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Landing a lead role in a TV series would seem like a dream scenario for an up-and-coming actor. But it can also become a nightmare. Just ask Maggie Q.

The actor, who got her start in Hong Kong action films, scored the title role in the CW’s 2010 spy thriller “Nikita,” where she was able to showcase her athletic prowess while becoming one of the few Asian actors to star in a network drama series.

Although Q was grateful for the experience, she also remembers the project as all-consuming and grueling, prompting her to be more selective about her choices.

Her inner red flag went up when she was first approached about starring in “Ballard,” Prime Video’s new show based on a series of best-selling novels about fictional LAPD detective Renée Ballard by former Los Angeles Times journalist-turned-author Michael Connelly.

“I get a lot of scripts, and a lot of them I don’t like,” said Q, whose real name is Margaret Denise Quigley. “I also wasn’t looking to take on another show. It was like, ‘Is this something I really want to do right now?’ I know what it takes to be No. 1 on a show. It’s a massive output, and it really has to be good enough for me to want to do that again.”

To her surprise, she loved the scripts. After meeting with Connelly and other producers, she said, “I knew I was in a room with people I wouldn’t mind spending years of my life with.”

Q is now back at the No. 1 slot on the call sheet in “Ballard,” premiering Wednesday with 10 episodes. The new TV series is a spinoff of “Bosch: Legacy,” which wrapped its third and final season in March.

Ballard first appeared in Connelly’s 2017 book “The Late Show,” and she has continued to solve crimes in five other novels. The detective joins quirky attorney Mickey Haller (known as the “Lincoln Lawyer”) and world-weary police detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch in the gallery of Connelly’s colorful characters to jump from the bestseller list to the TV screen.

Q felt an instant admiration for Ballard’s dedication to her job as well as her strong personality, which often puts her at odds with her male colleagues. She was also impressed that the character was inspired by real-life investigator Mitzi Roberts, who worked in LAPD’s elite Robbery-Homicide unit.

In the series, the investigator has been newly demoted from Robbery-Homicide after clashing with her male partner and has been reassigned to head up the underfunded cold case unit, supervising a staff of reserves and volunteers. Titus Welliver, who played Bosch in the eponymous series and in “Legacy,” will appear periodically during the season.

Connelly has been a longtime fan of Q, whose more prominent roles include the only female member of the Impossible Mission Force headed by Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in “Mission Impossible III” and a dogged FBI agent in ABC’s “Designated Survivor.”

“She has a relentless aura about her,” said Connelly in a phone interview. He was also thrilled that Q and Roberts share similarities: “They both have a confidence and a fierceness in their eyes. They have matching histories — they both grew up in Hawaii and they surf. It’s like it was fated to be.”

“Ballard” is a sharp reversal from Q’s last series — the 2024 Fox comedy “Pivoting,” about three close-knit women who are trying to cope with the death of another friend. Q played a doctor who decides to make a life change and work in a grocery store. The show only lasted one season.

In a separate interview, Roberts, who is a consulting producer on the new show, said Q was her first choice among the actors being considered to play Ballard.

“She has played so many realistic, strong female characters,” she said. “When Maggie got the part, I was ecstatic. When we first met to have coffee, it was like we’ve known each other our whole lives. During several days of physical training before production, I thought there might be things that would be hard for her to work on. But it was never an issue. She approached everything so professionally.”

During a video interview from her home in Hawaii, Q discussed the new series, her raw memories of “Nikita” and why she doesn’t go to Hollywood parties. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Were you familiar with Michael Connelly or his books before you became involved with the show?

My first exposure were those first six or seven scripts, which I read on a plane to New Zealand. I was aware of Michael Connelly, but only peripherally. I’m an avid reader and I wish I had more time to read fiction, but I don’t. So I wasn’t schooled on Mike’s massive success. After I read the scripts and liked them, I then dove into who Michael was and found it really interesting that he parlayed being a journalist into this wildly successful fiction career.

How important was it when you learned that Renée was based on a real detective?

When I finally met Mitzi, we got on in a way that was very unpredictable. She felt like a sister. She ended her career in cold cases, and it was there that she was really able to connect the DNA in crimes that were completely unrelated.

Although you’ve done so many kinds of projects, this still strikes me as an unlikely Maggie Q vehicle.

I agree. I have to feel something; there has to be an emotion that resonates down the line. I need to feel longevity with it. A lot of consultants working on this show were or are people who are retired. I can see and feel in their stories and the lives they live now that they still haven’t let go of cases they were not able to close. The peace they haven’t been able to bring to a certain family still bothers them. The quality of these people is extraordinary. I felt it was an honor to tell their stories.

Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer are very dynamic. Renée is a lot more reserved and closed off. She does not connect easily with others. Was that a challenge to make her feel alive?

In terms of Renée, being in Robbery-Homicide was her dream job. She wanted to get the bad guys. To be demoted the way that she was — there’s a certain amount of bottling up that comes with that. She then has to prove herself in a department that she doesn’t want to be in and never asked for. In doing that, maybe they will again see in her the detective that she was and bring her back to the job she loved so much.

This show is a sharp pivot from your last TV series, “Pivoting.” It was jarring to see you in a comedy.

That show was a dream job. It was a huge departure for me, and that was what was fun about it. Nobody expected me in that role. It was a gift to me. The show did not perform like we hoped. Fox offered to save the series by moving it to another country, and I was not willing to do that.

I’m very curious about your ordeal with “Nikita.” You once described it as an experience that almost killed you.

It really did. Up to that point, I had done only films. I had never done a TV show, and I was very naive. I remember going into it with positive energy. David Solomon, one of the producers in the first season, took me to lunch. He had been on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” for seven years and watched how Sarah Michelle Gellar killed herself being the title character. “Maggie,” he said, “do you know what it will take to lead this show?” I said, “No, but I work really hard.” He said, “I appreciate that, but can you even conceptualize the output you will need on this show? I watched Sarah Michelle suffer for seven years. Everything was on her shoulders.”

I have never been so wrong about what it would take to do a show like that. I’m pretty optimistic, but nothing in my bag of tricks was working when I was on that show. It’s not just about the job. You have to deal with people’s personalities, writers, schedules. And I was in Canada on my own, with no support, leading a show that I thought I would be able to sustain for 10 months during the year because of my work ethic. I have never been so wrong. Because I had done action movies, there was a level I wanted to reach that people had never seen before. I was doing my own stunts, working with choreographers at the top of their game. I’m really proud of the level of action we did bring to the small screen.

People may find it surprising that you live in Hawaii. I know you were born and raised there.

My husband and I live in a couple of different places, but we spend a lot of time here because there is peace here. There’s no traffic, it’s low crime, the air is clean. For a lot of Hollywood actors, they do the work and then want to get as far away from the industry as possible. I work in the industry but have never immersed myself in it. I don’t go to parties; I don’t hang out. I do my job and go home, and that’s the way I like it. I never thought being seen had any real value. I just want to be at home, be with my dogs and be in nature. That’s what grounds me. Then when I’m back in Hollywood and on the clock, I have a peace that no one can take away.

Who says you can’t go Home Box Office again?

Warner Bros. Discovery renamed its streaming service HBO Max on Wednesday, formally reversing its decision from two years ago to dump the prestigious HBO brand in a bid to make the service more appealing to a mainstream, meat-and-potatoes crowd.

The gambit to chase Netflix with a service called Max didn’t work. Warner Bros. Discovery’s leaders eventually recognized the tremendous value in the HBO name, and sheepishly brought it back for an encore.

The company announced the switch in May.

“The good news is I have a drawer full of stationary from the last time around,” HBO Chairman Casey Bloys said in May, making light of Warner Bros. Discovery’s about-face during the company’s annual programming upfront presentation to advertisers at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The move marks the fifth name for the service in 15 years.

HBO’s first digital offering, introduced in 2010, was called HBO Go. Eventually the company added an HBO Now app. Then, in 2020, when the company launched its comprehensive streaming service with Warner Bros. movies and television shows, executives decided the HBO Max name would play to the company’s strengths while beckoning customers with a souped-up product and moniker to match.

That lasted until Chief Executive David Zaslav stepped in. The company truncated the name to Max because Zaslav and other executives felt the need to create some distance from HBO’s signature shows to make room for the nonscripted fare of Discovery’s channels, including HGTV and Food Network.

Now it’s back to HBO Max.

The company has said the shift was a response to audiences’ desire for quality over quantity.

“No consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content,” the company said in May.

The change also represents a recognition that Warner Bros. Discovery, a medium-sized media company with a huge debt burden, couldn’t compete with Netflix, which tries to offer something for everyone.

And while some of the Max-branded shows, including “The Pitt,” are critically acclaimed, it was the HBO fare, including “The White Lotus,” that has been the most consistent draw for subscribers.

HBO built its legacy as a premium cable channel that required an additional fee on the monthly cable bill. Such groundbreaking series as “The Sopranos,” “Game of Thrones” and “Sex and the City” put the channel at the vanguard of prestige programming.

Most subscribers who currently have Max won’t need to download a new app, company insiders said.

An app update will eventually change the blue Max logo to a black HBO Max one.

Staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

Can you build serious strength without heavy weights? A clinical trial comparing resistance training and blood flow restriction methods highlights options for those seeking gains without joint stress.

Study: Comparative analysis of high-intensity resistance training and blood flow restriction training on enhancing upper limb muscle strength and mass. Image credit: Ground Picture/Shutterstock.com

A recent paper published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology compares the effects of two types of exercise training on upper limb muscle mass and strength. The results could help redirect people unsuitable for high-intensity training to another alternative.

Introduction

High-intensity resistance training (HIRT) is an effective way to achieve upper limb muscle growth, but at a higher risk of damaging the joints, ligaments, or tendons in this injury-prone area. Low-intensity training uses a low training load with more repetitions, increasing the time required. Though it is safer than HIRT, it is also less effective, reducing the final muscle hypertrophy.

Blood Flow Restriction Training (BFRT) is a low-intensity alternative to HIRT. Also known as KAATSU training, BFRT is a novel method of strength training in which external pressure is applied to the limbs using specially designed pressure equipment. This pressure obstructs venous blood flow completely and arterial flow partly. The outcome is more intense body stimulation at each load level, the goal being to increase muscle strength and size and boost endurance.

BFRT could be a safe middle path that confers muscle growth and strength comparable to that with HIRT, but with less risk of injury. BFRT combined with short-term intensive strength training improved body composition and cardiac performance, enhancing cardiovascular fitness. This is the case in young and elderly participants after a short-term intervention.

BFRT has also been demonstrated in the rehabilitation of post-surgical patients, for instance, after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. Here, it improves muscle thickness and strength, helping the patient regain function. BFRT also prevents injury in older adults by increasing bone strength and exercise capacity.

BFRT can be optimized by using an exercise intensity of 20% to 40% of one-repetition maximum strength (1RM) with a high number of repetitions, during two or three sessions per week. Pressure is applied to achieve 50% to 80% vessel blockade, though there is no consensus on whether to use absolute vs progressive pressure. Each of these affects upper limb training adaptation, but they have not been directly compared with each other or with HIRT, prompting the research in the current study.

This study was a randomized controlled trial involving 34 participants, who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: the HIRT, BRTF with fixed pressure (BFRT-F), or BFRT with progressive pressure (BFRT-P).

Study findings

The 1RM increased significantly in all groups, with the best results in the HIRT group, followed by the BFRT-P group.

The HIRT protocol increased all isokinetic muscle strength parameters. The highest was an increase of over 55% in the triceps extension. Peak torque increased significantly at the shoulder and elbow joints in the HIRT group compared with BFRT-F.

The BFRT-P group experienced comparable increases in strength of between 30% and 40%. Though increases occurred in the BFRT-F group, the gains were significantly below those in the other groups. With the trunk and back muscle groups, the gains in peak torque were highest for HIRT (~3%) compared to both other groups.  Still, the BFRT-P group showed a marked improvement in peak torque compared to BFRT-F.

Despite being inferior to the other groups’ outcomes, the BFRT-F also showed significantly higher peak torque in several joint extensors and flexors.

The HIRT and BFRT-P groups, but not the BFRT-F group, demonstrated increased arm muscle circumference, especially during muscle contraction, signaling muscle hypertrophy. The most significant increase occurred in the HIRT group.

Muscle mass increased in both the HIRT and BFRT-P groups. In the HIRT group, this increase was about 15.1% and 22.6% in the left and right arms, respectively, and 5.2% and 10.6% in the BFRT-P group, for the left and right arms, respectively. The BFRT-F group failed to show any significant change.  

These findings followed the predicted pattern, probably because progressive pressure with BFRT-P causes greater metabolic stress. This, in turn, induces more hypoxia and results in the accumulation of metabolites in the muscle, the probable reason for its superiority to BFRT-F.

Conclusion

The study presents the first direct and controlled comparison of high-intensity resistance training with two blood flow restriction training modalities. It demonstrated that the best results were obtained with HIRT, confirming, as expected, “HIRT’s role as the gold standard for mechanical tension-driven adaptations”. In contrast, the BFRT-F group had the lowest gains.

Notably, the BFRT-F group used a lower load at 30% 1RM but still showed strength gains, indicating that BFRT does play a role in improving strength. Certain studies suggest that BFRT can build muscle strength comparably to HIRT, but possibly only in trained individuals. BFRT may be especially important in training among older men, where it has sometimes been shown to be nearly as effective as HIRT, though the results are conflicting.

The authors noted that using fixed, absolute pressures instead of individualized arterial occlusion pressures may have limited BFRT’s full potential. They also acknowledge the absence of a low-intensity resistance training group with BFRT, which limits comparisons between BFRT and conventional low-load training. Additionally, muscle strength was estimated using an indirect 1RM formula rather than measured directly, introducing possible error.

“While HIRT is optimal for strength and hypertrophy, BFRT-P is a viable alternative for individuals contraindicated to high-intensity training.” The findings suggest that pressure progression may be crucial in maximizing results with BFRT. Future studies should explore the role of personalized arterial occlusion pressures and include a low-intensity control group to provide controls for low-load training without the effect of BFRT.

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