Featured News - Current News - Archived News - News Categories

`Found` cast members Karan Oberoi as Dahn, Kelli Williams as Margaret, Shanola Hampton as Gabi, and Gabrielle Walsh as Lacey. (NBC photo by Matt Miller)
"Found" cast members Karan Oberoi as Dahn, Kelli Williams as Margaret, Shanola Hampton as Gabi, and Gabrielle Walsh as Lacey. (NBC photo by Matt Miller)

Q&A: 'Found' star Gabrielle Walsh drawn to show's shocking twists, turns & triumphs

by jmaloni
Tue, Jan 14th 2025 03:00 pm

NBC series returns Thursday with new episodes

Behind the Screens with Joshua Maloni

@joshuamaloni

Finding missing persons is nothing new for series television – but unique to NBC’s “Found” is a story in which the captive becomes the captor.

Gabi Mosely leads the high-profile rescue firm Mosely & Associates, widely known for reuniting lost individuals with their fraught family members.

In the pilot episode, we learn Gabi (Shanola Hampton) was herself kidnapped some two decades earlier by a man simply known as “Sir” (Mark-Paul Gosselaar).

Though she has formed a top team of recovery specialists – and has the ear of D.C. detective Mark Trent (Brett Dalton) – Gabi finds herself in need of more insight into her cases.

She turns to an unlikely source – someone … chained up in her basement.

Sir.

It was that shocking twist that helped attract Gabrielle Walsh to this series. She plays Lacey, an M&A legal eagle, cyber sleuth – and someone Sir will use against Gabi.

“I was auditioning as per usual, and I got the script that came across in my email to read, and when I read through it, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is pretty incredible character development,’ just right off of the bat. I thought that the story was handled well. And then by the time I got to the end, I started screaming and running through my apartment because I had found out that this woman – who's this like superhero vigilante – actually is a kidnapper herself,” Walsh said in a phone interview Friday. “I thought it was badass! Lacey, when she finds out in the show, not as much. But I thought that it was pretty cool that Gabi was keeping her kidnapper in her basement.

“I was like, ‘How do I become part of this universe?’ ”

Gabi (Shanola Hampton), right, has made it her mission to look after Lacey (Gabrielle Walsh) on "Found." (NBC photos by Matt Miller)

••••••••

“Found” juxtaposes Gabi’s confinement with Sir’s, while highlighting Gabi’s mission to help others with a story like her own. Her team members include Dhan (Karan Oberoi), the muscle, who was abducted; computer genius Zeke (Arlen Escarpeta), an agoraphobic kidnapping victim; and Margaret (Kelli Williams), a hyperactive observer and behavior expert whose own son went missing years before at a transit station.

Sir – whom we learn is Hugh Evans (Gabi’s high school teacher) – first became enamored with teen Gabi (Azaria Carter) upon discovering her intelligence, insight and warmth. Envisioning what he believes is a better life for Gabi – with him, away from those he deems unworthy of her talents – Sir kidnaps Gabi and forms a faux family.

Seeing Gabi isn’t happy, Sir thinks a new friend might help. He takes Bella (Jasmine Washington) – whom we now know as Lacey – and it’s that action that ultimately spurs Gabi to take action and escape with her new charge.

In each episode, emphasis is placed on Lacey’s recovery. She moves from a silent, scared, scarred child, into a confident, determined defender of the lost.

Gabi still takes particular guardianship over Lacey, and Sir knows this, and is prepared to act on it as he envisions a reunion on his own terms. … And escapes the basement.

The Gabi/Sir twist was the first of many “Found” has presented in just over 20 episodes.

Walsh said she couldn’t believe it when Lacey wound up in unbelievable dire straits – taken for a second time by Sir, as punishment for Gabi’s crime.

Gabrielle Walsh’s Lacey was kidnapped and nearly killed by Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s Sir on “Found.” (NBC photos by Matt Miller)

••••••••

Season two begins with the M&A team frantic to find Lacey, and Lacey fighting to survive.

“(Laughs) I mean, I believe I messaged NK (creator, executive producer and showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll) immediately. Like, ‘OK, so what's going on? I'm not really getting kidnapped, right? He's just kind of, like, hanging out in the closet, you know? Maybe it's just a vision? Maybe he's just an illusion this whole time? Like, what is the deal? Are we going to have to go through this?’ ” Walsh recalled. “It’s like, ‘Nah, girl, you're taken again.’ And I was like, ‘Whoa.’

“When we were starting that, when we got greenlit for the second season, NK had sat down with each of us and kind of gave us a layout of what the season was going to be like, which was really helpful to me as an actor, to be able to kind of understand the arc of where my character was going to go – and especially grasping onto what this relationship was going to be like, being his captive yet again.

“And I mean, I was terrified by it; but I was excited to explore that as an actor. And as you could see from the episodes that have already aired when Lacey is captive with Sir, there is a part of herself and her strength that she gets to get back, that she gets to, so to speak, ‘beat her boogeyman.’ Although trauma is not that easy and simple to get through. But she got to feel like she wasn't a little girl anymore, and she got to stand up to this man who had been a monster in her closet – literally – for so long.”

WATCH:

 

When “Found” returns from its holiday break, Lacey has unbelievably rebounded from her second stint with Sir and, with Gabi perhaps facing another bout of imprisonment – this time for her own actions – is more determined than ever to see M&A succeed and Sir be sent away.

For Walsh, Lacey’s journey is especially impactful. Walsh has “been a bit of a motivator for my friends and my family. I'm always wanting to, I don't know, I guess encourage people to do and be their best.”

“I think Lacey’s been through so much,” Walsh said. “As all of the rest of the team describe her, she is a light. She's got this childlike spirit that wants to see the best in things and hope for the best. She's not an idiot by any means. She's going to law school. She wants to fight for the truth, and fight for justice, and fight for these forgotten ones. But she wants to live in that light and love and positivity.

“It was even alluded to a bit in one of the episodes. She's talking to Zeke on the floor; and she's been through therapy; she's been through counseling and doing these things to be able to have that strength and mental fortitude to be able to see the light. And I think that's important to be said – that seeing the light. I keep repeating ‘seeing the light,’ but seeing the positive aspects of things, or being able to see the beauty, the future, what's ahead or beyond the pain and the trauma, takes mental fortitude, takes strength, and that was just written into Lacey and her existence, and is something that I, as a person, try to carry with me through the different changes or things that I have been through, or struggles that I have gone through in my life; trying to see the positive aspects and see the light into the future.”

“Found” airs at 10 p.m. Thursdays on NBC.

“Found” stars Arlen Escarpeta as Zeke Wallace, Gabrielle Walsh as Lacey Quinn, Kelli Williams as Margaret Reed, Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Sir, Shanola Hampton as Gabi Mosely, Brett Dalton as Mark Trent, and Karan Oberoi as Dhan Rana. (NBC photo by Kwaku Alston)

••••••••

Hometown News

View All News