Lifetime’s series of Saturday night thrillers continues this weekend with Vanished: Searching for My Sister.  Tatyana Ali (Love That Girl) stars in dual roles as Jada and Kayla, identical twins who look alike but couldn’t be more different. When wild child Kayla disappears, responsible Jada reports her missing and waits for the police to do their thing. But when the investigation stalls, Jada matters into her own hands. Posing as her missing sister, she searches for leads  - and gets more than she bargained for.  

While playing twins was an intriguing prospect, that’s not what drew Ali to the project. “I was so excited when I read the script,” she told journalists last week, “the fact that it’s based on a true story and that this really happened, that a woman really went undercover as her twin, all of that was so exciting. I love the notion of not allowing your loved one to remain a statistic or not be cared about, that someone would fight so hard to make sure that her sister, who has been through addiction, been through all these things, that her life mattered.”

If you’re looking for some great new dramas to add to your watchlist, Lifetime’s got you covered. The network has announced a slate of six original movies rolling out over the next few weeks. The diverse lineup includes plenty of suspense and surprises, so get comfy and grab your remote!

First up is Safe Room, premiering tonight at 8:00 Eastern/7:00 Central. The thriller stars Nicole Ari Parker (Chicago P.D., Empire) as Lila Jackson, a newly widowed mom raising her autistic son. When Ian (Nik Sanchez, The Rookie) witnesses a killing, Lila must protect him from two intruders looking to silence them. The thriller also stars Drea de Matteo (The Sopranos), Mackenzie Astin (The Magicians) and Boris Kodjoe (Station 19, Soul Food), who also makes his directorial debut.

The chemistry among the cast was apparent in a Zoom call with journalists. Kodjoe and Ari Parker have been married for 15 years, while de Mateo and Astin have known each other forever.

“I think the universe helped establish the chemistry,” Astin told SciFi Vision. “Drea and I have known each other for about twenty years,” he said. “I actually sort of got this job because Drea recommended me."

***Warning: This story contains major spoilers for the series finale of The Expanse.***

The Expanse’s series finale is out today on Prime Video, and it doesn’t disappoint. The episode is chock full of the thrilling action scenes, narrow escapes and quality effects we’ve come to expect from this fantastic series. And when the war for control of the Belt is finally over, the conflict ends with a deft political maneuver that would make Chrisjen Avasarala proud.

SciFi Vision spoke with the show’s creative team – series creators Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham and showrunner Naren Shankar – about captain Camina Drummer (Cara Gee)’s key role this season. Drummer lost everything: her home, her friends, her family, and everything she thought she knew about the Belt – before becoming a key player in the solar system’s new order. 

“One of the terrible things in fiction is being a protagonist,” Abraham deadpanned. “Things never go well for you.”

***The video part of the interview contains spoilers for 6.06***

Over the past three seasons, fans of The Expanse have watched Amos, played by Wes Chatham, grow into a friend and mentor to Clarissa, played by Nadine Nicole, much as Naomi (Dominique Tipper) was to him back in season one. Clarissa's relationship with captain James Holden (Steven Strait) is complicated (remember when she framed him for mass murder?), but she’s making a real effort to settle in with the Roci crew. So, how much is her relationship with Amos responsible for her ability to set aside revenge and become a better person?

“I would say most of it, if not all,” said actress Nadine Nicole in a recent exclusive interview with SciFi Vision. “She'd pretty much given up on any second chances until someone thought that she might deserve that and gave it to her.”

Tonight, The CW premieres its newest superhero adventure, Naomi, starring Kaci Walfall in the title role. When the unexplainable happens in her own hometown, Superman blogger Naomi starts to question everything she she knows about herself as odd things start happening to her.

The series is part of the DC Universe, but a bit different than you might think, as the world isn’t yet aware of Superman other than as a comic book character. “I think what's so lovely about the world of comics and DC specifically is that there's really something for everyone,” executive producer Jill Blankenship told SciFi Vision during a recent TCA panel. “And in it, you get to touch on all these different places and all these exciting characters.” Blankenship also said that when it comes to potential crossovers with other DC series on The CW “nothing is ever off the table.”

Executive producer Ava DuVernay, who, as has Blankenship, has worked in the DC Universe before, liked that it is different than other super hero origin stories. “[S]he's who she is, and she knows everything that's going on. This was really the step to becoming yourself, the steps to realizing your destiny, the steps that it takes to become who you're meant to be.”

Today, the final season of A Discovery of Witches, based on the trio of novels by Deborah Harkness, premieres on AMC+, Sundance Now, and Shudder in the US.

When witch Diana, played by Teresa Palmer, and vampire Matthew (Matthew Goode) return from 1590 to their own time to continue their hunt to recover the elusive Ashmole 782, Diana is already pregnant. Now having the experience of being a mother in real life, Palmer was impacted in the way she played the character this season, the actress told Jamie Ruby of SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview. “I got to dive back into the feelings of becoming a mother for the first time,” said Palmer, “because that's a very special certain feeling of newness, newness and anticipation and excitement. Also, you're very nervous, and you're trying to find your footing.”

The actress also said that she played a big part in the way the birthing scene comes to fruition. “I met with the writers; I met with Deb, and I just kind of folded in some of the sisterhood element to the birth experience and incorporating Alex Kingston in the birth a lot, that real sort of [feminine] divine energy that sort of takes over when you give birth, or when some women give birth, and I wanted that experience for Diana on screen.”

***The following interview contains spoilers for 6.05***

With just six episodes this season, The Expanse is barreling toward its series finale faster than a slingshot racer on the Jupiter-6 run.  This week, the penultimate episode, “Why We Fight,” finally brought Chrisjen Avasarala and Camina Drummer together in a moment that was worth waiting for. Their meeting on Ceres was a brief scene loaded with six seasons of political conflict and personal loss.

Throughout the series, Avasarala has lost her son, her marriage, her position, and power. Her planet was attacked, her people devastated, and her husband killed. SciFi Vision asked actress Shohreh Aghdashloo in an exclusive interview what drives Chrisjen to continue to lead in the face of such tremendous cost, and what brought her to an alliance with Drummer’s fleet. 

Tonight, CBS premieres the new medical drama Good Sam, which follows heart surgeon Dr. Sam Griffith (Sophia Bush), who takes on the role of chief of surgery after her boss and father, the arrogant Dr. Rob “Griff” Griffith, played by Jason Isaacs, falls into a coma. Upon his return, Griff, unable to accept his daughter’s new authority, goes toe to toe with Sam, defying and questioning her at every turn.

One of the things that was of interest to Isaacs in taking on the role of Griffith was the father-daughter relationship. When asked about his reason for joining the cast during a recent exclusive interview with Jamie Ruby of SciFi Vision, the actor talked about his relationship with his own daughters who are now becoming adults. “I've got teenage daughters, one's nineteen, and that whole thing of letting go of thinking that you are the puppet master and realizing that they're surpassed you in navigating the world…just that at the heart of this was the father and daughter [relationship].”

Isaacs was also interested in the role because of the showrunners. “[Katie Wech]’s running it in such a different style from any of the men I've ever encountered in such an extraordinary way, and she gives out such a collaborative energy…Just having spoken to her and engaged with her, I wanted to jump in and see what the experience was like.”

***The following interview contains spoilers for episodes 6.03 and 6.04***

Midway through season six, The Expanse’s war for control of the Belt and the rings turned personal for Jim Holden (Steven Strait).  In episode 6.03, “Force Projection,” with the Pella in his sights, Holden had a choice: act as a captain and kill Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander), or act as Naomi’s (Dominique Tipper) partner and spare her son, Filip Inaros (Jasai Chase-Owens).

Holden made his choice but told nobody, knowing most of his crew would not approve. He had to know that someone would follow up on the dud torpedo sooner or later, and sure enough, the secret’s out in the next episode 6.04, “Redoubt”. And while Holden did what he did for Naomi, her reaction took him by surprise.

Recently, Insight Editions released the book Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron to display the journey of the artist’s evolution by giving a look into his personal art archives, including rare never-before-seen works from his private collection. The book showcases many of the ideas that lead to aesthetics of some of his most successful films, such as The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar, as well as work from unrealized projects and everything in between.

During a recent roundtable interview promoting the book, Cameron talked to Jamie Ruby of SciFi Vision about the feeling of getting to see his designs on screen for the first time in a succesful film such as The Terminator and how it gave him confidence to do even more. “I think that gave me the confidence to then go and hunt much, much bigger prey,” said Cameron. “I moved up to going after mammoths after that. So, I went from The Terminator to Aliens, a sequel to a beloved film that had a huge global impact.”

The director continued that because the director of the original film Alien, Ridley Scott, was largely popular at that point, many people tried to talk him out of it, but he didn’t listen, and he did it in his own way. “They said, ‘[I]f you make a good film, everybody's going to credit Ridley, and if you make a stinker, it's because you're not Ridley.’ I literally had serious producers, knowledgeable people, try to talk me out of it, but I just stuck to my guns and said, ‘Yeah, but I like it. I'm just just a fanboy.’...I just wanted to do my version of it, but the cheekiness is, my version of it, not slavishly doing just a continuation of Ridley’s style and story.”