Shanola Hampton and Mark-Paul Gosselaar don’t want Found fans shipping their characters together — but they also did nothing to walk back their electric onscreen chemistry.
“We wouldn’t dial anything back. It organically happened. It organically evolves,” Hampton, 47, exclusively told Us Weekly. “Everything we do, I don’t rehearse. We don’t rehearse scenes together. What you see is what you get.”
Hampton noted that there’s something that “just works” between her and Gosselaar, 51, as actors, adding, “If we consciously made an effort to dial it back [while filming], it would just look forced. You have to let these characters breathe. You let us breathe as actors and you get what you get.”
Despite not pulling back on how she and Gosselaar interact as Gabi and Sir, respectively, Hampton doesn’t want viewers rooting for their characters to get together in the long run.
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“Those of you out there shipping Sir and Gabi, ladies [you should want] better for yourselves,” she quipped. “Serial kidnappers are not the standard. Gabi can do better.”
Found, which premiered in 2023, follows public relations specialist and crisis manager Gabi Mosely (Hampton) and her team of associates as they work to find missing people who have been ignored or forgotten by law enforcement.
While Found primarily focuses on the cases themselves, it also centers around Gabi and Sir’s relationship. The NBC series introduced their dynamic with Gabi kidnapping Sir in the present timeline — as viewers learned via flashbacks that Sir kidnapped Gabi when she was a teenager.
“The truth is I can see [the intrigue] because there is a chemistry,” Hampton explained to Us. “We are used to a man and a woman having chemistry — and then it automatically means a relationship. So what happened was Mark-Paul and I came out in season 1 not planned. We had this chemistry and no one knew what box [they checked[ because we need boxes to put everything in.”
She continued: “People don’t really know what to do with their emotions. … I think that that’s what makes the show so special. That’s why people need to see more to see where their relationship goes.”
Gosselaar, for his part, felt exactly the same way.
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“Well [our chemistry], it’s not something we ever work on — it just happened organically. It’s always been that way,” he told Us earlier this month, adding that he and Hampton “just got lucky” as costars. “Sometimes you don’t need to like the person in real life for there to be chemistry on the screen. That’s not our case. We really enjoy each other’s company and I consider [Shanola] a really good friend. So that just bleeds through the lines that are all there.”
Gosselaar clarified that “there’s nothing sexual about” Sir’s interest in Gabi.
“As you said, it’s written this way. So when I’m saying these lines, I just have to understand Sir’s deep affection for Gabi — and his love for her,” he detailed. “It’s just that when he sees her, she brightens him. She’s just a part that he needs and that he wants. It helps that Shanola is a really good person and she’s a really fine actor.”
He added: “But as actors, we should be able to have that chemistry with anyone. Maybe when you see us actually together off set, [you see] we really enjoy each other and maybe people confuse that with [our characters on screen]. It just bleeds on the screen. But I think Shanola is a good enough actor that she could find that chemistry with almost anyone.”
Found airs on NBC Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET and new episodes are available the next day on Peacock.
