Updated

Updated · MovieWeb · Aug 4

Lioness Season 3 Lifts Amazon Prime to No. 6 as Paramount+ Thriller Tops Global Charts

Updated

Updated · MovieWeb · Aug 4

Lioness Season 3 Lifts Amazon Prime to No. 6 as Paramount+ Thriller Tops Global Charts

Q: What grueling behind-the-scenes demands pushed Zoe Saldaña into a four-year physical transformation for her CIA role?

Zoe Saldaña’s four-year transformation for **Lioness** was driven by Taylor Sheridan’s insistence that her CIA character, **Joe McNamara**, look and move like “a machine,” combined with the show’s unusually intense physical and technical demands. Saldaña has said Sheridan personally pushed her to **build more muscle** for the role, which led her into **four years of weight training** that eventually became a long-term fitness habit. For the latest season, that preparation intensified further after Sheridan warned her in advance about a more combat-heavy storyline and told her he wanted Joe sharper, stronger and more battlefield-ready. The role required more than just gym work. Saldaña also underwent **weapons refreshers on handguns and semi-automatics**, and she said the production put a premium on making the CIA team look as authentic as possible in action scenes. She has also noted that criticism from some viewers who doubted a petite-framed woman could credibly handle the show’s combat sequences became extra motivation to train harder. Behind the scenes, the strain was also intellectual. Sheridan’s scripts are packed with **dense CIA and military jargon**, to the point that Saldaña and **Nicole Kidman** have said they often had to track him down between takes to clarify dialogue and terminology. Kidman likened preparing for the show to “doing a thesis in the CIA,” underscoring that the transformation demanded both physical endurance and heavy technical preparation.

3 articles · Updated · MovieWeb · Aug 4

Aug. 2 brought an immediate streaming jolt: Taylor Sheridan’s Lioness Season 3 became the No. 1 series on Paramount+ worldwide and climbed to No. 6 on Amazon Prime Video.
Amazon benefits because Lioness is available through Prime Video’s Paramount+ add-on, which lets viewers access Paramount+ inside Amazon’s app while Amazon keeps an estimated 20% to 50% of subscription revenue.
Ride or Die still holds Prime Video’s top spot, but Lioness gives Amazon a hit it did not finance, extending Sheridan’s reach beyond Paramount+ alone.
Season 3’s momentum is also backed by reception: it carries an 82% Rotten Tomatoes score and a 96% user rating, making it one of Sheridan’s best-rated TV seasons.