With its latest harrowing case, FBI is bringing up some hard memories for Special Agent OA Zidan (Zeeko Zaki). In “No One Left Behind,” the team investigates a kidnapping case that quickly gets political as the missing person is a member of the Taliban, and he’s been taken hostage by soldiers in the hopes of trading for a POW in Afghanistan. While Maggie (Missy Peregrym) is taking some time off to focus on the young girl she’s now guardian of, OA and his own Army Ranger past take center stage. We also get to go home with him and his girlfriend, Gemma (Comfort Clinton), which might be the most shocking development at all. How on earth are those two still together? She does cocaine, he inadvertently got her friend killed when she worked as an informant to take down the mob running the nightclub they liked to go to. It feels like there’s no way this relationship is still working, and yet it clearly is. Zaki chalks it up to the fact that maybe Gemma and her dead friend simply “aren’t as close as they seem to be.”
With its latest harrowing case, FBI is bringing up some hard memories for Special Agent OA Zidan (Zeeko Zaki). In “No One Left Behind,” the team investigates a kidnapping case that quickly gets political as the missing person is a member of the Taliban, and he’s been taken hostage by soldiers in the hopes of trading for a POW in Afghanistan. While Maggie (Missy Peregrym) is taking some time off to focus on the young girl she’s now guardian of, OA and his own Army Ranger past take center stage. We also get to go home with him and his girlfriend, Gemma (Comfort Clinton), which might be the most shocking development at all. How on earth are those two still together? She does cocaine, he inadvertently got her friend killed when she worked as an informant to take down the mob running the nightclub they liked to go to. It feels like there’s no way this relationship is still working, and yet it clearly is. Zaki chalks it up to the fact that maybe Gemma and her dead friend simply “aren’t as close as they seem to be.”
Zaki also pointed out that Gemma seems to have been purposely “very far away” from his work partner, Maggie, meaning the two women are never going to be “butting heads.”
“It’s kind of nice that it feels like a totally different world,” he added.
We’ll get to see a bit of that world in the episode, which reveals a lot of new information about what OA has been through and how to approach it with the people in his life. “We get to see him struggle with opening up to his girlfriend, and we see all of it coming to a head by the end of the episode where he does become extremely vulnerable with her, and it was extremely fun to play.”
Read on for the rest of Parade‘s interview, in which Zaki shares his feelings on the sensitive topics addressed in this episode and teases a dramatic end to the season.
Zaki: Well, I think what we’ve seen with OA is he carries a lot on his own shoulders, and in moments throughout the series, you’ll see that there are these breaking points. A few seasons ago, he started going to therapy, and I think what it reinforces is that no one can do this alone, no matter how hard you try. It’s nice to see a strong hero like OA have these vulnerable moments, have these dilemmas, and then see him actively seeking the healing of his traumas.
