On NBC’s popular drama “Found,” Gabi Mosely is weighed down by guilt, trauma and a boundless work ethic to find missing people. That weight is etched on her face, embodied in the way she walks and talks. She is neither a candidate to teach yoga nor Zumba.
But the actress who plays her, Shanola Hampton, is a nonstop vortex of positive energy on set. On a late July day on the Atlanta set of “Found,” Hampton arrived with a flurry of hugs and apologies since she wasn’t actually shooting anything. “Sorry it’s such a lame set visit,” she told a group of journalists.
Then she starts raving about her costumer Demi Lyles. “She gives me the looks honey! This baby knows some clothes.” She spied a crew member and pointed at him: “I like your beard!” And to everyone in general: “You’re all killing it.”
She gave Access Hollywood a vibrant tour of the set. She roamed the office of Mosely & Associates featuring the wall of photos of saved people, swept through Gabi’s spotless home, then entered the infamous basement where she secretly kept her former captor Sir. That’s the role played with controlled malevolence by Mark-Paul Gosselaar, an actor who broke into Hollywood playing a significantly lighter character on “Saved by the Bell” more than three decades ago.
“I’m just a little girl from a small town called Summerville, South Carolina,” said Hampton in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “What I do never gets old. I grew up on soap operas where everything looked so big. You get on a set and realize it’s just a small room with walls. It is literally TV magic. I still get a buzz being on set.”
Hampton said as the lead and an executive producer, she has a responsibility to keep the set ebullient no matter how heavy the subject matter is.
“Whether it’s 6 a.m. or 10 p.m., Shanola lifts our spirits,” said Karan Oberoi, the actor portraying Dhan Rana, the “muscle” of Moseley & Associates who secretly captured Sir before season one for Gabi thinking she’d kill him, not imprison him. “She is always singing. I hear a lot of gospel.”
“I am not heavy,” Hampton added. “Our set is not heavy.”
When “Found” debuted a year ago, the drama procedural appeared straightforward: Gabi, who had been kidnapped as a child, built a dream team to track down missing persons who might otherwise be ignored. Gabi seemed like a cross between “Scandal” character Olivia Pope and real-life feminist attorney Gloria Allred.
But there was a wild twist at the end of episode one. Gabi’s childhood kidnapper nicknamed Sir was now trapped himself, chained in Gabi’s basement. For him to survive, she convinces him to help her on her missing person cases. The relationship is not sexual but both deeply emotional and intellectual. They become connected in a way that is both perturbing and weirdly engaging.
Hampton said when she signed on to the show, she knew Sir would escape the basement at some point. She just didn’t know when.
“Selfishly, those were my favorite scenes to shoot,” she said, referencing the tense verbal stand offs between Sir and Gabi. “I called those my Mark-Paul days. For an artist who is theatrically trained, it’s the best of all worlds. Yes, you do the jargon and the M&A situation room stuff. You just need to remember your doggone lines. But the magic was in the basement. It was so layered.”
Credit: Matt Miller/NBC
Credit: Matt Miller/NBC
The producers ultimately chose not to keep Sir in Gabi’s basement for too long. By episode 13 of season one, he escapes the dungeon, tries to poison multiple members of her team and kidnaps Lacey Quinn (Gabrielle Walsh) again. Lacey was Gabi’s close friend who Sir kidnapped decades earlier to provide Gabi a fellow companion.
Gabi kept her kidnapping gambit a secret from her team until he got out. When she had no choice but to reveal the truth to her team last season, the betrayal of trust ran deep, Gabi’s authority severely punctured. That rupture remains front and center season two.
“We’re shooting episode 13 now and we’re still working through the trust issues with Gabi,” said Oberoi in July. (The show will finish shooting all 22 episodes by next month.)
Gabi “takes it in the chin over and over,” Hampton said. “And she beats herself up, too.” (After the season two debut Oct. 3, it’s unclear if she’ll get jail time for her sins.)
And since this is a TV show with a potentially long shelf life, the M&A team, each of whom were either kidnapped or nursing the pain of losing a loved one to a captor, will stick together and find missing people each episode.
And of course, trailers show Gabi and Sir inevitably meeting up again in the real world with Sir playing a wily cat-and-mouse game with Gabi.
Hampton said showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll, who also produced the CW’s well-received drama “All American,” created a special 12th episode that features only the main cast. Dubbed “bottle episodes” by TV insiders, these types of episodes are usually far cheaper to make than regular episodes.
“This one was not watered down,” Hampton said. “It was magic. It reignited all those juices in me as an artist. ”(Given the upcoming broadcast schedule, this episode won’t see the light of day until mid-December or early January.)
If “Found” continues its strong ratings trajectory, she said, Carroll “already has five seasons mapped out in her head. That’s special. She always knows where these characters are going. It never feels forced and it feels fleshed out, which I love.”
Hampton, who spent 11 seasons on “Shameless,” the edgy dramedy on Showtime led by William H. Macy, said working on a show like “Found” is still a challenge.
“Learning the art and craft of a procedural, the case of the week, and making it sound natural to me has been an adjustment,” she said. “At the same time, I always have to remember the reason we are telling these stories is to bring to light stories of people from underserved communities.”
IF YOU WATCH
“Found,” 10 p.m. Thursdays on NBC, available on Peacock
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