Katherine McNamara Teases Changing Motives Ahead on Walker Independence

[Warning: The following contains spoilers from the series premiere of Walker Independence. Read at your own risk!]

Abigail Walker (Katherine McNamara) is officially on a quest for revenge, and also some justice. The heroine of The CW's Walker Independence, a prequel to Walker, has decided that she needs a bit of both after the smarmy Tom Davidson (Greg Hovanessian) murdered her husband and then took his job as sheriff of the small Texas town of Independence. Abby wants Tom dead or at least punished, and she was even willing to do it with her own hand there for a second, until her new friends talked some sense into her. No, shooting Tom during a crowded saloon party is not the answer, but Abby's certainly going to figure out what is as she adapts to her new home and its quirky, mysterious population. 

McNamara tells TV Guide that of course, there's more to the story. "In Independence, everyone's running from something, and no one is who they seem," she says. "As Abby starts to peel back the layers of who all these people are, her motives and her perspective could potentially change. But what's interesting is that justice is not always a straight line. It's not always black and white." 

She goes on to explain that in order to get both the justice and the revenge Abby desires, she'll have to make some sacrifices and some compromises to her own morality. "We'll see how the west shapes Abby and how Abby shapes the west as we move forward." 

Below, McNamara offers some teases for what's to come and shares how the show compares to its sequel show, Walker. 

Walker, Independence opens with some covered wagon sex right before Abby's husband dies. How sexy is this show? Are we going to see Abby get to a place where she can fall in love again, or at least have some more sex? 
Kat McNamara: We'll see. She is a woman who is extremely strong-willed and has quite a lot of conviction, but there is a good deal of romance. It's still a Western. We have the romance, we have the adventure. We have furtive glances between many characters, whether or not they ever come to fruition. What's great is that we have such a cast of rich characters and all these relationships bring out different colors and each other and you really don't know where anyone is going to end up or who anyone really is, until you peel back those layers and really dissect what their past is, what their future looks like and why they're in Independence to begin with.

There's a long tradition of stories about men who lose their wives, including Walker. So how is it different to tell it from a woman's point of view, especially in this time period? 
McNamara: It's very interesting because we have an opportunity to reinvent the wagon wheel, as it were, and really tell a lot of different perspectives on a genre that is very well-known and very beloved. There's a lot of commonalities and a lot of tropes all within this genre, and yet, we have the opportunity here to tell new stories and share new perspectives, including Abigail's, who is this woman in the 1870s who all of a sudden finds her entire life and her entire future has gone up in flames, literally, and has a choice. She can become a victim of her circumstances, she can crumble under the pressure and the flames of war, or she can reinvent herself and begin a new future and a future that is solely hers. Having a character that has such agency in a time when a lot of women weren't given those opportunities and those freedoms or that kind of independence, as it were, has been quite an amazing journey.

Since Walker starts in a similar way with Walker losing his wife, are there similarities there? 
McNamara: There are a lot of commonalities. I will say I thoroughly enjoy the fact that somewhere in the CW verse, I am both Stephen Amell's daughter and Jared Padalecki's great, great, great, great grandmother. There's a timeline in which that exists. But it's been such a pleasure to bring this to life because you know, it is such a legacy, Walker, Texas Ranger. So in the Walkerverse, as we're starting to call it, you get to see the similarities, and I've had long conversations with Jared. I've heard his Walker TED Talk of "how to Walker." But it's really all about having that heart and that spirit and that tenacity that will get you through anything. We definitely get to see that, and not only with Abby but with all the characters.

It's been a while since we've seen you without superheroes or magical powers. Is Abby all new for you, or are there some similarities with Clary and Mia and other characters you've played? 
McNamara: Well, there are certain commonalities and you know, all three of them are women who are thrust into a world or into a situation or a responsibility that they know nothing about and have to find a way to form a family and make it work and really come into their own and come into the person that they were meant to be in in a various myriad of ways. But what is interesting about this is, you know, I've been in super suit and leather jackets and combat boots for almost the last 10 years and suddenly I find myself in a corset and five skirts, and I'm a lady all of a sudden. So it's different, but that's what I love about my job. I get to live a million different lives and really figure out what that's like to inhabit that person's life.

This is a completely different world, but I would imagine those characters don't leave you easily. What have you taken with you from those shows to projects like this? 
McNamara: Well, I mean, Calian does carry a bow and arrow, I keep begging them to let Abby shoot a bow just for the CW of it all. Maybe that'll happen someday. But no, it's really interesting to get to see how that all plays, because there is a certain strength and a certain backbone that all of these characters share, but there's also vulnerability. As tough as Mia is and as hard headed as she is, she's a squishy little softy on the inside. She's been through a lot and doesn't really know how to deal with her own emotions. You get to be this spectrum of characters, and that's why I'm so grateful for the roles that I've gotten to play and the roles that I continue to get to play. There are elements that make them interesting and make them similar, and yet they're entirely different women. And it really speaks to the moment that we're having television where you're getting to see women as one example of the diversity that we're seeing in television but being told in many different ways you know, the strong, empowered woman is not necessarily just one character, even within Walker, independence or within the Arrowverse or within Shadowhunters. Every single woman on that show has an agency and has a story to tell and has their own power in a certain way, but they're all very different women.

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Can you paint me a picture of what the rest of this first season looks like? 
McNamara: Without spoiling anything, it's becoming sort of a beautiful allegory for our world today. You see this independent, unincorporated town in Texas that's trying to find itself and find its way and find the world that it's going to be and what it's going to represent and what it's going to stand for. And all the people within it are trying to do the same and find their own sense of justice. Whereas you know, in the world today, we're at a place where we have the pandemic, we have this chance to start over and we have this chance to create the world in which we want to live and the future we want to leave behind for our great, great, great, great grandson, Jared Padalecki. You know, it'll be interesting to see how folks react to that and if they can find those commonalities within our show.

Do you refer to Jared as your great-great grandson to his face? 
McNamara: Oh yes. Yeah. I thoroughly enjoy it. Look, I bake and I knit. I'm thoroughly taking to being a grandmother. I really enjoy this. One hundred percent.