Melissa O’Neil Breaks Down Lucy and Nyla’s Important Undercover Op (Exclusive)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Rookie Season 8 Episode 7 “Baja.”]

When two young women are found murdered after living the van life and being drug mules, Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) and Nyla (Mekia Cox) become determined to get them justice and go undercover in the Monday, February 16, episode of The Rookie.

That means Nyla leaving behind James (Arjay Smith) and their daughter and Lucy saying goodbye to Tim (Eric Winter) pretty soon after they moved in together for this four-week operation. “It is a longer stint, but maybe because she’s not going solo and she’s going with Harper, that’s why it feels safer and OK,” says O’Neil, who hopes that “a lot of tenderness and love” came across when Chenford discussed the op.

Lucy and Nyla do catch who blackmailed the women into being drug mules far beyond when they wanted to — their undercover personas are similar to put them in the same position — as well as who killed them. Below, Melissa O’Neil discusses Lucy’s undercover op with Nyla and more. (And stay tuned for more to come from this interview.)

Lucy and Nyla go undercover. I love this team up. I want to see more of them together.

Melissa O’Neil: Yeah, me too. I love working with Mekia. I mean, she’s such an incredible artist and we have a really good time. She’s one of those very, very generous actors because I’m a total goofball on set, and I love making her laugh, she has a really good laugh and she gives them up really easily, too. So she’s amazing to work with.

This takes Lucy away from what she’s been doing this season with her promotion. Talk about filming this episode.

I think one of the things that was the most interesting while we were filming this was seeing the way that our crew adapts to all of these different situations. The rig that we’ve built for shooting inside of the police cars, that’s a custom rig, and they had to bring in this huge tow truck to tow along the van for all of those shots while we’re driving in the van. That wasn’t something that we could just rig up because they wanted to see the entire front of it, and I can’t imagine being somebody else on the road watching that monstrosity drive by. And really, preparing for filming this episode happened, I think two months prior because I had to learn how to swim. First and foremost, I had to learn how to swim. And then Mekia and I also went and we did surf lessons a couple of times so that we could try to accomplish something. And of course, on the day that we finally shoot it, it’s so cold and so windy and so choppy and getting tugged out on the boat…but it was a really incredible process.

And as far as Lucy’s experience through it all, I think that she’s always going to have a tender spot for women who remind her of what she went through. And I thought that that was a really clever way to tie in the hangover from that experience, that trauma that she had six seasons ago now, but to not look at it directly. I thought that was really clever of them. That can be a little, I don’t want to be crass, when people are just — pity pot, they’re licking their wounds a little bit too long, not that I don’t think that that would’ve been valid for Lucy, given what she has gone through, but to see that kind of reflected in a way that was geared towards helping another woman, especially earlier with that young woman in the hospital.

That was so good.

Yeah, that girl, she’s an incredible actress, very generous. And then everything that happens here, it’s tugging on that heartstring, it’s tugging on this thing that she knows, and I think that’s why she was so moved to do it. So any part of her that might’ve been feeling like a fish out of water, I think, was erased by the fact that she was so focused on this part of the mission. And I don’t know what ended up happening in the cut, but I remember there being a scene where Harper is eager to get the bigger fish, and Lucy reins her in and is trying to keep her and them focused on the task at hand, which was about the girls and just getting them. So yeah, I’m excited to see it. It’s always a little bit vulnerable on our show as an actor to do something that is so divergent from the formula that we know people have come to love, which I think is a stretch to even say that because The Rookie, if they have a formula, it’s that they don’t have a formula. We’re kind of doing whatever we want every episode, and it’s increasingly ambitious as we go along. But as far as what she does and what Harper does, it’s very divergent. And to see the two of them coming together, which we haven’t seen since Season 2, we had a blast together. And I hope that that translates on screen.

It really does. What I also liked was seeing Lucy’s passion, how much she used that to convince Grey (Richard T. Jones) to say yes to this operation. I feel like she was going to stay there pushing until he said yes, right?

Probably. I think she was a little bit bullheaded about this. She was stubborn about it, even though it’s not her place, and there’s probably somebody else well-suited to it. This is an aspect I think of her leadership quality is that she cares and she cares enough to do it right. And if she feels that the only way that’s going to happen is through her accomplishing it, she does her best efforts to make sure that she can be in that room. And so yeah, I really admire that about her.

After the arrest, Lucy takes a moment on the beach. How is she feeling in that moment?

I’m having a bit of a moment remembering that moment, actually. I think it’s overwhelming. It reminds me of when you do something exceptionally difficult and your body and your nervous system, everything stays together until it’s over and then everything falls apart. Everybody has a different type of nervous system constitution. And if there’s anything there that I borrowed from my real life for this moment with Lucy is that I am definitely somebody who resonates with when the s**t is hitting the fan, I have clarity of mind and I’m able to stay focused and do what needs to be done. And then when it’s done, then the cards kind of come crashing down. And I think that that’s what happened there. I think that’s the moment on the beach with Lucy, after the arrests have happened, it’s the crash from the adrenaline rush that’s happened and being triggered, being triggered enough to kind of almost lose your temper a little bit, especially when you’re around senior officers. I don’t even remember, did they leave in, “Don’t look at me.” Did they leave that in?

Yeah.

When he is getting arrested, there’s just a moment and she’s overcome with repulsion by the situation, by the fact that there’s people out there, and it’s just a release and it’s overwhelming to kind of bring a situation like that to its close, which I’m grateful that they took the time to tell that part of the story because I think it’s important to remember that as much as they’re trying to do the right thing for other people who are suffering, they’re humans, too, and they have their own experience. And it’s not easy to be exposed to such terrible examples of how people can govern themselves, especially because it touches on something that she has her own history around.

You brought this up earlier about Nyla wanting to keep going and Lucy being the one to remind her why they’re really there, and we’re seeing what Nyla’s going through because of the Glasser deposition, the trial, and she and Lucy talk about that here.

I’ve been watching the season to refresh myself, and I’ve been so stoked by all of the different storylines, especially this thread that braids together Wesley [Shawn Ashmore] and Lopez [Alyssa Diaz] and Harper,, and even seeing how that’s affecting their friendship. It just makes my heart feel tender. I don’t like it. And we’ve all been — any adult woman who has a meaningful relationship with another adult woman knows how tenuous and terrifying it is when that friendship approaches a precarious place because I would argue that our female friendships are some of the most important bonds that we have in our lives. And when those feel stressed, it’s very heart-wrenching, sometimes even more so than in a romantic setting.

The Rookie, Mondays, 10/9c, ABC