Anya Banerjee Reveals There May Be Secrets to Uncover About Meera Malik's Death

The premiere of the 10th and final season of The Blacklist ushered in a brand new character to the high-stakes universe: Siya Malik (Anya Banerjee), who just happens to be the daughter of Season 1's Meera Malik (Parminder Nagra).

As a former CIA agent, Meera joined the Task Force as a master interrogator. She even helped Reddington (James Spader) figure out the identity of a mole in the FBI who wanted to destroy the Task Force. In the end, she was tragically killed in the field by the henchman of a Blacklister named Berlin. 

Now in Season 10, Siya has volunteered herself to help the Task Force take down Wujing in his quest to kill Red. However, Banerjee revealed to NBC Insider that despite all we learned about Meera and the circumstances surrounding her death in Season 1, there may be more to the story.

"Finding out the truth about Meera is really the emotional core and the driving force for Siya," Banerjee tells NBC Insider. "So she will stop at nothing to find the truth. And as Siya gets more ingrained within the Task Force, we’ll learn more about her personal backstory, and her own skills and unique talents as an MI6 agent."

As for working with Red despite him indirectly causing her mother's death, Banerjee says it's definitely a complicated relationship we'll see play out throughout the season.

"I think there’s a lot of moral ambiguity there," she tells us. "She’s here to carry on the good work that her mother started, obviously becoming an agent herself. She’s there to make a difference in the world, take down bad guys. And Reddington is a a pretty big complication there, given the fact that he is this first class criminal."

She continues, "She has to walk a fine line between doing her job and helping the Task Force, and also learning from Red what secrets he might have about her own mother. So it gets very interesting and tricky there between them."

Despite the conflict that may arise onscreen, behind-the-scenes Banerjee is enjoying getting to work with Spader and the rest of the cast. Especially keeping in mind that The Blacklist is the New Zealander-American first-ever regular TV role.

"Everyone is a veteran at this point, and so stepping in as the new person in the final season means I get to just absorb all of their knowledge like a sponge," she says. "James in particular is a master class in acting. Just working alongside him, opposite him—which I’ve had the honor of doing quite a bit in a couple of the episodes that we just shot—I really learn from his specificity, and his conviction. We had a lot of fun together."

The Blacklist will air Sundays at 10/9c on NBC and later stream on Peacock.