How Accurate Is ‘Lioness’ Really? A Real CIA Officer and Original Documentarian Set the Record Straight

‘Lioness’ has become one of Paramount+’s most talked-about original dramas, built around the kind of high-stakes, women-led espionage storytelling that’s rare even in today’s crowded streaming landscape. With Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman anchoring a covert CIA task force through three seasons of shootouts, betrayals, and international intrigue, the show has drawn millions of viewers eager for its next twist.

That fictional CIA program actually traces back to something real. The original Lioness initiative began during the Iraq War as a U.S. Army program, born out of a practical necessity: male soldiers weren’t culturally permitted to search local Iraqi women at checkpoints, so female service members, most of them pulled from desk jobs rather than special forces, stepped in to fill that gap. The program gained international attention in 2007 after 20-year-old Corporal Jennifer M. Parcell, a volunteer Lioness, was killed by a suicide bomber at a checkpoint.

Now, in a new exclusive, two people with genuine ties to that history are weighing in on how much of the Taylor Sheridan drama actually holds up. Former CIA intelligence officer Christina Hillsberg and war documentary filmmaker Daria Sommers spoke with PEOPLE about where the show captures something real, and where it drifts into pure invention.

Sommers, who co-directed the 2008 documentary ‘Lioness’ alongside Meg McLagan chronicling the real women who served, took particular issue with the show borrowing the same name for an entirely different, CIA-driven storyline. “If they had called the show something else, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Sommers told PEOPLE, making clear her concern isn’t with critiquing the series creatively but with how reusing that specific title risks blurring the already fragile historical record of the women who actually served.

Hillsberg, meanwhile, offered a more mixed assessment rooted in her own intelligence background. While she acknowledged the show’s combat sequences stray far from anything resembling real CIA operations, since most actual officers don’t even carry weapons, she credited ‘Lioness’ for portraying a genuinely diverse range of women in the field and for capturing something authentic about the emotional weight that comes with intelligence work.

Both women’s perspectives point to a similar conclusion: ‘Lioness’ functions as entertainment first, drawing loosely on real history rather than attempting a documentary-style retelling. That distinction matters, especially given how much dramatic license the show takes in reimagining an Army-run checkpoint initiative as a covert CIA assassination program staffed by elite undercover operatives.

Hillsberg specifically praised how the series handles the personal side of intelligence work, noting that it does a genuinely strong job portraying just how intensely personal relationships built during intelligence operations can become, a detail she says rings true even amid the show’s more far-fetched action sequences.

That tension between emotional authenticity and factual liberty seems to be exactly what both experts want audiences to understand. The real Lioness program’s legacy remains tied to ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary circumstances, not the kind of covert, weapons-trained specialists depicted on screen, and reconciling those two versions of the name is clearly still an ongoing conversation for the people who lived the original story.

For a show that’s built much of its marketing around a “ripped from real history” appeal, hearing directly from someone who documented the actual women behind that name adds real weight to the conversation around where ‘Lioness’ succeeds and where it takes creative shortcuts. Whether that distinction changes how fans watch the show moving forward remains to be seen.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!