina, bad choices are made.

TCC: Obviously, we know the chemical addictions are her drug addictions, but what do you think are some of her emotional addictions?

JG: Well she's...is in enormous need for attention and attention from men. I think that's where her self esteem lies and until Christina can find a purpose for herself...a healthy purpose for herself that she's not really going to get well. She can be incredibly manipulative, she knows how to play men, and , she can't seem to have a relationship that is not a transaction and I'm curious to see whether in the future whether she can have an actual real, healthy, emotional relationship with another person.

TCC: Right. So, you're obviously very different from Christina in that you aren't an addict and didn't work as a prostitute, but what similarities, if any, do you draw on between yourself and the character, or what differences?

JG: Well, as you said, the differences are pretty clear. But I think, I think I have the same kind of vulnerability and like an overly sensitive being than Christina. I think she's so sensitive that that's why she ends up self medicating and she can't seem to find a way to function in the world. I think she's overwhelmed with feeling and she runs from it. I on the other hand do what I do because of it, I think...I'm able to be constructive with my sensitivities. We're both mothers and have the mother love for our children, but she's not able to function in an appropriate manner. So I am [laughs]...It's hard to parse it, obviously there's a lot of me in her ...and I can play out a lot of my inappropriate impulses with Christina.

TCC: Right and in an interview about the show, I think it was from the first season actually, Nick Jonas called you a very, very detailed actress. Can you tell me what he meant by that, what details do you try to draw on when you're playing any character and what details do you look for in your work?

JG: Well, I'm very obsessive about anything that my character is wearing , or touching or putting in her room. I have to make up a story about everything to myself and know, "why is that there?" And if it's not authentic to my story of the character, it goes. I think about what does she do all day and how does she satisfy herself, like in the last set of episodes I made her become obsessed with her fingernails, that was like her outlet she was constantly painting her fingernails or changing her fingernails and I had to have I had props, I was like, "please get me a bunch of fingernail polishes in her room." I imagine she kind of is living out her need for a little bit of danger by, she's shoplifting fingernail polish. I think in terms of those kinds of things. What she chose to put on that day, what does it mean? Why did she chose it? Where did she get it? It all has to feel authentic to the character.

TCC: So it sounds like you have a lot of autonomy over your character. Is that a decision between you and the director or is that all you?

JG: Well, it's definitely all written by Byron Balasco. These characters are sprung from the mind of Byron Balasco and ... it's in the script it's on the page although he includes us. He is very inclusive with the actors, we go out to dinner, we sit down, he'll say, "What do you think? What did you feel after we've finished a set of episodes and before he's written the next ones. What did you learn about her? And where do you think she'll go next. He takes it in, it doesn't mean he's going to do what you said. But he does have a conversation with us as the actors and he does give us a lot of ownership over these people. It does feel much more collaborative than anything I've experienced before.

TCC: So switching gears a little bit, what was it like to film this season, this is the second season so, did it still feel new? How are you interacting with your co-stars?

JG: It always feels new because these characters, these people are being revealed to us, episode by episode, script by script that comes in. As much as Byron includes us in the discussion, once he goes away and writes, we don't really know until the scripts come in one-by-one over a number of weeks what is going to happen, so that keeps it exciting. You're always surprised to see what happens next. You have to be really open and ready for everything and anything, and I like this ongoing discovery of who Christina is and what she's capable of. So that keeps it exciting.

And we have a wonderful time, the entire company the actors and the crew are very devoted to the show, and to the story that's being told, and at any given time on the set, we might have, especially in the gym or at the fights, we have a mix of actors, crew members and people who are actually in the world of mixed martial arts. We have a lot of professional fighters who come on the show or commentators, who are actual commentators in the world of mixed martial arts, or our referee Mike Beltran is in the cage with our actors, but he's a real referee out in the world of mixed martial arts. So we're all committed to portraying this world as authentically as possible and are really connected by that commitment and passionate about the show so it's a great atmosphere on the set.

TCC: So my next question is a bit of a strange one. There are a couple of television shows out right now that deal with estranged mothers, the one that comes immediately to my mind is of course Empire with Cookie and her sons. So how do you think Christina falls in line with those mothers? What do you think is different about her relationships, what do you think might be the same? What do you think about the fact that there are so many shows out with people with mommy issues in them?

JG: [laughs] I don't know, you are right about that. And when I first saw Empire I drew the comparison between the family dynamic there. Cookie is obviously a lot more powerful and sure of herself and has a lot more self esteem than Christina does, so she's able to get things done. Christina's just kind of...at this point in our story, she's still kind of hapless and, like I said before, she doesn't have a strong sense of herself and her purpose in the world, and until she finds that and until she's able to find something to take the place of the addiction, some drive, she's not going to be very successful with beating it. And it's a constant ongoing process recovery from the addiction anyway so it ebbs and flows it goes up and down but yeah, do we have a collective mommy issue going on? I'm not sure, I think maybe it's just something in the zeitgeist as the more women are becoming more powerful and feminist issues are being so much discussed, and on the other hand maybe it's men looking at in what ways they need women in the world...Whether it's mothers or fathers I think those kinds of parental...issues touch everybody in one way or another and I think you get to a point in life where you realize nobody has a perfect situation, there's something underneath every family, we're all just working it out and trying our hardest and there are successes and failures in every relationship. It's a moving, changing, growing thing. But that parent child dynamic is what sets a person, sets every individual up for their life, whether they are lifted up and supported by that or whether they're fighting their way out from under a bad situation. I think it's just something that everyone can relate to.

TCC: So for my last question, I'm just curious, what else do you have going on or what's next for you? What's next for Kingdom? What else is going on in your world?

JG: Right now we're on a hiatus with Kingdom and working hard to promote the season and getting more people to know this show is out there. So we've been doing a lot of that. And when I have off time I'm being mom. Being mom to my kid and hopefully supporting her and won't leave her with too many mommy issues.