“I have to bounce around, and my body has to bounce with me,” she says. “As soon as we wrapped Lioness this season, I lost 10 pounds of muscle. And so, it kills me to do that, but for the other roles that I play, I saw the character, not the network, not anybody else. I saw the character as different physically. So I’m really dedicated to all aspects of the character. Physically, I just want to match what’s in my head.”

Nobody sees the part that’s hard. Building the muscle takes months. Letting it go feels almost worse, because she knows she’ll have to build it all over again the next time Bobby comes calling. She doesn’t complain about it. She just states it, like it’s simply part of the job description. 

“It’s not necessarily the funnest thing or the most healthy thing or the easiest thing, but it is what I have to do,” she says. 

About three months before filming starts, she’ll head back into the gym with one purpose, rebuild what she let go. It’s not about how she looks in a mirror. It’s about whether Bobby feels real. 

Bobby isn’t convincing because she looks strong. She’s convincing because everything about her, the way she moves, the way she barely talks, belongs to someone who’s already been tested and doesn’t need to prove it again. Long before Jill built Bobby’s body, she had to understand who Bobby actually was. 

That understanding didn’t come from a script. It came from real conversations Jill had with former operators, women whose quiet professionalism stuck with her long after the conversations ended. When I ask what mattered most in bringing Bobby to life, she doesn’t pause. 

“I just think it’s a strength and it’s a confidence that all of those women had, and the way they spoke. It was strong and confident,” she says. “That was the one thing that I wanted to convey with Bobby. These operators are very competent, they’re confident in their skill level, and, you know, they’re a bit like machines. But they all love their country, and they were all there for the right reasons.” 

“Machines” isn’t a knock. It’s discipline, the kind you need when hesitation costs lives. Bobby doesn’t waste words. She doesn’t need to be seen. She does the job, and Jill believes that restraint says as much about an operator as anything physical does. 

It’s also why viewers know almost nothing about Bobby outside of work. Lioness isn’t shy about digging into what its characters carry emotionally, except with her. Jill says that’s on purpose. 

“There’s a lot that we don’t know about Bobby, and that is by design,” she says. “As soon as you see a crack in the armor, that’s a weakness. I don’t think that Taylor is at a place right now where he wants to explore that with the team.”

That doesn’t mean Bobby doesn’t feel anything. Every operator hits a breaking point eventually, Jill says, no matter their gender. 

“They cry in the bathroom or in the closet when they’re by themselves,” she says. 

Bobby just hasn’t had that moment on screen yet. Instead, she’s the steady one, holding the line for everyone around her, especially Joe, played by Zoe Saldaña. 

“Bobby protects Joe,” Jill says. “She will always put Joe before herself, and she will put country before herself. By the time you get to Bobby’s feelings, it’s almost like she has no more left for her, you know? And that could be by design as well.” 

Talking to Jill about Bobby, it gets hard to tell where the actress stops and the character begins. She doesn’t talk about playing an operator so much as honoring one. Every choice, how Bobby carries herself, how much muscle Jill puts on before filming even starts, comes back to one question, would the women who actually lived this believe her? 

That question didn’t start on a set. It started years earlier, inside her own home. 

Her husband works in military intelligence. Her father was a Marine. Through them, she spent years around service members whose stories looked nothing like what she saw on TV. Women who weren’t side characters or stereotypes, but leaders. At some point she realized nobody in Hollywood was in a hurry to close that gap. 

“When my husband and I came up with the concept for the show, it came out of our love for our men and women of the military,” she says. “I never saw the women in the military portrayed like the women that I knew. So it was very important that we get it right.” 

Lioness was never just another job to her. It was the show she’d been waiting for someone else to make, and when no one stepped up, she and Taylor Sheridan made it themselves. What matters most to her isn’t a review or a rating. It’s whether the women who actually wear the uniform see themselves in it. 

“I stay pretty vocal about making sure that we don’t end up like Barbies with guns,” she says. “I want to make the women proud that watch this show and that do these jobs.” 

That sense of responsibility doesn’t clock out when filming wraps. It follows her home, to a farm in Tennessee, where the cameras are gone, the scripts are put away, and Bobby disappears for a while. What’s left is the same thing that started Lioness in the first place, a desire to actually do something for the military community that’s shaped so much of her life.

Every year, Jill and her husband host the Patriotic Pick, an event that raises money for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. The mission is personal, making sure the children of fallen special operations herosl get the education and opportunities their parents would’ve wanted for them. 

I ask why this mission specifically and she didn’t reach for statistics. She puts herself in the operator’s shoes instead. 

“If I were one of those operators and I got killed, and I was in heaven, and God said, ‘What can I do for you?’ my immediate response would be, take care of my children,” she says. “I think educating children is really important in the way they navigate life, and it’s going to help them immensely. That’s probably why David and I wanted to do something for the military, but more specifically for children.” 

It’s a theme that curses through nearly everything she does, from filming, training and farm life. She wants the people she’s representing to feel seen, not performed. 

By the time Season 3 arrives, Jill has already watched the opening episode, and she doesn’t try to play it cool. 

“I’m very proud of every single episode of all the seasons,” she says. 

Most actors would stop there. Ratings, streaming numbers, a good opening weekend, that’s usually the finish line. Jill is thinking further down the line. 

“I think that in the future, when human beings go back and want to look at a real life portrayal of what women did in the military, I hope that our show is the first thing that pops up.” 

It’s a big thing to hope for, but it tracks with what she’s already shared with me. Lioness was never about filling a slot in a lineup. It was about giving women in uniform the kind of representation and honor she felt they’d earned years ago. 

Her own career followed a similar path. Nothing about it happened overnight, and none of it existed until she decided to build it herself. That lesson didn’t come from a film set. It came from one quiet night around a bonfire with her husband when she wasn’t sure the career she wanted was ever going to show up. 

“When I was 40, I was complaining that I felt I missed the boat in my own profession,” she says. “I felt like there was so much I wanted to do, and I feel like a lot of people probably feel that in their own field, like they’ve aged out and it’s kind of over.”

Her husband didn’t offer sympathy. He offered a challenge. 

“Why don’t you create it? If you can’t find it, or if no one else sees it, then go out and make it happen,” she recalls him telling her. 

Looking back, that wasn’t just career advice. It’s the mindset behind Lioness, behind the work she does for military families, behind pretty much every decision she’s made since. Instead of accepting the ceiling other people handed her, she built her own room. 

It’s the same thing she hopes her daughters carry with them, and honestly, the same thing she thinks Bobby would say if you asked her. 

“Nothing in this life should define you as far as age, or weight, or how you look. All of that is just obstacles,” she says. “I thought, well, there’s no way I can do this. I don’t know how to do it. And then it just became its own thing. It became my destiny to do that as a woman in her 40s.” 

In the end, it’s really not about strength at all. And it’s certainly not about waiting for permission. 

“If you’re not happy, move. Create. Make it happen. That’s my best piece of advice as myself or Bobby. I feel like Bobby would probably do the same thing.”