'Alaska Daily': Hilary Swank teases her character Eileen Fitzgerald, 'I love that she does her homework'

"It's kind of fun to see this award-winning journalist go up to Alaska and… she just kind of shakes it all up," she said.
Hilary Swank in a still from 'Alaska Daily'
Hilary Swank in a still from 'Alaska Daily'

Come fall and ABC will roll out a new crime drama starring Academy Award winner, Hilary Swank. The actress will now grab a dictaphone as a journalist in 'Alaska Daily' after donning boxing gloves and then suiting up for a space drama. Created by Tom McCarthy, the series follows a journo heading to Alaska from New York for a fresh start and finds herself working on a cold case dealing with the death of a native American woman. Things get darker and murky when she uncovers a larger conspiracy. Ahead of the show's release, Swank teased her character and the show.

Talking about her character, the 'Away star teased that Eileen was a go-getter and a quick learner. "She is going to get to the bottom of the truth one way or another," Swank told EW. "No one's going to stop her from getting there. And I love that she does her homework; she knows her rights and if she doesn't, she quickly learns them. It's kind of fun to see this award-winning journalist go up to Alaska and… she just kind of shakes it all up. It's something I admire in people — people who don't give up, who persevere."

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Swank also shed light on how she was blown away by the storyline. "I read the article and I was blown away by the statistics and the facts. And the fact that most of the world doesn't even know about a lot of those things that are happening. I had known about the missing, lost, and murdered indigenous women before I spoke to Tom, and understandably, I was horrified and really angry that this is happening. It's obviously systemic and nothing's being done about it. Those are the stories I seek."

The official synopsis reads, "From the mind of Tom McCarthy (Spotlight), Alaska Daily stars Hilary Swank as Eileen Fitzgerald, a fiercely talented and award-winning investigative journalist who leaves her high-profile New York life behind after a fall from grace to join a daily metro newspaper in Anchorage on a journey to find both personal and professional redemption. Tom McCarthy is creator and executive producer. Hilary Swank, Melissa Wells, Bert Salke, Kyle Hopkins (Anchorage Daily News), Ryan Binkley (Anchorage Daily News), and Peter Elkoff, who will also serve as showrunner, are executive producers on the series. The pilot episode is written and directed by Tom McCarthy."

'Alaska Daily' premieres in the US on Thursday, October 6, at 10 pm ET/PT on ABC. 

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