Jodi Balfour Gives Us the Scoop on RELLIK’s Season of Suspense, Subterfuge, and the Suspicious Detective Shepard

RELLIK (“KILLER” backwards) is a crime thriller airing Friday nights on Cinemax. The show stars Richard Dormer as Detective Gabriel Markham, a physically disfigured man pursuing the serial killer who nearly took his life. Jodi Balfour also stars as his partner, the secretive Detective Elaine Shepard. We caught up with Jodi last week ahead of RELLIK’s penultimate episode. Check out what she had to say about playing such a complicated character, telling a story in reverse, and why she thinks Oscar winner Mahershala Ali is the GOAT. Black Nerd Problems: When RELLIK starts, we think we know who Shepard is – a detective in a complicated relationship with her partner. But we soon learn that she’s a lot more complicated than we thought. How was it playing such a complex character whose story unfolds in reverse? Jodi Balfour: It was a huge challenge, even just technically speaking, because of the way the show is told in reverse. As audiences see with the end of (last week’s) episode, there’s a huge reveal that I’m completely wrapped up in. The added challenge with RELLIK was that I had to keep a lot close to my chest because the storytellers – the directors and writers –  really wanted to conceal the twist that comes in episode 5 from the audience. So ordinarily if I was playing someone as damaged and as emotionally traumatized and complicated as Elaine is, I would have opportunities to show that. So yeah, it was really challenging.

BNP: What were your first thoughts when you were p…