Dr. Sara Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies)

Sarah Wayne Callies as Dr. Sara Tancredi

Raised in Chicago, Sara Tancredi's ambitions to be a doctor began when she was very young. While at Northwestern University, she was introduced to the works of Mahatma Gandhi and decided to become a humanitarian, which later influenced her decision to work at Fox River State Penitentiary. Another factor which contributed to her occupational choice was her past morphine addiction, culminating in being unable to help a boy after he was run over because she was high. At 29 years old, Dr. Sara Tancredi was one of the few doctors working at Fox River. Her chosen occupation became a constant source of stress for her father. Sara is the only child of the Governor of Illinois, Frank Tancredi. Due to her father's hectic political career and vastly differing beliefs, she did not have a close relationship with him.

From their first meeting, Sara had sensed that Michael was different from the other prisoners. After she checked his academic record, she was surprised that he had graduated with a master's degree. In "Allen", she notices his nervousness as she tests for his glucose count to confirm his diabetes. However, she dismisses it after his test apparently passed (but only because Michael had taken insulin blockers to raise his blood sugar).

In Michael's subsequent visits to the infirmary, Sara carefully deflects all his attempts to charm her. When she was required to conduct a medical check-up for Lincoln Burrows, she discovers from Katie that Lincoln is Michael's brother. After a riot broke out in episode "Riots, Drills and the Devil", Sara was temporarily trapped by herself at sick-bay with the prisoners planning to rape her. Michael eventually rescues her using the crawl space up on the ceiling. He claims that he knew his way around because of his previous assignment to clean out the toxic mold for PI (Prison Industry). Sara later finds out that he lied to her which further encourages her to try to figure out what would possess him to rob a bank and end up in prison. She searches for clues about Michael's background, and though she knows that something is utterly suspicious, she can't stop herself from being attracted to him.

Sara becomes jealous though and distances herself from Michael when she discovers he had a conjugal visit from his "wife." However, she continues to help Michael in subsequent episodes despite their relationship. On Lincoln Burrows' execution day, Sara went to her father to ask him to review Lincoln's case after Michael pleaded with her. Her relationship with Michael deepens and they ultimately share a kiss in the infirmary. However, after she discovers that Michael had stolen the keys from her, Sara distances herself yet again from him. After Michael tells Sara about his planned escape, Sara is confronted with the decision whether she should help Michael or not. Eventually, Sara returns to Fox River at night and unlocks the infirmary door. Horribly distressed at what she had done, Sara injects herself with morphine which she took from the infirmary. Suspected for being an accessory to the escape, the police officers charge into her apartment with an emergency warrant and find her to be nearly dead from a morphine overdose.

After recovering from her drug overdose in the season premiere, Sara becomes the target of The Company - the mysterious organization behind Lincoln Burrows' murder setup. Posing as Lance, a homosexual addict at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, Agent Kellerman attempts to befriend Sara to find out the whereabouts of Michael Scofield, who left her a message in an origami crane.

However, after her father alerts her of Kellerman's suspicious identity and her father's subsequent death, Sara becomes part of the show's conspiracy plot as she holds the key (left by her father) to information that may exonerate Lincoln. Following this, several attempts on Sara's life are made by The Company, which force her to find Michael via his coded messages. Her meeting with Michael takes place at Gila, New Mexico but their reunion is short-lived when Kellerman and Agent Mahone find out about their rendezvous point. At first, Sara is reluctant to leave with Michael to Panama but is captured by Kellerman shortly after. Kellerman proceeds to torture Sara, in an effort to obtain information about a USB drive he thinks her father gave her. Sara escapes from Kellerman and decides to change her appearance and throws her wallet with her IDs away.

Sara travelled from New Mexico to Missouri. She deciphers another coded message from Michael and reunites with him in Evansville, Indiana. Together with Michael, Lincoln and Kellerman, Sara travels to Chicago where her father has hidden the audio file of a recorded conversation between Caroline Reynolds and Terrence Steadman that can help prove Lincoln's innocence. On the train to Chicago, Sara admits to Michael that she has fallen in love with him, and they kiss. Later in the episode, Michael admits he has fallen in love with her. Michael and Sara eventually retrieve the audio file with the help of Henry Pope.

After leaving Kellerman by himself, Sara, Michael and Lincoln find out that the audio file is not legally valid to be used as evidence. They decide to use it to blackmail President Caroline Reynolds for a presidential pardon instead. When this fails, Michael and Lincoln are forced to leave the country. After accepting Michael's invitation to leave the country with him, Sara realizes she is being tailed and surrenders herself to the FBI in order to let the brothers escape. Sara is then faced with a 12-year prison sentence but just as she is about to plead guilty, Kellerman comes forward to testify on her behalf.

His testimony exonerates Sara and Lincoln, and Sara reunites with the brothers in Panama and tells them of the news. However, when Agent Kim suddenly appears and tries to kill Lincoln and capture Michael, Sara shoots Kim in the chest. Nowhere to run, Michael and Sara surrender themselves to the Panamanian police but to Sara's surprise, Michael confesses to Kim's killing instead of her. She was last seen leaving in the crowd by Lincoln.

During the third season, Sarah Wayne Callies did not appear, though standbys are used to portray the character. In the first episode of season three "Orientación", Lincoln, who has lost contact with Sara, is told that an American woman of her description was found in a Panamanian morgue. Upon viewing it, Lincoln is relieved that the body is not that of Sara. However, later in the same episode a mysterious woman reveals to Lincoln with a cell phone video that Sara and LJ are actually being held at ransom.

In episode three, "Call Waiting", a Polaroid photograph of Tancredi in captivity is shown to Michael. This drives him to secure a phone at great risk in order to talk to her, and in the resulting conversation Sara manages to get a coded message out to Michael. This coded message leads Lincoln to locate her and to make an unsuccessful attempt at freeing her and LJ. In response, a bloodied box is sent to Lincoln. It is revealed in "Good Fences" , that Sara has been decapitated and her head was placed in it. However, Lincoln does not at first tell Michael of her death. Lincoln is later forced to tell Michael of her death as he demands another photograph of her alive.

Characteristics

In the television series, the character is described as "tall, slender, brown hair, brown eyes." The character's biography on the show's official site describes Sara as someone who wanted to be more than a "traditional doctor" and to follow a "more humanitarian path". Similarly, the actress portraying the character comments that, "At a certain point, in her past, she's worked with Doctors without Borders, worked in the Third World, and I think it gave her a different sense of the value of life and the potential of medicine in ways that resonated with her, for First World applications in a prison population."

Sara is shown in the series as a compassionate doctor who cared about her patients, while treating each one of them with the same cordiality and respect. In the episode "The Rat", Sara's father questions her motive for helping Lincoln Burrows, to which she replies, "It's my job to advocate for [my patients]." Sarah Wayne Callies, who portrays Sara Tancredi, remarks that the character "feels a certain level of responsibility to these guys. Partly because who her father is... she's the kind of person who would rather take a stand and sleep well at night than have a peaceful family."

In the second season, Sara becomes part of the conspiracy plot of the show after her involvement in Michael and Lincoln's escape, and her father's later pursuit of information concerning Lincoln's case. She is continuously chased by covert agents after the death of her father in "Buried". Sara later confides in Michael in episode "Chicago" that the two things keeping her going are her feelings for him and that she wants to seek justice for her father's death. Regarding her character's change in the second season, Callies says, "She's just someone who has really rushed at life and absorbed experience with real enthusiasm. She's getting a lot more than she bargained for right now, and I certainly don't think she'll be the same person after this."

Character Development

Sara Tancredi was introduced to the series as the daughter of the Illinois governor and the prison doctor who the protagonist frequently visits to obtain his insulin shot. The background story of the character, revealed in the sixteenth episode of the first season, was not actually conceived along with the original conception of the series. Callies commented in an interview that it was the "very first inkling" that she had about the character's past. Also in the same interview, the actress mentioned that during the production of the series pilot, she had suggested to Prison Break creator Paul Scheuring that "it would be interesting to play her as a recovering alcoholic".

The character's continuation as a major role in the second season was a "surprise" to Callies since the second season revolves around the lives of the eight fugitives outside the prison. The actress states that it is "some of the most creative storytelling for women on TV right now" and that she was given "lot of latitude in establishing a sense of who [the character] is". As the characterization of Sara continues to develop, Scheuring describes the character as "one of [the series'] strongest components".

Towards the end of the production of the second season of Prison Break, Callies' pregnancy was announced. With the pregnancy not incorporated into the show, the story was written in such a way to account for Sara's disappearance during Callies' maternity leave. At the time Paul Scheuring commented, "It actually fits into what we were already planning." He also claimed that the original treatment would have included "explanations for why she wasn't in the first [batch] of episodes" of the third season, later revealing that it would set up a planned 13-episode story arc that would ultimately culminate with her character's death.

However, due to Callies and the show's producers being unable to agree on a new contract, the character was suddenly killed off in the fourth episode, much earlier than planned. Her sparse appearances during the season (including the use of stand-ins with their faces obscured) and her gruesome, off screen death was the result of working around the inability to film additional scenes with the actress, as well as for dramatic and emotional impact.

Production Note

A newspaper article about Sara Tancredi is visible and readable in the Pilot episode of the series (as one of the many that Michael tears off the walls of his apartment). The article gives Sara's middle name as "Wayne" (the same as that of the actress portraying her). It also says that she is the "second-eldest daughter of Frank Tancredi."

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