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The fourth and final season of Black Sails premieres on Starz on January 29, 2017 and with it, a ton of trouble for Max (Jessica Parker Kennedy). Alliances have been shifting, power is changing hands and Max has to scramble to stay on top in a more volatile Nassau than we’ve seen before. We got a chance to chat with Parker about Max’s resilience, how her relationship with Anne Bonney (Clara Paget) and Jack Rackham (Toby Schmitz) is changing and what’s coming in season four. Check out our interview below.

Here is the official synopsis:

The fourth season opens with hundreds of British soldiers dead in a forest… the Royal Navy sails back to England in retreat… the West Indies are now a war zone, and the shores of New Providence Island have never been bloodier.  With the help of Eleanor Guthrie, Woodes Rogers transforms Nassau into a fortress without walls, as Captain Flint amasses a fleet of unprecedented strength, hoping to strike the final blow against civilization and reshape the world forever.  Meanwhile, from within the island… an insurgency builds, fueled by the legend of its exiled leader, whose name keeps grown men awake at night… the one they call “Long John Silver.”

But as Flint, Silver and their allies are about to learn, the closer civilization comes to defeat, the more desperately and destructively it will fight back.  Oaths will be shattered, fortunes will change hands, and amidst the chaos, only one thing remains certain: it has never been more dangerous to call oneself a pirate.

Legion of Leia: So, what are we going to see Max dealing with this season?

Jessica Parker Kennedy: I can tell you–this woman, goes through so much every season and I think the stakes are so high for her in season four. She’s so close and there’s a new character that comes in that tries to make her life a living hell. Not because he wants to make her life a living hell. I think that he thinks he’s doing the right thing. They want the same thing but in two very, very different ways. Of course, Max’s way is the right way and his way is the wrong way [laughs] and they really butt heads. He’s kind of a frightening character, and I think that it’s the first time someone has really tried to intimidate her. I think it’s going to make the audience really uncomfortable. He’s just so unlikeable. I’m probably saying too much. No, I’m not! I think it will be very uncomfortable for the audience because it’s so uncomfortable for Max. She’s always in really difficult positions, but he’s a force. She needs him as an ally and she’s struggling to get that. It’s high stakes for her. It’s also a season where you get to see a little bit of a different side of her, which is nice. I think at the end of this season she really has a great understanding of who she is, because I think, ever since that break up with Eleanor (Hannah New), she has shut off and put up a wall, or at least, shut off that vulnerability inside of her, as you do when you go though getting your heart completely torn out. I think that vulnerability in her kind of opens up a little bit more in season four. It’s got a great balance of a lot of different character traits that she gets to explore.

Legion of Leia: The relationship between Max, Anne and Jack is fascinating. What are we going to see between them, going forward?

Jessica Parker Kennedy: I can’t really talk much about it. There was this point where they were allies, then they weren’t, then they were again. I mean, it’s a very strange, complicated love triangle in a lot of ways, that you’ll definitely see them together. It’s complicated, as always, and really weird, because Jack is weird and Anne is weird. [laughs] I think it’s about Max finding her place amongst those people, because in many ways, she was a mother to Anne and a role model to Anne and a lover, too, and there was this question of are they in love or is Max using her. Yeah, that dynamic between the three of them is something that does continue in season four.

Legion of Leia: I usually hate asking about costumes. I don’t want to be like, oh, what are you wearing? But with Max, her costumes have been a very strong clue about her station in Nassau. I also can’t imagine wearing those things in the heat.

Jessica Parker Kennedy: It’s a nightmare. It’s a nightmare! In season one, we talked a lot about how, oh, we’re going to make the dresses out of linen and cottons, and then by mid-season three, I was in wool and in leather! [laughs] Life was not good! It’s like a hundred-and-something degrees. I think the biggest challenge of shooting in South Africa was the heat and the costumes. For the boys and the girls, because we had equal numbers of layers. The only thing the girls had that the guys didn’t have were the corsets. But it was an extraordinary amount of clothing to be wearing while you’re trying to do epic monologues. We really struggled with that. There’s something so glamorous and wonderful about that when we put it on in the morning though. I have terrible posture and when I’m Max, I’m forced to stand up straight, but by the end of the day, my head is here [drops head down], but my back is up and I’m sweating everywhere! [laughs] It’s like getting out of–at the end of the day–I can’t get out of those outfits by myself at all because of the lacing in the back– and all costume [crew] know, you have to be at Jessica’s change room at the end of the day, the minute she gets there, because, you know, she’s dying. So you don’t pass out! Hannah got to wear these cold neck things that would go around her, but because I was wearing that wig, and those curls, I never got any of that. I got a fan, but then I got in trouble for the wig. What I ended up doing was we got those little air conditioning boxes and Hannah and I would put our skirts over them and we’d try to get cool from a different direction and hope that it would work.

Legion of Leia: I have to ask about the snake in the brothel. I love him! Do you miss the snake?

Jessica Parker Kennedy: I miss the snake! So much! We have a few of them and they have names like Little Banana, but in Afrikaans. I’m a massive fan of snakes. I’m afraid of weird things like fish and birds, but things like bugs and snakes, I love. I really miss that snake. But I used to get a kick out of the extras that would come to set for the first time and were afraid. And, of course, the extra that was the most afraid of snakes would get sat right next to him. No one would say that there was a snake in the tree and the extra would look up and the thing would be there. I’m a horrible person. I’d laugh so much. It was hilarious. It’s funny when you’re not afraid of something and you see someone else be afraid of it. It’s fun to laugh at them! I chuckle. [laughs]

Legion of Leia: In the second-to-last episode of season three, Max tells Eleanor, “I’m your friend.” How does that relationship develop this season?

Jessica Parker Kennedy: It’s so funny. It was really hard for me as an actor, doing that because I was like, I wouldn’t do that. You know? But I think that she understood, I have to have this person as an ally. I can’t hold my emotions on top of that. I can’t have them weigh over this. This person has to be my ally. It’s mature. She’s matured and she put that away, what happened in the past and said, yeah, I want this to work. Season four, there’s not a tremendous about of time that Max and Eleanor spend together, but there are conversations that are had, always difficult ones. But it’s not her main focus.

Legion of Leia: As women in this situation, there aren’t a lot of allies to be had.

Jessica Parker Kennedy: Whatever choices you agree or disagree with Max or Eleanor making, you know that they’re bright, intelligent women. That’s a good point that you made. They have to stick together. Who else do they have? There’s a feeling of trust there. We know Eleanor screwed up, for sure, but I think there’s a part of Max that believes in her.

Legion of Leia: I know a lot of actors like to stick strictly with the script, but I was curious about how much research you did before playing a character like this?

Jessica Parker Kennedy: I didn’t do heaps of research. I’m not really a research-y kind of actor unless I’m playing someone who is particularly real. I really went on emotion, with how I felt. I really let Hannah do all the research and all that! And then I said, “What did you read today?” [laughs] I kind of spent my time thinking about the women in my life who are very strong and very powerful. My mother had a bit of a tough upbringing and she was a single parent as well. Her mom had health issues. So there is a stoic-ness that she had while raising me. I never saw her break. She dealt with so much while getting her doctorate and dealing with her crazy parents and our family and being a mother and being a teacher, building a house. She’s just an extraordinary person, and she always kept it together. So I really thought about that. And then I did remember the few times that I have seen my mom be vulnerable and kind of used that as well when Max does break down in season one. Then there is Cate Blanchett’s role in the first Elizabeth. How she just–she was such a girl when she became Queen, and then she changed so dramatically. And her stillness, I really would go back and take from and think about that. I found that to be extraordinarily inspirational.

Legion of Leia: You never see Max break.

Jessica Parker Kennedy: No, you never see her break. She broke so hard in front of Eleanor and she never did it again. That changed her. That broke her. So she picked herself ups and she was not the same after that. It was so interesting for me because, during that time in the second season, I went through a really bad breakup, so it was really funny. We  had wrapped season two, we were still taking about season one. I was just like, viscerally feeling what Max was going through. It was kind of extraordinary because I was so different in my interviews that year. I was just like, everything felt personal in the show. It was really great.

Are you excited for season four? Are you sad to see Black Sails go? Let us know in the comments.

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Jenna Busch

Jenna Busch is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Legion of Leia and has hosted and written for sites like Nerdist, ComingSoon.net, Metro, Birth. Movies. Death., IGN, AOL, Huffington Post and more. She co-hosted Cocktails With Stan with the legendary Stan Lee and has appeared on Attack of the Show, Fresh Ink, Tabletop with Wil Wheaton, in the documentary She Makes Comics, on NPR and Al Jazeera America, and has covered film/TV/gaming/comics for years. She's currently a co-host on Most Craved. She's been published in the comics anthology Womanthology, is a chapter author for Star Wars Psychology: Dark Side of the Mind, Game of Thrones Psychology and Star Trek Psychology and more, and owns a terrifying amount of swords and 20-sided dice. There are also those My Little Pony trailer voice overs that give one nightmares.