Here’s what Morgan Freeman’s role is in Lioness, and why he is always in the Situation Room

If you’ve been watching Lioness and wondering what Morgan Freeman’s role is and what he is actually doing in all those tense meetings, here’s what you need to know.

Morgan Freeman’s character doesn’t go out on missions with Joe, he isn’t a CIA operative and you won’t see him running around with the Lioness team. Instead, he plays Edwin Mullins, the United States Secretary of State. And that actually puts him much higher up the chain of command.

So, who is Edwin Mullins in Lioness?

Edwin Mullins is the US Secretary of State, and Morgan Freeman joined Lioness in the role when the series was announced in January 2023. Paramount confirmed at the time that Freeman would play the Secretary of State in Taylor Sheridan’s espionage drama.

His job in the show is basically about the political and diplomatic side of the Lioness programme. He is one of the senior government officials involved in overseeing the wider political consequences of the CIA’s Lioness operations. He regularly appears alongside CIA Deputy Director Byron Westfield, CIA supervisor Kaitlyn Meade and other senior officials as they discuss what Joe and her teams are doing.

Speaking to TVLine, Freeman himself explained how he sees the character. He said, “My job, as Secretary of State, is to somehow try to keep this [Lioness] team aimed in the right direction, because if they do something that’s going to get a lot of blowback, it could eliminate them as a group.”

He also explained, “I want to continue [the program]. But it has to be continued with a laser-like concentration on reality. ‘What can we get away with? And should we even do this?’”

Why does he keep appearing in the Situation Room?

A lot of Edwin Mullins’ scenes happen in meetings with the other top officials. He’s usually there when Joe and Kaitlyn have to pitch a plan because these missions aren’t happening in a bubble. Whatever the team does can cause political and diplomatic problems. So Mullins has to think about what could go wrong before giving the green light.

Freeman’s Mullins is described as typically sitting alongside Westfield, NSA Chief Damian Hollar and White House Chief of Staff Mason while they scrutinise the plans brought before them.

That’s what makes his position different from Joe’s. Joe is dealing with the operation itself. Mullins has to look at the bigger picture.

Michael Kelly, who plays Byron Westfield, previously explained that Freeman’s character is one of the people Westfield answers to. Speaking about sharing scenes with Freeman, Kelly said it was “one of the greatest honours of my career.”

Is Morgan Freeman’s character actually involved in the missions?

Edwin Mullins is a political figure rather than an operative, so his involvement is mostly at the senior decision-making level. He is brought into situations where the Lioness programme intersects with US foreign policy and where the consequences of an operation could be much bigger than the target itself.

Freeman described diplomacy as a job where you are constantly trying to prevent situations from getting worse. “Diplomats have one serious task and that is putting out political fires damping down, trying to ameliorate disagreements,” Freeman said.

He added that diplomats have to “learn to tap dance, using discretion” when dealing with difficult situations.

That gives you a pretty good idea of how Freeman sees Mullins. The thing is, Mullins isn’t dealing with normal diplomatic drama. He’s the Secretary of State in a show where the CIA is sending highly trained operatives on secret missions that can get seriously deadly.

Freeman summed up that contradiction rather well when he said, “And in the situation that I’m in here where I’m secretary of state relying on a bunch of killers, that’s political dynamite. So I handle with care.”

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