What Shanola Hampton would tell her 'Found' character if she could

Shanola Hampton is a force to be reckoned with. So is her character on the NBC series "Found."

Hampton plays Gabby Mosely, a recovery specialist who draws upon her own past as a kidnapping victim to find missing people. As the show goes on, audiences see she has a secret herself: She’s holding her childhood kidnapper Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) captive in her basement. Sir helps Gabby tap into the mind of an abductor to crack the cases before it’s too late.

When Hampton first received the call from showrunner Nkechi “NK” Okoro Carroll that the charged, complicated show was renewed, she recalls saying ‘Oh my goodness’ at least 45 different times and celebrated with a dance and her ‘no chill’ high kick.

“It’s such a surreal moment,” Hampton tells TODAY.com. “The percentile of getting a pilot to even go to a series is so slim and then to have that show be received the way that it is, and then to get approved for Season Two with more episodes … it’s huge.”

Hampton says saying yes to the role was "no brainer," thanks to its balance of entertainment and shedding light on the lack of attention underserved communities get when it comes to missing person cases.

“When I was reading that (script) I was like, 'OK, she’s a baddie, telling stories that we need to be told and then there’s a man in the basement,'” says Hampton. “I mean, who doesn’t want to play that?”

Audiences first meet Gabby running in heels (yes, running) undercover to crack a case. As long as she's capable, Hampton says the high-high action scenes aren't going anywhere. She prefers to do her stunts so that she could make the character, as she describes, “a baddie with heels on”.

“When you see me kicking or running in heels, much to everyone’s chagrin, I don’t care — I’m going to be fine,” says the mother of two. “I run better in heels than I do in sneakers.”

Known by her friends as the "mama bear" in the group, Hampton says if she were Gabby’s friend and knew what was really going on, she wouldn’t turn her back but would rather call her friend’s choices and get her to focus on healing.

“I would say, girl, GIRL,” Hampton jokingly pleads. “You gotta go get some help, we gotta get you together. I’ll visit you in prison, but girl what are you doing?”

Despite Gosselaar's dark character and their even darker shared history, Gabby starts to feel empathy for the antagonist of the show. Although Hampton makes it clear that for her the relationship between Sir and Gabby isn't sexual (even if fans say otherwise), she understands the audience's reaction to the on-screen tension.

"When I heard (at first) that there was a 'will, won't they,' I was like, 'What is in y'all's sick minds?" laughed Hampton. "(But) I think that now as the season has progressed, the idea of it being sexual has dissipated and it's more of a creepy-weird obsession chemistry. I don't know how to define it because we've never really had this sort of representation of this kind of chemistry before, so you would automatically think it's a love thing, but it's not so now it's taken on a whole other a new chemistry genre that we're all figuring out what to call it."

Sir isn't the only man in Gabby's life that fans gush over. Detective slash former-fling Mark Trent (Brett Dalton) leaves fans wondering what really happened between the two and if Gabby can balance their past with her present.

"With Trent's character, you see a connection but it's so far removed from what Gabby is capable of giving at this point of her life," says Hampton. "It's almost beautiful that it's (the show) is not about her finding love. We've seen that in our heroes before and to drag Trent into her world that is so chaotic is not fair and Gabby knows that."

Hampton says she prepares "moment by moment" and only reads the next script when filming on the current episode wraps — no matter how tempting it is to gush with cast mates.

“The roles are reversed, and I absolutely do it like the viewer,” she laughs. “When I’m reading (the script) I’m as intrigued as if I were watching it on television.”

Hampton says the ending of Season One is "so epic." The next script is one she is actively looking forward to reading — just as much as viewers are to watch.

“I am so excited to get that first script just to know how we bounce back,” says Hampton.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com