FBI Post-Mortem: Zeeko Zaki on OA’s Tragic Decision and the Heartfelt Confession to Maggie

December 17, 2024 by Marisa Roffman

“Riptide” – After three Customs Officers are shot dead in a cargo heist, the team entrusts OA’s old army buddy Clay to help them determine if it was an inside job, on FBI, Tuesday, Dec. 17 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs). Pictured: Zeeko Zaki as Special Agent Omar Adom ‘OA’ Zidan. Photo: Bennett Raglin/CBS ©2024 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, December 17 episode of FBI.]

After FBI’s OA (Zeeko Zaki) put his faith in his former Army buddy, Clay (Guy Lockard), things spiraled out of control on the Tuesday, December 17 episode of the CBS drama.

Though Maggie (Missy Peregrym) told OA she was worried that his loyalty to Clay was his blindspot, the agent insisted he had things under control…until Clay double-crossed him and told OA that he owed him for saving his life back in the day. The price Clay wanted? A chance to escape with life-changing money. Clay and OA engaged in a standoff, but Clay made it clear he wouldn’t go back to prison—and prompted OA to fatally shoot him.

“Life is truly on the line,” Zaki tells Give Me My Remote. “And when someone saves your life and you trust them with that, and you then get confronted with, ‘Is this person truly on my side, or are they not?’ It was very intense to play. It was very intense to even sort of think about when we were just sort of walking through it and prepping [to film the scene]. But betrayal is a very heavy emotion to get to explore on the show, and it is nice that they really found a way to up the stakes in terms of playing out a betrayal.”

Finding the right tone for the scene—after establishing the duo’s relationship over a handful of episodes this season—was also key. “The tone was definitely, for me, just heartbreak,” Zaki says. “To really have to put it all together, to be running the whole episode believing one thing, and then get confronted with the truth in this very intense moment and standoff at the end, and having to take that journey all within a few minutes was very intense. But I think the easiest way to sort of play it was just heartbreak.”

“And then, of course, after the heart’s broken, you’ve got to save yourself, protect your partner, and do what’s right in the eyes of OA and the Bureau, and where his overall loyalty lies,” he continues. “So it’s kind of nice to see him get to handle all of that in such a short period of time. It was something that we definitely found in the moment and through all the takes [of filming the sequence]. And by the end, it was like, ‘Ah, okay. We found it.’ And it felt really good.”

“Riptide” – After three Customs Officers are shot dead in a cargo heist, the team entrusts OA’s old army buddy Clay to help them determine if it was an inside job, on FBI, Tuesday, Dec. 17 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs). Pictured (L-R): Guy Lockard as Clay Voss and Zeeko Zaki as Special Agent Omar Adom ‘OA’ Zidan. Photo: Bennett Raglin/CBS ©2024 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Though OA had no choice, he was responsible for ending his friend’s life. So how will the agent be coping with the simultaneous guilt and grief? “I think another superpower that these agents have is compartmentalizing their personal things with the work,” Zaki points out. “So it’s really nice that that actually is a tool in our arsenal, because of the scripts and because of how we film [with some storylines taking a beat before we revisit them]. That’s a superpower of OA. So we definitely will see that it’s tucked away, and when it’s time to open up that can again, I’m sure that will be something very special, too.”

“But that’s what the job is,” he continues. “Lives [are] on the line, so you keep the personal stuff in a cage. You show up every day. It’s a sport; you get on your field and you play for your team.”

Zaki notes he thinks OA is keeping up that wall even off-screen, too. “I guess I kind of get to decide that, because I’m the character, but I like to think that in the moment, he does all of those calculations,” he says when pondering whether OA might have allowed himself a moment to process this when he went home that night. “And he understands the gravity of what he’s doing. And if he didn’t before, he definitely did after. And just like how actors search for justification, I think he would have done the same thing. And at the end of the day, the person that someone was doesn’t mean that it’s the person that they are [now]. And it’s just a nice metaphor for a lot of friendship relationships that people have, that people experience.”

One relationship that remained solid in the hour was OA’s partnership with Maggie. The duo shared an important beat when OA opened up to Maggie about being captured for more than 20 days while he was serving, and Clay went rogue to save his life.

Zaki and Peregrym have played thousands of scenes together during their FBI tenure, but the personal ones are still rare—and a treat for the actors. “Any sort of emotional moment or hurdle that we get tasked with doing when it’s between me and Maggie, I always get really excited,” Zaki notes. “I love when we get to just be face to face, play these heavy moments out…she’s always super present with me in those moments. And as an actor, it’s like you couldn’t ask for anything more.”

“We just kind of keep building this thing,” he continues. “And it’s nice to sort of see the evolution of these moments. And it just really feels like it’s this nice sort of climb from season 1, where even the stories I told her then were extremely vulnerable. And they just keep raising the stakes and we keep being there for each other, and our relationship grows stronger. It’s just really, really fun to play and bring to life.”

FBI, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS

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FBI Post-Mortem: Zeeko Zaki on OA’s Tragic Decision and the Heartfelt Confession to Maggie

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