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"Sarah Clarke on season 1" 24: the Official Companion season 1 and 2 (2006)

by Tara DiLullo

Around the mid-point of season one the writing staff were stuck figuring out where the last half of the season was going to go - especially the resolution of the mole arc. They wanted that storyline to twist again to make an even bigger impact, which in turn led them to make Nina Myers the real mole.

Joel Surnow remembers, "We never told Sarah Clarke that she was bad. She just played the good, supportive, stable mate of Jack Bauer. If we had told her that she was bad, she would have had to do all that work in her head to get back to the thing that she was doing naturally."

One of the more low-key, but incredibly important confrontations of the season was the conversation at the safe house between Nina and Teri. Previously friendly with one another, their conversation quickly goes downhill when it comes out that Nina had an affair with Jack during the Bauer separation.
The subsequent tense tête-à-tête between the women became a favorite scene for the actresses. Sarah Clarke says, "We were very proud of that scene and really happy that the producers realized that it was necessary." Leslie Hope concurs, "It was one of my favorite scenes, so watching Sarah play the scene, and what she did with it, was so good!"
Clarke details that they were able to get the producers to allow them to tweak the scene together, to make it more genuine from a female perspective. "They were really great with our input about how women talk. A lot of the time, you get scenes like this and even if they set up the scenario right, the dialogue between the women just isn't right. I think the thing we hit upon is that women usually know what the other person is going to say. Women have a great instinct and intuition and usually they just want to hear the other say out loud what they already know. So when we read the first couple of drafts, it was just over-spoken. [Director] Jon Cassar was really great in whittling it down with us. It was all about what was not said, and that worked really well for us. It was exciting."

While the producers had figured out Nina was the mole earlier in the season, they didn't tell anyone until the last four episodes. "I had no clue about Nina being the mole," Sarah Clarke laughs. "I was naïve. I was thinking, 'Yeah, I love Jack. I'm the one who helps him.' I remember wondering, 'How are they going to surprise everyone?' I though the mole might have been Tony, but that seemed too obvious. Literally, I think I got the news four episodes from the end of the season. When they told me I was blindsided, for sure. I remember thinking, 'How is that going to play?' and I went back and looked at the episodes and sure enough it tracked. Then I was really excited. Talking to Joel [Surnow] and fleshing it out, it made perfect sense that I was a great double agent. I loved the duplicity of having a mission, but then falling for people along the way. Truly, I think Nina loved Jack. I like to think Nina was a pretty good person and she just made some really bad mistakes and then it just spiraled.
"I really like Leslie Hope, so I was sad I was making her character end," Clarke continues. "Although, at that point, we all had no idea what incarnation the show would come back in. The producers had talked about the show going backwards, so we all could come back no matter what. They also talked at one point about making the show an ensamble piece, where it was another twenty-four hours, but we all played different people. There were different thoughts being thrown around about what they were going to do, so no one really took it like it was over for Teri. And it was also up in the air if they were going to kill her or not."