Found Boss on Comparisons Between Gabi and Scandal’s Olivia Pope, Continuing Power Struggle With Sir

Keisha Hatchett
·3 min read

In NBC’s Found, airing Tuesdays at 10/9c, Gabi Mosely (played by Shanola Hampton) runs a crisis management team and does whatever it takes to find the missing individuals who’ve been otherwise forgotten — even if that means subverting the law.

For many viewers, she feels reminiscent of Scandal’s Olivia Pope, who also ran her own crisis firm and operated outside of the law to do what was necessary during the ABC drama’s run from 2012 to 2018.

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Showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll recognizes the similarities between both characters, noting that their commonalities are merely coincidental, and that Olivia wasn’t the inspiration for Gabi.

“[Gabi] wasn’t influenced by Olivia, but when you boil it down to what career gives you the kind of freedom to do what you want to do outside the rules, crisis management firms usually end up the ones. Because they’re not cops, they’re not the law, but they have expertise that straddles all of that,” she explains. “It’s private investigator-type work mixed with lawyers and tech experts and all of that.”

It’s not a coincidence that personality types “like Gabi’s, like Olivia Pope’s end up in a career like crisis management because they so brilliantly problem-solve and think on their feet and have a ‘the end justifies the means’ attitude,” the EP adds. “So, while she wasn’t inspired by Olivia Pope, I absolutely see the similarities that people are able to pull from that, because they run crisis management firms, and they’re both forces to be reckoned with.”

Part of what makes Gabi a morally grey character in Found is her choice to keep her former captor Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) chained up in her basement, using his expertise to help her solve cases each week. Flashbacks throughout the series illustrate how Sir exercised his control over younger Gabi and tried to give her a new persona, though she never fully gave in.

“The thing you’ll notice is even though he had Gabi in captivity for a year, he was never able to break that spirit,” Carroll shares. “And so, while he was [holding her hostage], she never quite gave him the thing he wanted, which was full acquiescence. She still maintained her spirits, she still fought back, she still fought for her identity [and] her independence.”

The tables have turned in the present, though, and Gabi is now the one in control — or so she thinks. “Technically, Sir is now the one in captivity, that’s chained to a wall. And yet, the back-and-forth between him and Gabi, their dynamic has you questioning which one of them is really in charge,” she says. “It’s clear who’s the kidnapper and the kidnappee, but who really has the power? It’s not always the kidnapper, and I think we see that, both in the past storyline and present one.”

Carroll teases that as Season 1 continues, you’ll see “how the scenes we’re showing in the past inform their interactions in the present day” and how much that captivity was such a “formative time in Gabi’s life and played a role in shaping the woman she became.”

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