Recent Posts
“Prison Break” has a breakout star in its newest cast member.
Ahead of the revived show’s imminent TV comeback, much of the talk has focused on the old favorites returning. But ENTITY got a sneak peak and found it was newcomer Inbar Lavi who stole the show.
We caught up with the Israeli actress at the reboot’s premiere where she revealed she signed up for her action role as much to educate as to entertain. The new “Prison Break” series is set in war-torn Yemen and Lavi wanted the opportunity to inform the show’s viewers about the current horrors in that part of the Middle East.
“The people of Yemen struggle every day in the midst of a civil war and I feel a big responsibility to give them a voice and tell their story. We’re very lucky to be throwing a light on that area,” she said. “Plus it’s exciting to play a kick ass woman.”
Lavi, 30, plays a Yemeni freedom fighter named Sheba in the series, which returns to Fox on Tuesday, April 4, after nearly eight years away.
The actress lost one of her best friends to a bomb attack in Israel at 16 and although she moved to America aged 17 to pursue her showbiz dreams, issues in the Middle East are never far from her mind. One of her favorite sayings in Hebrew is “Ani po aval halev sheli sham,” which translates as “I am here but my heart is there.”
Los Angeles-based Lavi was traveling again for this new nine-part series of “Prison Break.” It was largely shot in Morocco — which doubled for Yemen.
As a past viewer of the show and now a cast member, she said the best moment from filming was getting to see the saga’s two stars, Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller, back together as the brothers at the center of the story.
“I got to see them reunite for the first time on set. When they embraced, it was so powerful and moving. It was kind of like, get a room! But their chemistry is why the show works so well.“
Miller and Purcell made four previous seasons of the show from 2005 to 2009 and Purcell said the subsequent popularity of old episodes on Netflix was responsible for “Prison Break'” returning by proving there was still a big audience hungry for more. “It had to do with the Netflix generation. The show has remained relevant and hasn’t diminished, like those classic movies that have a timeless quality to them.”
In this new series, which premiered at the Wondercon festival in Anaheim, CA, Dominic’s character, Lincoln Burrows, finds the brother he thought was dead is actually alive and being held prisoner in Yemen. So he flies there to bust him out of both the prison and the country and enlists Inbar’s character to help with her local knowledge, toughness and firepower.
The actress has had a string of previous roles on American TV shows, including “Entourage,” Sons of Anarchy” and Castle,” but this is her biggest — and perhaps best — part yet. You can see how she fares by watching “Prison Break” each Tuesday at 9pm on Fox, starting April 4.
