Designer handbag or missile launcher? Gabrielle Anwar of USA’s <em>Burn Notice</em> can shoulder either accessory and make it an unparalleled fashion success. Anwar’s character, Fiona, a beautiful but trigger-happy ex-IRA operative, is a rarity on TV: a woman who is completely feminine and completely badass at the same time. That’s just one of the reasons that Anwar, the show’s leading lady, opposite the dynamic duo of Jeffrey Donovan and Bruce Campbell, relishes her role. “It’s tremendous fun to be running around with a sawed-off shotgun and a pair of four-inch wedge heels,” she says. “That’s not just a male fantasy.” But being a dangerous woman often comes with consequences. Fiona’s past comes back to haunt her in the summer finale of <em>Burn Notice</em> (8 p.m. CT Thursday on USA). When she is abducted, it will be up to former spy Michael Westen (Donovan), Fi’s on-again, off-again lover (and an equally dangerous man), to save her.</p><p><strong>Series creator/executive producer Matt Nix says that other actresses who auditioned did a scene in which they woke unconscious Michael up with loving kindness. He says you won the part because, when you did the scene, you kicked Michael’s chair. Is it safe to say that you “got” the character from the start?</strong> “That’s very sweet of him to say, but I’d like to bounce the compliment right back at him. She’s written so well that it’s hard for me to make a poor choice. It’s really there on the page and I have to give credit to these writers, because there are so few female roles that are depicted with any sense of guts. When I read the pilot script, Fi came bouncing right out of the page and grabbed me. She was never a two-dimensional role.”</p><p><strong>Do you have any insight, or have you gained any insight from playing Fiona, into why men are attracted to and fascinated by dangerous women?</strong> “It’s very interesting, because I think in my own personal life, I’ve always been inclined to wear the pants in the relationship. And I have discovered in my ripe old age that that is not the partnership most men gravitate towards. There’s a tendency in men to want to rescue their woman, so that they feel she is eternally indebted to them. There’s a sense of safety in that for men, I think. That’s the kind of woman they engage in wedlock. But then, when they fantasize, men are drawn to a woman that is unattainable and unconquerable, a woman who really doesn’t need to be taken care of. In other words, they’re turned on by the very thing they’re afraid of. It doesn’t get sexier than that, now, does it?”</p><p><strong>Michael and Fi are clearly crazy about each other. But he won’t commit because he has this other agenda of getting his old job as a spy back. Do you think their relationship will ever wind up in a satisfying place?</strong> “I’m not sure Fiona is hoping for it to go to a gratifying, satisfying place. I think that she would get dreadfully bored if that were the case. I think that part of her attraction to Michael is the perpetual challenge.”</p><p><strong>Has it been an interesting experience, immersing yourself into a world of guns and bombs and all things tactical?</strong> “It is incredibly empowering to be around such destructive material. I mean, I get a sense of why people pursue military careers, because it gives you this incredibly false sense of strength, this very superficial wielding of power. I am by nature much more of a pacifist. My last resort is to wield aggression. Yet there’s a carnal part of me that seems to be impressed when I’m handling these weapons and explosives. It’s something I can’t seem to help. It just seems to be there. I would rather it didn’t exist in me, but it does.”</p><p><strong>What do you think Fi’s outfits say about her, aside from the fact that she must have an enormous closet at home?</strong> “She does, doesn’t she? I think Michael has a rather Spartan spy dress-up box and Fiona has an entire wardrobe. I think it’s wonderful. I’m very happy for her. I think it’s really fabulous fun, if nothing else, to be dressed up. It’s a part of me that’s left over from my childhood of my pink princess dress-up box. And I get to indulge that every day. I think if we were relocated to another land and she tried to approach her chameleon-like attire in that realm, it might not be quite as appealing in Lapland, for example.”</p><p><strong>What’s up with all the yogurt? It seems like the only thing in the fridge is Michael’s yogurt and Sam’s beer.</strong> “I know. I know. I would love to see a couple of mangos. Anything else. I’ve had my fill of probiotic enzymes. It’s funny: I’ve stopped eating yogurt in my own life. Because who knows when they’re going to say, ‘This is where Fi goes to the fridge and eats a carton of yogurt,’ and we do it 60, 70 times in a day and I’ve had more than my fair share of cold cultured food groups.” </p><p><strong>One great element of the show is Michael’s narration. Given that he knows so much about building a bomb, bugging a room, shaking a tail, etc., his head is an interesting place to be. But wouldn’t an episode with Fi as narrator be fun?</strong> “I don’t know if Fiona’s linear construction of thoughts would work the way that Michael’s does. I think her voiceover would be a far more rambling and erratic depiction of what happens onscreen. She might be talking about making a bomb and then abruptly change to the subject to shoes. I’m not sure it would work. It’s sort of a Mars-and-Venus thing. But it would be rather funny.”