Yahoo Lifestyle 'FBI' Star Zeeko Zaki Reveals Where OA and Gemma Stand After 'Action Movie' Episode
Another week, another traumatized agent on CBS' FBI. This week, it was OA's (Zeeko Zaki) turn in the hot seat, even though he was actively trying to take a day off. He and girlfriend Gemma (Comfort Clinton) were on a train headed to Niagara Falls on an unarmed vacation when he started noticing suspicious behavior by some of the other passengers. Gemma quickly pointed out that he had put on his "Fed face," and OA hoped the guy carrying a gun had a perfectly legitimate and legal reason for it. Spoiler alert: he didn't.
OA and Gemma quickly found themselves in what Zaki described to Parade as a "mini version" of a Liam Neeson movie, and of course OA had gone on vacay without a gun. So all he had were FBI instincts, his superhuman athletic skills, and Gemma's secret second phone with which he could text Maggie (Missy Peregrym). He tried to lay low, but things quickly went awry when Gemma got shot, and he had to give himself up in order to convince the hijackers to try and save her and avoid a murder charge.
It quickly became clear that OA's train hijacking was related to the murders being investigated back in the city. And the team began to put together that this was in retaliation for a devastating train derailment six years ago in Ohio. OA's train was running on tracks owned by the freight company responsible.
Most of the hijackers thought they were just taking over the train in exchange for a ransom equal to their failed lawsuit against the freight company. But they were being lied to by one of their own. A woman named Evelyn had lost her husband to cancer caused by the hazardous materials on the derailed train, and her plan was to crash the train right into the freight company's headquarters and make a big statement.
The last 15 minutes of the episode allowed OA to go into full-on action movie mode. He convinced two of the scared hijackers to untie him and give him their guns, and he got all of the train's passengers on other cars so he could disconnect them from the front car, leaving just him and Evelyn hurtling towards a crash. Evelyn shot herself in the locked control room, so OA was all by himself as he had to short circuit the lock and figure out how to stop the train with just seconds to go before disaster–naturally.
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The train stopped, Gemma recovered well in the hospital, and OA narrowly avoided death. But if you think that's going to take him out for any time at all, you gotta remember that this is FBI, and these people are not normal.
"One of the biggest things we try to portray in these characters is their strength and compartmentalization," Zaki said. "A big part of this job is keeping your personal life and your work [separate]. The work is the drug for these guys, and they definitely surrender to the work. It helps them [keep it] out of their real lives, whether that's healthy or not healthy. I'm assuming it's kind of not healthy, but it is definitely a part of this job."
Earlier this season, OA shot and killed his old military buddy out of necessity. He barely had a moment to process that before jumping into another case. He knows (and the writers probably know) that it's not really realistic to just push all those inevitable emotions down. But this is TV, and there's a tried and true procedural formula they've got to stick to.
"If it's only one episode you get to see, you know that you don't need to see the episode before," he explained. "So if we play the trauma from an episode before too much, it might kind of defeat the traditional procedural equation. But they always do find a way to circle back and keep those storylines going, so we'll see how they do it this time."
Zaki's trick, both for OA and for when filming scenes even gets intense, "is to just live in the moment and be present with the current episode," he said. "The ability to do that is a skill that agents have to have.
Of course, this particular case was very much a crossover between OA's personal life and work life, but it's not the first time he and Gemma have survived trauma. Back when they were first dating, a sting operation got her friend killed and she still continued to date him, and Zaki's got thoughts on what this particular incident will do to the couple. Read on for the rest of our interview.
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This felt like a big moment for OA and Gemma, even though it's yet another horrible thing happening to them.
They say if you want to test your relationship, someone should get shot and then you'll see if you really love that person. Until we were in that moment, I didn't really know how it was going to play out and it was nice to see it organically be this very intense experience. I think for OA, it definitely heightened their connection and made him realize how much he does care about her, and hopefully the same thing for her as well.
Does this change things for them? Are they closer? Is he feeling guilty for her getting shot?
He definitely feels guilty. We'll see. I don't know what the writers are going to do with it yet. I'm hoping they don't write me blaming her for standing up. But I'm excited to see where they go. Hopefully, it's a really cool opportunity to bring us closer together, assuming there's a million ways it could go. It could make her think it isn't a safe relationship to be in. Maybe she's like, "Hell yeah, this is awesome, I love the rush." We'll see what the future brings.
At least during the episode, we got to see a lot of emotion from OA. What was that like to film, since he's not normally so personally affected during a case?
It was really cool to just sort of hit the levels on the spectrum that I haven't needed to hit before. Being without his partner, being without his team, being without his gun and things like that allowed me to just kind of explore a higher stakes version of some of the emotions OA's experienced before. And an ode to the crew of this show and the set designers and the makeup artists. That blood all over [Gemma[ really brought out an honest reaction that was fun to find in the moment.
Was there a moment while filming where you really felt like you were Liam Neeson on a train?
I mean, when you're hanging between two train cars, bashing at the pieces to make them disconnect, and then you get to jump from one to the other, that was definitely the action star moment that I think everybody wants to play. It was super fun, and I'm really happy that it turned out well.
Was anything shot on a real train?
I'm really happy that you saw the episode and still asked that question. No, it was all on a stage. We had a full one and a half cars of a train, but it was also CGI and done very safely on a stage.
Can you talk about some of the upcoming cases? I assume they're not all on the same intensity level as this one.
It's really cool, the next run. We've already started it, but you get these episodes where me and Missy aren't together because of the "episode off" clause in this season. It's really cool to see us separated and then to see us reunited. We do it in a really, really cool way. I'm really excited for that to play out. The moment that we come back together is really cool. You get to really see some different dynamics and different partners together, and we get the intro of a new character [played by Emily Alabi]. So there's definitely exciting beats in the back half of the season for sure.
What's the new character like?
She's super badass, as all of us hopefully are, and she's great. She's super sweet and a great actress and a great person to work with. It's been super fun so far.
Does she gel well with the team?
Yeah, for sure. And she gets a really cool episode coming up and we definitely get to see where she's come from and things like that. It's just fun to keep the world growing.
FBI airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on CBS.
