FBI's Missy Peregrym On Filming The Season's Most Harrowing Scene Yet: 'I Feel Like I Blacked Out'

Spoilers ahead for Monday's episode of "FBI"!

In Monday's "FBI," Maggie Bell finds herself in grave danger, as a nefarious slasher from her past returns to unleash hell upon her and her family. 

In the cold open, Maggie's sister Erin is chloroformed and abducted while out on a nightly stroll. It doesn't take long for the team to figure out that Ray DiStefano, an obsessed criminal Maggie put away twice before, is responsible for Erin's disappearance... and he still has quite the bone to pick with his favorite special agent.

After sending the FBI a video of a distressed Erin tied to a chair, Maggie tracks Ray to his father's brownstone, and that's where he finally catches up with Agent Bell, knocking her out and dragging her to an abandoned campground. After chaining her up and holding her at knifepoint, the deranged Ray demands that she apologize for not reuniting him with his father before his dad's untimely death. After multiple violent struggles, Maggie eventually escapes her captor and kicks him off a cliff, only to find she's too late to save her sister: Erin's dead body is discovered in the back of DiStefano's van. 

Below, TVLine talks to Missy Peregrym about Maggie's tumultuous relationships with her recovering-addict sister and the villainous Ray, and what it was like to shoot one of the franchise's most gutting scenes ever.  

TVLINE | It's been a minute since we've seen Maggie's sister, Erin. How would you describe the women's relationship since then?
MISSY PEREGRYM | Non-existent, honestly. I've been trying to get ahold of her and I have always carried this guilt for the last conversation we had. [It] was a very natural response to a situation that was happening, which would seem like a normal thing in a healthy relationship. You can have these moments and it's safe, but it totally broke us. And it's devastating to me what's happening because I can't even get us to have a conversation, let alone anything else in our relationship. I'm an unsafe person to her already, and then this happens.

TVLINE | What's Maggie's reaction to hearing that Ray DiStefano is back in the fold and still carrying this vendetta against her?
It's horrifying and it's confusing in the end because I don't really understand what's going on and why he would go this far? DiStefano felt a connection to me the last time we worked together, and then he felt betrayed by me. And I knew that he was mad. Obviously we all saw that. And so to a certain degree, I'm like, "OK, he's just trying to get me back for that situation," but it's more than that. It's that I broke his heart because he felt like he had a connection, and I'm the only other person now in his life. His father's passed, so he's been sitting in [prison] just thinking about me. 

We wanted to play that human need for relationship and connection and intimacy. For DiStefano, obviously it's twisted, and the scary part for Maggie is that I was just doing my job. I didn't have to go back and tell DiStefano that his father passed. I could have gotten anybody to do that, but I went back out of respect for him helping me. And because I did that, I'm the one who's being blamed for the situation. And now my sister's paying for it. It's devastating because I'm a flawed person who's doing my best to help everybody around me, and I can't even help my sister. I can't even have a relationship with my sister. And now because of my ability and my empathy and my way of communicating with people and getting them to open up, I've now created a completely dangerous situation for myself and for my sister.

TVLINE | I loved was how fired up OA got after Maggie was abducted. He even said, "Think what Maggie would do if it was me." What does that say about their partnership?
Oh, we're the best. There's so much love and connection. We would do anything for each other and this is what I love about our dynamic. I know a lot of people would love to see us get together, [but] I think what we have is so much greater. I need him so much, and he's part of the reason why I give so much to the job. We've put ourselves on the line for the other person a lot and would do anything for them, so it's great. It's my favorite part. He's my best relationship. 

TVLINE | See, I'm not 'shipping them at all! I love how they currently are as partners. I think some of our readers may disagree though.
I don't 'ship them either! You're on my side. [But readers can] totally keep going with their fan fiction. I'm into it.

TVLINE | Ray accused Maggie of having a "savior's complex." What's your take on that?
Yeah, 100% I do. It's a sneaky thing to fall into, right? It's such a noble, good thing, but actually, it's super controlling. It's exactly what I have with Erin. All I want is for her to be OK. If I could do anything, it would be to heal her of the struggle that she has and help her and walk alongside her and journey with her, and I don't know how to do it because I'm not in control. And I honestly don't know how to stand beside her with all of the ups and downs. It's really upsetting to me. I don't have the tools for that. I have the tools to go to work, solve the case, get the guy, you know what I mean? Keep the streets safe. I can do that. I don't have the emotional bandwidth or skillset to be that vulnerable with someone I care so, so, so much about. Again, why this is heartbreaking.

TVLINE | Ray said Erin couldn't stay clean with Maggie in her life because the pressure was too much. Does Maggie believe him? Is there any truth to that?
I think it's true. We could have played it either way, but I think it's much more interesting to play the truth. I'm a huge fan of truth. There are so many gray, complicated areas of life. We make assumptions all the time about people. We're deceptive to ourselves and other people in terms of our emotional places and why we're driven to do what we do, and I think the show only works when we try to get down to the truth, because that's where we get to show our true colors and what's going on in our minds as things are playing out in real time.

The truth is DiStefano has been reading the messages from Erin, and she's been connecting. There's no reason for her to hide that part of herself if she's connecting with someone who understands. What's devastating to me is that I'm hearing it come from his mouth, and I haven't been able to get a hold of her, and she won't tell me these things. So to hear that stuff and have to take that in in that moment? [It] hurts a lot because of course that's not what I want. S**t! [Laughs] That she can't be in my life and be sober? But I think that that's real. I think that's so honest and I loved it. I loved all that stuff that was said because I think it's relatable. I think people can want one thing and not have the tools to handle it.

TVLINE | Maggie eventually discovered that her sister was killed by DiStefano. What was it like filming that scene and how were you feeling on set that day?
There were a lot of conversations with [showrunner] Mike [Weiss], with [writer] Mae [Smith], with [director] Yangzom [Brauen], about what we wanted to get out of that moment. For me, I didn't have a plan, but I needed the room to see what happened, which is why we went with no dialogue. There was nothing planned to say. Yangzom had an idea, of course, of how she was going to end the scene. On the day, I was so nervous to do this the whole time, just with how dark it was and how deep I had to go and it's game time. You can practice all you want (which I don't really), we can talk about the scene, we can talk about what we want, we can talk about the tone and what the shots are going to be and what everybody wants. Everybody has a vision for it. And at the end of the day, I have no idea what's going to come up in my body. All I can do is show up and put myself there.

I made sure that I didn't see anything. I didn't see how she was lying. I didn't see her [Adrienne Rose Bengtsson, who plays Erin] before shooting (which I explained after I was really sorry that I didn't say hi or tell her that I didn't know what's gonna happen), but she was amazing. She stayed so dead the whole time. Zeeko and I laugh all the time on set and it's how we get through doing this content, but we're constantly joking around and we have such a good time. And he's just a very funny guy, and I was like, "Z, I can't. I need you to just be straight right now."

So then I went into the woods before we did the take, and I remember we kind of walked through the scene a little bit. We walked through where I was gonna go so they could place the cameras and the lighting — things can go wrong so easily in any take — so we set it up as best as we could without really living it and feeling it. I just remember looking up, and I asked God to help me because I was scared. I've been to really dark places with people before and I was scared to let that back in, but I didn't want to use it. You know what I mean? I wasn't going away and being like, "Oh, I remember how terrible this was. Let's put that back in my body," because it felt... I couldn't out of respect for where I'd been. So I just sat there and asked to be present. And I remember walking back, standing beside Zeeko, and we grabbed each other's arms, and Yangzom came and looked at me from down the way. And she just stared at me and I gave her a nod and she gave me a nod back, and she went behind the monitors and that was it. They called action, and I was just off for whatever came up. I feel like I blacked out.

One of the only moments I remember is looking back at Zeeko, and again, no one really prepared for this, and the look on his face was so good. Nobody really knew what was going to happen. I love this scene so much. Everybody was so locked in. We only did that take one time and it was a oner. From me running from the woods, to seeing Peter, seeing his face, and going to the back of the van. Everything on my coverage was done in one take. They had two cameras. The DP Ramsey [Nickell] was like, "What do you need?" I said, "I need to do everything at once, as much as possible." He said, "Done." I'm telling you, it was unbelievable. There were zero mistakes with technical equipment, focus, lighting, performance, positions, nothing. Nothing went wrong, and that is incredibly rare. I was very grateful because I didn't want to go back there. It took me probably five minutes for my body to stop shaking after that.

TVLINE | How will such a huge loss affect Maggie moving forward?
I'm off the next episode. I return [the week after] and think that the best thing to do is to come back to work. It's how I've dealt with loss in the past and it's the only place I know. It's my whole life. I just think I'll get back up on my feet and with time, I'll move on, and that is not the case. That can't be the case. I'd never experienced something to this level and it's not just about losing my sister and the shame and guilt of not being able to protect her. It's the fact that it's completely my fault. My lives merged into this horrible center and I lost everything. I didn't just lose Erin. I lost trust in myself. I lost trust for how I operate in the world and how I communicate and how I move, because that's what got me here in this position in the first place. There's no way I can just come back to work and be myself. I don't even know what that means.