FBI Post-Mortem: Zeeko Zaki Admits the ‘Victim’ Events ‘Has to Change OA’

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, October 11 episode of FBI.]

In the aftermath of OA (Zeeko Zaki) being mugged on the Tuesday, October 11 episode of FBI, “Victim,” it took the agent a while to actually acknowledge how deeply the experience impacted him.

After literally running from the scene of the crime, OA initially declined to help in the NYPD’s investigation into the couple that mugged him, insisting he hadn’t seen anything—while also hiding what was going on from (most of) his colleagues.

With OA trying to grasp on to his denial, it also left Zaki with a slightly different version of the character to play. “I think the funnest thing as an actor was to look myself in the mirror and say, it’s season 5, I’m aggressively secure in playing OA—here is an episode that is an insecure OA,” he tells Give Me My Remote. “So I almost had to abandon sort of all confidence in the character and really fall back on how my craft has evolved; the ability to be present and comfortable on set, and to realize that these are new notes. These are new emotions and new scenes and new character situations. So it was really exciting to get to play such a fresh script five seasons into the show.”

As OA was trying to just push past his own trauma, it also allowed him to have slightly different dynamics with his team. “The best part about my coworkers is that they’re all incredible actors,” Zaki gushes. “The reason we have so much fun on set is, regardless of anything, we all do play off of each other really well. There is a chemistry and there’s a kind of comfort in that, because when we are doing these scenes, we can always reassure each other while remaining in the characters. When we get to play emotional stuff off of each other, that’s when you really if it worked or if it didn’t.”

“Getting to put all this imposter syndrome in front of the other characters and in front of my coworkers, on purpose, as written, just really tugs at the imposter syndrome that I, at least, have experienced in this industry, in a positive way,” he continues. “Imposter syndrome is kind of ingrained in us. Hiding things from your coworkers and your loved ones is an example of that. So all of us kind of getting to play off of this new kind of energy in the episode is really fun.”

Eventually, OA opened up to his still-new partner Nina (Shantel VanSanten), who had made it clear, repeatedly, he was doing the best he could.

“What’s really nice is how we seem to be more vulnerable and open with a stranger on a train than a loved one,” Zaki notes. “We will tell something very deeply personal to someone in passing if they’re willing to listen, and we know that they’re not going to remain sort of an audience member to the rest of our journey.”

“In that same right, I feel like I would not be as vulnerable in a moment like that if we had been partners for any longer,” he continues. “But in this desperate desire to feel understood, when the stakes are that high, and you don’t have history with somebody, I think there’s this just—you try to get it all out in a way [where] it doesn’t matter how long we’ve been together; that you can understand and I think it’s really nice, because if [a moment like] that works, an audience member who is even just tuning in for the first time can still be affected by the weight of the subject.”

Ultimately, OA was able to help their case’s only witness open up—and he was to identify the people who had attacked him, too. But will it prompt a change for the agent going forward?

“I think it has to,” Zaki acknowledges. “For me, I try to really keep a grip on the reality of the character. It’s been five years, and this very potent, traumatic event happened to him. If it happened to him and it wasn’t directly correlated to that case that day, maybe it wouldn’t have been so magnified. But I think the idea is that we’re five years in, this has to change OA.”

“As an actor playing someone for five years, you want a new moment and you want a new layer,” he continues. “And the trust we all have with the character in him being vulnerable, and him being this anti stereotypical, six-[foot] five[-inch], bearded Arab man—it’s gonna be really fun to get to lead with understanding, compassion, and put that in front of a few other things. And who knows? But I’m excited and I hope it leads into more deeper, emotional, trauma-related episodes, where we get to really have more relatable cases to our audience, get to dive into there.”

That being said, Zaki doesn’t want things to change too much. “But, of course, I’m not saying that I do not love the massive action-packed bomb episodes,” he admits with a laugh.

FBI, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS

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