Kandyse McClure on Kaia’s Season 7 Journey and Why ‘Virgin River’ Season 8 Starts “With a Bang”

As Virgin River navigates its seventh season, the show has undergone a subtle but tonal shift. While Mel and Jack remain the series’ anchors, there is a distinct freshness blowing through the rest of the ensemble. The emotional heavy lifting this year has largely fallen to the “outsiders,” and chief among them is Kaia Bryant, played with a simmering, restless energy by Kandyse McClure.

In a season defined by the aftermath of the Yosemite wildfires and the creeping threat of domesticity, McClure’s Kaia has become the show’s most fascinating psychological study. We sat down with McClure to discuss Kaia’s “adrenaline addiction,” her unexpected confidant in Brady, and why a sewing circle, not a romantic grand gesture, was the turning point for the character’s soul.

In person, McClure is a far cry from the guarded “lone wolf” she portrays. Met with a literal rain of sunshine and infectious laughter, the actress is perhaps the most accommodating and easygoing interviewee in the business. Whether she is joking about a writer’s cameo or candidly showing off a “boobies” mug gifted by Richard Keith’s wife, her warmth is the engine that drives our deep dive into the “no-BS” friendship and identity crisis that defined Season 7.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Kaia has spent her life being defined by action and urgency. Did you and the writers talk about what it means for someone like that to build an identity in “ordinary time,” in Virgin River slowness?

That’s exactly the challenge she has this season. There is this peace, this sense of place, and this calm that she didn’t expect to find in her relationship with Preacher and in the community. This is what she runs up against: a loss of self. Where do I place myself? As she sees Preacher expanding and his world growing while her world feels like it’s shrinking, that’s the challenge.

She spends so much of the season asking who she is when there are no fires to fight. Did you see that as a professional crisis, an emotional one, or even an existential one?

My first instinct is to say existential. “Where am I in the world?” She has this line she says to Brady: “If I wasn’t here, who was I? If I wasn’t running into a fire, what person am I?” But then there’s this other really important moment where she identifies that this is something she used to do with Jay (her ex-husband), that it was part of her past. That life-and-death moment really puts things in perspective for her.

This season made me think a lot about addiction, not in the usual sense, but an addiction to adrenaline and being needed in crisis. Was that part of how you understood her?

Absolutely. An adrenaline rush is exactly that, a rush of chemicals, and that sense of feeling alive. I think it’s part of the maturity we see Kaia go through this season; she recognizes that as a crutch, and it’s keeping her from actually knowing herself more. I believe there are parts of you that you can only learn in a relationship. It’s easy when you’re by yourself. But when you have to negotiate somebody else’s feelings and dreams and moods, that’s a different muscle. I see her taking that intensity and refocusing it into her relationship.

Virgin River S7. Kandyse McClure as Kaia Bryant in Episode #706 of Virgin River S7. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025

The friendship between Kaia and Brady is something we didn’t know we needed for Season 7. They’re both people with restless instincts. What did you find most revealing about Kaia through her scenes with him?

I love it. I love the representation of male-female relationships where we can be friends, and there is mutual respect. I love that they give each other a clean slate and very no-BS interactions. You have two characters who both feel deeply flawed and are seeking something, and they meet on the same level.

They are also both outsiders compared to the rest of the community.

Exactly that. I love that they redeem each other because others see them differently afterward. Like, “Oh yeah, Brady’s friends with Kaia… maybe she does belong here.” I really enjoy working with Ben Hollingsworth. We’re both intense people; he’s always thinking about the work and the scene. I know when I have scenes with him, he’s coming in with ideas. And I love that I get to tease him. I like to call him “cadet” all the time. He hates it.

Kaia doesn’t reject community, but she almost seems suspicious of the need for it. Was that something you consciously played?

She describes herself as such a lone wolf, but that always comes from a place of hurt. Somebody who’s hyper-vigilant and hyper-independent learned that somewhere; they learned they couldn’t depend on other people. A lot of her healing in Virgin River is about being able to trust. Brady definitely does that for her. Preacher, too, but also the sewing circle.

That’s interesting because her emotional shift seems to come not in a romantic scene but in hearing the voices of the sewing circle and realizing that people are waiting for her back home. Why do you think that moment hits her so hard?

It’s a sense of family. She’s witnessed the sewing circle rally around other members, Muriel with her cancer, Mel with the baby. They hold so much of Virgin River’s history and knowledge. Being accepted by them feels like being accepted by everyone.

What do you think Kaia sees in Preacher that makes stillness feel possible for her?

He’s just so steady. He’s the eye of the storm. It’s building that trust that nothing she can do, be, or say will knock him off that place. Not that he doesn’t feel anything, but that he reaches for her first. I think that’s a very relatable dynamic in a relationship.

Virgin River S7.Kandyse McClure as Kaia Bryant in Episode #710 of Virgin River S7. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025

Was there a moment this season where you felt Kaia was actually the most emotionally exposed, and it wasn’t necessarily a “loud” script moment?

There were quieter moments. Even though the dinner with Jamie and that whole jealousy piece is comedic, there is that moment where she asks them about their relationship, and you see this visible fall of how wrong she got it. I said to the writers early on: Kaia does not apologize for anything. She’s not a person who will use that word offhandedly. So, when she apologizes, she really means it. It was this mix of embarrassment and a loss of something. Even that exchange when she sees Brady and he checks on her… that’s when she realizes, “Yeah, maybe I don’t know Preacher as well as I thought I did.”

Whenever the series eventually reaches its conclusion, what is the “end state” you envision for Kaia?

I see her life in Virgin River. I see it growing, the fire department, working more closely now with Grace Valley. There’s something about that depth and becoming an increasingly rooted part of this community. But I think we have to go back first. I would need to see more of where she came from to understand where she’s going. How do you end up in the Forest Fire Service? You have to be running away from something.

We know you start Season 8 production soon. What can you share about what’s next for Kaia?

We did get the first two scripts. It starts off with a bang. I’m not really sure how much the time jump is, but it does put us right in the middle of the action. The beginning of the season puts us smack bang in it, and things are happening very, very quickly. There’s a lot of setup in those first two episodes.

Virgin River S7. (L to R) Kandyse McClure as Kaia Bryant and Alexandra Breckenridge as Melinda Monroe in Episode #702 of Virgin River S7. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025

Beyond the show, you’ve been very active behind the scenes in the film community. What are you working on currently?

Virgin River is completely my focus at the moment, and of course, I’m going to Los Angeles at the end of March to support Zibby Allen’s Hollywood Rush. But most of the other work I’ve been doing has been quite local. I sit on the board of a couple of film festivals, a South African one and my local community festival.

I’ve been doing more speaking and finding ways of uplifting local films, both here in Vancouver and in South Africa. It’s been a season of learning, learning more about producing and getting really, really specific about Kaia.