Although life on USA's Colony isn't free, it is safe, at least as long as you play by the rules and do everything that the invading hosts tell you to do.

However, humans often resist those who would take their freedoms away. On Colony, one of those humans is Katie, a wife and mother, who feels that the fight against the invaders is a just and right one.

Actress Sarah Wayne Callies, who portrays Katie on the series, spoke to the press recently about what motivates her character to continue fighting against the invasion, as well as the strength behind Katie's words and actions.

With Katie and her husband, Will (Josh Holloway) at odds over doing what's right for the world and their family, things came to a head a few episodes ago, resulting in a huge argument, something the series built up to from the first episode.

"I think, in a way, the whole first season builds to that conversation," said Callies. "Will and Katie, I think that in a way, Will and Katie learn that love is not all you need, in the first season, that these ideological differences really may become profoundly problematic in their marriage. And I think there's a loss of trust over the course of the season, but that really culminates in that final argument. It's a tough thing to come back from.

"And, you know, particularly I think when Will says to Katie, 'You put the noose around those kids' necks,' meaning Rachel's son. That's a huge bomb to drop on someone, and certainly people say things in the heat of the moment that they don't mean, but I think that's one of those arguments in a marriage that's going to take them a long time to recover from."

Katie, like many other characters portrayed by Callies, is a strong woman, with a mind of her own. But does playing such roles make her feel a responsibility to depict the character in a certain way?

"I've had this strong woman question a lot in the last couple of months, and what I found myself thinking, I think all women are strong. I think just getting through the day, making whatever 60 cents on the dollar and having to put up with the high heels and the way men treat you and the way men look at you and the double standards of beauty and aging and everything else," said Callies. "You know, I kind of feel like, sister, if you just get from the beginning of the day to the end, you're strong. You're a warrior. Because God knows you're doing twice as much and you're not getting twice the compensation.

"I don't know. They seem to be the roles that I get cast in. I don't know that I feel a responsibility to play strong women. I think that's just how they come out of me. But I do feel a certain responsibility, particularly as a mother of a daughter, to try and work with certain kinds of other aspects of my business that can be problematic, you know, about vanity and commodification of women's bodies and stuff like that. It's a tricky line to walk, but you know, I certainly am trying not to get wrapped up in aging.

"I'm trying to promote images of women's bodies as having to be hypersexualized, having to be superthin. I'm aware of that, I think in a new way, having a daughter who will be growing up looking at those images and contending with her own relationship with those images - not only of me, but of women all over. You know, it's the reason I turned down the cover of Maxim, because I knew someday - I didn't even have a kid then - but I knew that someday I would have a daughter and I didn't want her to look at an image of her mom like that and try and find a way of folding that into her own sense of sexuality and femininity and identity as a woman."

On Colony, Katie is also a working mother and wife who is trying to do what's right by her family, and that's part of why Callies found the role attractive, along with the relevance of the show's subject matter.

"You know, I mean, the thing about Katie, she is closer to me than anyone I think I've ever played," she said. "And that scared me enough that it made me want to do it. I tend to walk towards things that scare me. But Katie also was every bit as fully developed and articulated as Will in this story, and I think often wives and mothers are accessories to leading men. And it felt to me, reading the pilot script, that Katie's philosophical universe was as fully represented as Will's, which made it a really exciting exploration because you can present two very different ethical responses to a dictatorship, to an occupation. And you could have a real dialogue because they were two fully articulated human beings. One happens to be a woman. One happens to be a man.

"And I think that dialogue actually is the reason that I wanted to take this job, because I think it's a really important time right now to be talking about the role of citizens in resisting oppressive governments."

The Colony season finale airs at 10 p.m. EDT March 17 on USA.

Photo: USA