Francine "Francie" Calfo is a fictional character on the television series Alias, portrayed by Merrin Dungey from 2001 to 2003 and again in 2006. Initially the best friend of lead character Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner), Francie is murdered by a lookalike assassin named Allison Doren, who assumes her identity.
Character overview
As the series begins in the 2001 pilot episode "Truth Be Told", Francie is Sydney Bristow's best friend and roommate. Sydney is a covert agent for a black ops division of the CIA called SD-6, a fact she struggles to hide from her friends. Francie acts as an occasional sounding board and confidante for some of Sydney's personal issues, and eventually decides to open a restaurant. Francie and her friend Will Tippin realize their attraction to each other, and decide to start a relationship.
Sydney, having learned that SD-6 is not a sanctioned CIA division but is in fact a covert cell of a transnational organized crime syndicate, manages to destroy the entire organization in the Season 2 episode "Phase One" (2003). In the same episode, a genetic doppelgänger named Allison Doren kills Francie and assumes her identity. Under orders from Arvin Sloane, Allison bugs Sydney's apartment, hypnotically interrogates Will, plants eavesdropping devices on Michael Vaughn and murders Marcus Dixon's wife. Eventually Will, and then Sydney, realize in the 2003 episode "The Telling" that "Francie" is an impostor, and after a brutal battle Sydney shoots Allison to death.
Allison later reappears very much alive in the 2003 episode "The Nemesis", in which she is shot by Sydney and then stabbed to death by Will.
With Francie not involved in the "secret agent" plot lines of the series, the character was "pushed to the sidelines" just as Lena Olin was introduced as Sydney's mother Irina Derevko late in Season 1. Clued in by Alias creator and executive producer J. J. Abrams in October 2002 to the "switch" of her character, Dungey and Abrams discussed different ways to facilitate it. Dungey began secretly training with world champion kickboxer Benny "the Jet" Urquidez to prepare for the physicality of her new role.