Shanola Hampton Explains Why Gabi on New Show Found is the "Best Kind of Character to Play"
Shanola Hampton's character on Found helps find missing people — but she has a sinister accomplice she's hiding from her associates.
When tragedy strikes but you survive, what do you do next?
That question lays at the heart of the upcoming new drama series Found which premieres October 3 at 10/9c on NBC. Former Shameless actress Shanola Hampton stars as Gabi Mosely the living embodiment of that moral and ethical exploration.
As a victim of a child abduction 20 years ago, Gabi managed to escape and grew up to launch her own crisis management firm — Mosley & Associates — with a mission to help find any of the 600,000 people reported missing in the U.S. every year, many of whom are minorities and persons of color.
Shanola Hampton Talks Character on Found
In an interview with NBC Insider completed prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike, Hampton said about her character: "Gabi Mosley is powerful, broken, complicated, fierce, traumatized, hurt, and a childlike superhuman. She's full of depth. And that's the best character to play."
Gabi experienced something horrific at a young age, but, Hampton explained, "Gabi was able to deal with a traumatic experience by finding and healing others."
"A huge part of the healing has happened, as you see throughout the season, but there's still a lot of healing to be done," she said of Gabi's ongoing journey. "The work started by her finding others that had gone through trauma and saving them, because that [saves] a little piece of herself."
Assisting her at Mosely & Associates are a staff of equally passionate yet broken heroes still navigating their paths of healing too, including Margaret (Kelli Williams), Lacey (Gabrielle Walsh), Dhan (Karan Oberoi) and Zeke (Arlen Escarpeta).
As the season unfolds, Hampton said that each of the character's complicated histories will be revealed and together they build a family of dedicated people trying to make the world remember and find the forgotten.
"It's such a beautiful story that we get to tell because we get to put away any sort of stereotype of what trauma looks like," the actress said. "We get to put away any sort of stereotype of what healing looks like because it's different for everyone. One of the things that I think is so rare, just in life in general, is we get to take away judgment. We get to take away in that bubble of the Mosely & Associates, the fear of being judged."
That's a good thing because Gabi's path to finding and helping the lost is going to include her former abductor — a man she refers to as Sir (played by Saved by the Bell's Mark-Paul Gosselaar). Theirs is a complex, psychological relationship meant to shock and surprise.
Found premieres Tuesday, October 3 at 10/9c on NBC and are available the next day on Peacock. Viewers can also watch on the NBC app and NBC.com by logging in with your cable provider.
