NOTE: This article contains spoilers. Read at your own will.
Amanda Vonn doesn’t need to raise her voice to make herself heard.
And she absolutely doesn’t need to do any heavy lifting to make someone uncomfortably aware of her power.
In Season 2 of USA Network’s The Rainmaker, Merle Dandridge is introduced as the season’s new antagonist, Amanda Vonn—a woman whose power is felt long before she makes her first move.
She’s highly intelligent and calculating and makes even the best lawyers question whether they can survive going toe-to-toe with her.
But what makes Amanda so dangerous?
According to Dandridge, it’s her stillness.
“It was the way she listens and considers and takes everyone in before she makes a move,” Dandridge tells So There’s That in an exclusive interview.
And when Amanda finally speaks?
She doesn’t just change the room.
She is the room.
And for Dandridge, Amanda’s presence and restraint were among the many qualities that drew her to the role.
But beneath her hardened armor is a woman whose relationship with power is far more complicated than it appears.
The Power in Silence
In So There’s That’s Season 2 review, I described Amanda as someone who defines every space she enters.
And in the first two episodes, the series uses visual storytelling, especially with Sarah (Madison Iseman), to showcase that power.
Sarah arrives at the law firm looking for a second chance after the devastating case loss in Season 1.
Who she encounters, however, is not the hero she idealized.
Instead, she encounters a woman who recognizes a young attorney with unchecked ambition and vulnerabilities to exploit at will.
But Dandridge also sees Amanda’s relationship with power as something deeper than intimidation.
She explains how Amanda has made herself indispensable to powerful people in spaces that are dominated by men—and how Amanda finds excitement in navigating that world.
And she’s able to do so by remaining still when everyone else shows their cards.
“She really operates from a place of a center that is not native to me.”
That stillness became one of Dandridge’s biggest acting challenges when inhabiting Amanda’s world.
From theater to motion capture work on The Last of Us, Dandridge learned how to transform her physicality to embody multiple roles. But Amanda required something different from her.
Her movements were more deliberate. Her voice became deeper. And rather than relying on grand physical expressions, Dandridge learned to trust what Amanda was saying without ever uttering a word.
“She does so much in silence, just a look.”
And it’s a performance whose very foundation rests on the understanding that sometimes the most powerful person in the room is the one who says the least.
Amanda Meets Her Match in Sarah
One of the most intriguing relationships in The Rainmaker is the growing dynamic between Amanda and Sarah.
In Episode 2, “Cards Up,” Sarah slowly comes to realize that her professional road to redemption places her right back under the influence of another powerful attorney.
This time, however, she pushes back.
And it’s her newfound resistance that Amanda didn’t anticipate and that Dandridge enjoys about their chemistry.
“She’s not just a pawn or a tool, as I think maybe she had originally thought she would be,” Dandridge says of Sarah.
In Sarah’s choices comes a surprising relational development between the two women.
Not a rivalry, but a recognition.
And that introduces an interesting possibility.
Could Amanda be looking at a younger version of herself?
It’s a dynamic that Dandridge is excited for audiences to continue to explore as we watch their relationship begin to form a clearer picture.
Because while Amanda certainly may recognize Sarah’s potential, she’s still perfectly willing to test her limits.
In our full conversation, Merle Dandridge dives into Amanda’s vulnerabilities, what she imagines her past to be and how it informs Amanda’s motives, and her acting decisions that continue to shape Season 2’s elusive antagonist.
Watch the full interview below.
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The Jury Selection
Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.
© Kivonshe | So There’s That
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