Rebel Boss Krista Vernoff Answers Our Burning Questions After That Jam-Packed Series Premiere

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the series premiere of Rebel. Read at your own risk!] 

Annie "Rebel" Bello (Katey Sagal) has arrived as the latest kickass female lead character in ABC's TGIT line-up, via Krista Vernoff's Rebel. The series premiere, which aired Thursday, introduced us to the legal advocate who has made a name for herself by bringing down shady corporations while also driving her extended family crazy in her unyielding pursuit of justice. In the first episode we met Rebel, her three husbands (two of them former), and her three kids, and got the low down on her latest cause. 

The first season will see Rebel, who is inspired by the real-life Erin Brockovich, try to take down Stonemore Medical Corporation for manufacturing faulty heart valves that have killed or grievously injured hundreds (if not thousands) of people. Despite being told by multiple people, including her boss and best friend Julian Cruz (Andy Garcia), that the case is unwinnable, Rebel refuses to back down from the fight, even when it pushes those closest to her to the brink. On top of trying to bring down Stonemore Medical, she's also trying to save every embattled person she meets, which leaves little time for her latest marriage. By the end of the pilot, Rebel finds out that her third husband, Grady (John Corbett), is planning to file for divorce. 

On the upside, she did eventually convince Cruz -- whose wife died potentially due to one of Stonemore's valves -- to take on the case. TV Guide spoke to executive producer Krista Vernoff about how the pilot sets up the rest of the season and why Rebel's fearlessness is what keeps those around her from ever straying too far. 

What does this show look like on a week-to-week basis if the heart valve case is her big arc? 
Krista Vernoff: The Stonemore Medical Corp. case is the long arc case for the whole season, but every week Rebel and Lana have these sort of -- we refer to them in the writers' room as like "the vigilante cases." Rebel has these people who she works with sometimes for free, sometimes for pay. Lana says in the pilot, "Sometimes we do work for free. Sometimes we work for pay, sometimes we do it for fun. Yours is fun." They help people. And sometimes the people that they're helping are people that they need in service of the Stonemore case. Sometimes they're not. It's unrelated, but the need to help people exact justice is profound enough that it distracts them from the Stonemore case. Every episode is a lot of fun. Every episode is twisty and turny. They're fighting for sort of cases of the week, in addition to the long arc case.

Rebel finds out she's getting divorced in the pilot episode. How does she change now that the relationship is ending versus thinking she was happy?
Vernoff: That marriage is juggling and ongoing throughout the season. We are not immediately having a divorce. We're looking at the idea that Grady filed for divorce because he failed to communicate his unhappiness. Once she understands just how unhappy he is, she tries to fight for the marriage. I think that you can see that there's a lot of good between them. He's probably not the guy for her in the end. He can't stop competing with her work, but it's hard to know because he's John Corbett. He is so sexy that it's hard to get away from him. 

Does that mean there is an opening for Rebel and Cruz? Because there was definitely chemistry there in the first episode. 
Vernoff: What I think is profound between Rebel and Cruz throughout the season is their friendship and the depth of their friendship. They go way back. They've known each other a long time. They get really mad at each other really easily. And yet, if anyone comes at them, they turn on that person together as the united front. It's really beautiful to see that chemistry between Katey and Andy, the love and depth of care that exists between them. And whether or not that might one day turn into something more than friendship is a question mark. 

Rebel's Katey Sagal and Krista Vernoff Tease the Erin Brockovich-Inspired Series

Another relationship of Rebel's that's in danger is with her daughter Cassidy. How apocalyptic is Rebel's response going to be when she finds out her daughter might sell out to corporate law like her father?
Vernoff: It's one of those moments where you expect an apocalypse, but Rebel is really smart. She understands that something was going on here. She instantly understands that her ex-husband is using Cassidy in service of something that's going to ultimately hurt Cassidy, and she tries to protect her daughter from it. But Cassidy is her own woman, and she hasn't decided yet who she's going to be in the world. So, for me, Lex Scott Davis and the character Cassidy is one of the most fascinating throughout the season because she's still defining herself. When you're still defining yourself, you sometimes behave in ways that you regret.

The pilot shows just how much Rebel can push her family in the pursuit of justice. Can you talk about how those familial ties are going to be tested in this first season?
Vernoff: What's interesting to me about this family is that they are a family. Even though she's divorced two of them and her marriage is on the rocks of another one, there's something about her that loves people and keeps people so that no matter how angry she's been at those ex-husbands at different points in her life, they're still showing up for the anniversary party. Somehow they all found a way to be a family for those kids. I love that about her. I love that she doesn't always give the time that everyone wants from her, but she gives a depth of love, and a depth of compassion, and a depth of humanity that makes her hard to walk away from and makes it impossible for her to walk away from others. So even though the family is now, as Ziggy says in Episode 3 or 4, "It feels like my whole family is going to war," because they're on opposite sides of a big case, at the end of the day, they still got each other's backs.

What are you most excited for fans to get to see in Season 1?
Vernoff: I am most excited about exploring these characters. I love this very complicated family. I love the character of Cruz. We get to meet his kids, we get to know a little bit through flashback [to] how his beloved wife died. We have great twists and turns. So really, it's just a wild ride with great characters you fall in love with more and more every week. You can't classify it as one genre so you never know what you're going to get every week. 

Rebel continues Thursdays at 10/9c on ABC.