The world is about to find out if it's ready for Rebel.
In ABC's new legal dramedy, from Grey's Anatomy showrunner Krista Vernoff, Katey Sagal plays Annie "Rebel" Bello. She's an activist and consumer advocate who may remind you of Erin Brockovich, but Brockovich only served as inspiration and executive producer, and Annie is a woman all her own.
She's got multiple ex-husbands and a kid with each of them, and Annie's certainly the kind of woman whose quirks could be hard to deal with. Somehow, though, all her kids and even her exes are on hand whenever she needs a favor.
E! News chatted with stars Sagal and Andy Garcia, who make up just a portion of the sprawling and impressive cast, about just what kind of a self-proclaimed mess Annie really is.
"Peg Bundy was kind of a mess in sort of a ditzy way, I would say, and Gemma in Sons of Anarchy was, I wouldn't call her a mess I would just call her a criminal. She was an outlaw," Sagal says of her former, best known roles. "Rebel is different in that she has a loud relentlessness about her. She's much louder than some of the other women that I've played, and wordy—boy, can she talk."
Rebel shares a "relentless energy" with some of Sagal's past roles, but a lot more "crass."
"Krista said to me at the beginning, 'You know, she's not necessarily as nice as you are,'" Sagal explains. "That was very informative to me...I have the instinct of loyalty, I don't have the approach that Rebel has."
Garcia plays Julian Cruz, a lawyer who keeps Rebel on retainer. They're also old friends, through his late wife. The dynamic between the two is the best relationship on the show, despite its early ups and downs.
"We know each other really well and we've been working together for a long time," Garcia explains. "She knows how to push my buttons and how she has to get through me when I'm going, 'We can't do that. You can't do that.'"
Rebel's response to anyone saying "No, we can't" is usually to say "Yes, we can."
"I put up with a lot of it because I love her," Garcia says. "And she's like my family..."
"And she's right," Sagal adds, and Garcia agrees.
"And she's right."
Sagal says the show is less of a legal procedural and more of a dramedy with some legal stuff thrown in with some family stuff.
"You're exploring a family life of kind of a relentless woman who relentlessly is committed to her work and has also got kind of a messy private life while trying to, as we do as women, have all the balls in the air and do everything," she says. "Something falls through the cracks and so you're gonna see a lot of family and you're going to see a relationship with Cruz at work that feels a lot like family, so it's not like we're in the courtroom all the time, it's not Law & Order, that's what I'll say. Right Andy?"
Once again, Garcia knows where he (and Cruz) stand.
"Yeah, I agree with that," he says. "I know enough now in our history of our relationship between Cruz and Rebel to not disagree with her."
Hit play above for more from Sagal and Garcia!
Rebel also stars John Corbett, James Lesure, Tamala Jones, Ariela Barer, Lex Scott Davis, Kevin Zegers, Sam Palladio airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. on ABC.