Taylor Sheridan‘s latest project for Paramount+ comes with some major star power attached. Special Ops: Lioness stars legitimate movie stars and critically-acclaimed talent like Nicole Kidman, Zoe Saldaña, and even Morgan Freeman. However after watching the series, which debuted on Paramount+ this morning, it was clear that those big names were being lapped by their lesser known costar. Laysla De Oliveira stars in Special Ops: Lioness as Cruz Manuelos, a domestic abuse survivor turned badass Marine who becomes a CIA field agent in the fight against terrorism.
While Special Ops: Lioness is often heavy-handed with its grim view of the world — the overall lesson seems to be only way women in the U.S.A. or the Middle East can overcome a cycle of abuse is to become violent themselves? — De Oliveira approaches Cruz’s story with a light touch. She wields a subtle kind of charisma that demands you watch her every move without begging for attention. Between her star-making performance and Cruz’s wild storyline, Laysla De Oliveira is the real star of Special Ops: Lioness.
Special Ops: Lioness opens with Saldaña’s character Joe, receiving a frantic message from a field agent whose cover within ISIS has been blown thanks to a crucifix tattoo she neglected to tell her handler about. Meanwhile, Joe and her crew of stereotypical heavies are busy fighting off an incursion on their base. During the battle, Joe attempts to facilitate extraction, but its soon clear that she’s doomed. Rather than save the asset, Joe orders a drone strike on the whole complex.
We then cut to Oklahoma City, four years before the events of the cold open and the show. Cruz Manuelos flips burgers, but it’s not good enough for her abusive, pot-smoking, gaming boyfriend. He would prefer that she strip for more money (for him). To hammer the point home, he brutally punches Cruz in front of their friends and tells her to go to bed. The next morning, Cruz gets him back with a cast iron frying pan to the head. It’s not good enough. The enraged boyfriend chases her through the streets. Cruz cries out for help and the first open door she stumbles into is for a Marine recruitment center.
Naturally, Cruz enlists and shockingly proves to be a brilliant athlete and ambitious soldier, rocketing to the top of the class. Cut to four years later, and Cruz is the military’s obvious choice to become Joe’s new field agent for Lioness Engagement Team. The CIA operation embeds women with the girlfriends, wives, and daughters of terrorists to locate those targets. The formerly cocky Cruz is thrown into this world without much preparation and expected to thrive or die. It’s an immediate and rude awakening for her.
It’s not just that Special Ops: Lioness is largely Cruz’s story and not, say, Kidman’s Kaitlyn Meade’s that makes De Oliveira pop. She’s one of those actresses you know you’ve seen before — in my case, Locke & Key — but this is when she’s really able to throw down a performance that argues she deserves to be in the mix for movie star roles. After all, she’s able to not only keep up with, but sometimes lap her literal movie star co-stars.
De Oliveira is able to convey both Cruz’s confidence in her fighting prowess and her fear of passing as a high society Arab. She’s simultaneously cynical of Joe’s intentions and eager to impress her. She is a shooting star blazing across the sky, fully aware that she could just as easily crash and burn as she could keep on glittering. In fact, doom is the likely price for any small success.
Time will tell if Special Ops: Lioness will be able to find the same kind of ardent following that other Taylor Sheridan-scripted Paramount+ shows have, but after sampling the new series, I feel certain that Laysla De Oliveira is poised for a similarly fast ascent as her character Cruz.
The first two episodes of Special Ops: Lioness are now streaming on Paramount+.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors, like Laysla De Oliveria, currently on strike, Special Ops: Lioness wouldn’t exist.