‘Found’ star hasn’t lost her enthusiasm

On NBC’s popular drama “Found,” Gabi Mosely is weighed down by guilt, trauma and a boundless work ethic to find missing people. That weight is etched on her face, embodied in the way she walks and talks. She is neither a candidate to teach yoga nor Zumba.

But the actress who plays her, Shanola Hampton, is a nonstop vortex of positive energy. On a recent morning, Hampton arrived on the show’s set with a flurry of apologies that she wasn’t actually shooting anything.

“Sorry it’s such a lame set visit,” she told a group of journalists.

Then she started raving about costumer Demi Lyles. “She gives me the looks honey! This baby knows some clothes.” She spied a crew member and pointed at him: “I like your beard!” And to everyone in general: “You’re all killing it.”

She gave a vibrant tour of the set, sweeping through Gabi’s spotless home, then entered the infamous basement where she secretly kept her former captor Sir. That role is played with controlled malevolence by Mark-Paul Gosselaar, an actor who broke into Hollywood playing a significantly lighter character on “Saved by the Bell” more than three decades ago.

“I’m just a little girl from a small town called Summerville, South Carolina,” said Hampton, who spent 11 seasons on “Shameless.” “What I do never gets old. I grew up on soap operas where everything looked so big. You get on a set and realize it’s just a small room with walls. It is literally TV magic. I still get a buzz being on set.”

Hampton said as the lead and an executive producer, she has a responsibility to keep the set ebullient no matter how heavy the subject matter is.

“Whether it’s 6 a.m. or 10 p.m., Shanola lifts our spirits,” said Karan Oberoi, the actor portraying Dhan Rana, the “muscle” of Moseley & Associates who secretly captured Sir before Season 1 for Gabi thinking she’d kill him, not imprison him. “She is always singing. I hear a lot of gospel.”

“I am not heavy,” Hampton added. “Our set is not heavy.”

When “Found” debuted a year ago, the drama procedural appeared straightforward: Gabi, who had been kidnapped as a child, built a dream team to track down missing persons who might otherwise be ignored.

But there was a wild twist at the end of Episode 1. Gabi’s childhood kidnapper, nicknamed Sir, was now trapped himself, chained in Gabi’s basement. She convinced him to help her on her missing person cases, and they became connected in a way that is both perturbing and weirdly engaging.

“Selfishly, those were my favorite scenes to shoot,” she said, referencing the tense verbal stand offs between Sir and Gabi. “I called those my Mark-Paul days. For an artist who is theatrically trained, it’s the best of all worlds.”

The producers ultimately chose not to keep Sir in Gabi’s basement for too long. By Episode 13 of Season 1, he had escaped the dungeon.

Gabi kept her kidnapping gambit a secret from her team until he got out. When she revealed the truth to her team last season, the betrayal of trust ran deep, That rupture remains front and center in Season 2.

“We’re shooting Episode 13 now, and we’re still working through the trust issues with Gabi,” said Oberoi.

Gabi “takes it in the chin over and over,” Hampton said. “And she beats herself up, too.”

Trailers show Gabi and Sir inevitably meeting up again, with Sir playing a wily cat-and-mouse game with Gabi. But, Hampton vows, that won’t be the end of the story.

If “Found” continues its strong ratings trajectory, she said, showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll, who also produced the CW’s well-received drama “All American,” “already has five seasons mapped out in her head. That’s special.”