Actor ARIELLE KEBBEL hopes that through the show, Lincoln Rhymne: Hunt For The Bone Collector, people can find their inner strength as they watch her character Amelia navigate herself. By Team Viva

What attracted you to the show Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector, and to the role of Amelia?

I’m a huge fan of The Bone Collector and I was aware of the book series by Jeffery Deaver. So when I got the script, I couldn’t believe they’re making this. It was a page-turner and I just felt so connected to Amelia. It felt like I got her vulnerability, brokenness, fierce survival skills, just how complex her everyday life was, and her everyday struggles. I loved her and wanted to bring her to life.

 Do you share any of her detective skills?

I really don’t know. I love the psychological challenge, I like figuring things out and feeling like I’m outsmarting somebody else. But as far as investigating crime scenes, with actual dead bodies being murdered in grotesque ways is concerned, that’s not for me. I’ve worked with various cops and detectives while training for this show, and I have so much respect for them. Seeing how they spend their time, watch the crime scene footage every day, day in and day out, and then go home to their families and act like it’s not happening. It’s a brave thing that they do as they have to hold a lot inside. There’s a lot of things they can’t share with their loved ones and how do you navigate that world? That’s a lot to handle.

What was the most useful aspect of spending time with them?

Seeing the female sergeants boss the male detectives around, just kidding. I was pretty proud of them. These people are really each other’s families. Sometimes their partners are closer to them than their spouses or family members because in this sort of job, your partner has literally just saved your life, so that’s who you share those things with. If you’re working a nine to five job, your colleague may be someone you really adore, but they’re not necessarily saving your life. So I think there’s an intimacy in this job that maybe people don’t think about. You have to trust your partner with your life. And I’d ask them, ‘How do you decompress?  How do you let go of the things you’ve seen?’ and they would tell me their really horrific jokes, because they have to find ways to laugh about it to stay sane. And then they go drinking together. 

Tell us about the scene in the first episode, where you hold up the train.

It’s such a powerful scene, I loved it. It’s in the book and the film so I was thrilled that I got to do it for our show. We actually shut down a real subway station in New York. It was a weekend and we filmed through the night and it happened to be St Patrick’s Day, so I saw the wildest stuff. Literally there were girls yanking on each other’s hair and throwing up and we’re trying to film a show. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s happening?’ But we were on the real subway tracks and it’s scary down there. I was freaked out — the third rail was right there. But it was really cool the way that they shot it. They built this whole contraption so there was this moving cargo with these guys on either side pushing it. It looked like something out of the 1940s.  And then they put all these lights on it to look like trains. So what people don’t know is that I’m actually reacting to these men dancing along on a little cargo train.

 Lincoln is plucking Amelia almost out of nowhere for this job — what do you think it is that he sees in her and connects?

I think the initial thing is that she happens to be the person that finds this crime and protects the evidence. She puts her life on the line to protect the evidence. I think right then and there he goes, ‘Okay, she can do this,’ because he knows what it takes to go against the Bone Collector, and he also knows that she has no idea what she’s in for. He even has this line when he tells her, ‘You don’t need to unlearn any bad habits, you’re a blank slate with great instincts’, which basically means he knows she’s starting fresh, so he can almost selfishly teach her his way. 

I think it’s a combination, that he sees her wit and strength and borderline adrenaline junkie-like death wish, and then also as time goes on, sees where it comes from. Amelia’s had a tragic past, as Lincoln has as well, so I think they do connect on the fact that, as they say, the broken take better care of the broken. I think they really connect with each other on a deep level without ever saying that out loud because they’re very different in their ways. She’s a profiler, he’s all about evidence. They’re constantly in conflict with each other about what’s the best way to solve this crime is, and yet, I think, they have a deep understanding of one another that will continue to develop as the season goes on.

Why do you think we are all so fascinated with serial killers and crime shows?

I don’t know. We’re so weird.  Why aren’t we fascinated with rainbows?  Why do we like serial killers? I think that there’s definitely a fascination behind it and it’s the question of whether you can get inside of their minds. How does someone justify doing this? What were they thinking at these moments?  Was it an accident? Was it on purpose? Was it about anger? Was it about payback? Was it about love? And I think that it’s all about stretching the limits, right? There’s life and there’s death and then there’s all the stuff that happens in between.  I think people are just fascinated with the question of where do you play in this world?  Do you play by the rules or do you break the rules? And if you break the rules, how far do you go?

What makes Lincoln Rhyme different from other crime shows?

Well, you have our partnership, which I think is very unique. Lincoln is immobile and so we’re using his brain, wisdom, genius, combined with my body and intuition. We’re linked together through an earpiece and ‘Lincoln cam’, which is like a camera where he can see a 360 vision of the crime scene and what’s happening, and together we solve these crimes and go after the Bone Collector. I haven’t seen a partnership like that on television, especially because we are two broken characters who seem strong in these given moments, but also have a lot of inner fear, conflict and trauma to work through along the way.

But the show is going to evolve and your character is going to become more empowered and a leader. Where do we see her going?

When we first meet Amelia, she’s never done this sort of work before, so she’s kind of a fish out of water in this world, even though she’s been training to be an FBI profiler. Sometimes she fits right in and sometimes it’s like, ‘Too much too soon, I don’t know what I’m doing.’ And that’s where Lincoln is guiding her and grooming her. And then, at what point do I feel comfortable enough to do it on my own? Or does he feel confident enough to send me on my own? All those things we’ll explore as the season goes on and then hopefully in season two.

 Did you read the books?

I did after I got the job. My dad was a fan of books before, so I knew about them, but once I got this show and I was doing research, I read the whole book.

Do you think it was important for you to read them?

Absolutely. The first book was written a long time ago, so there were some things that were almost nostalgic and fun to read because it was so long ago. And other things I was really happy I read, because they were these minor little character traits that I wanted to make sure I brought to this Amelia. Even though I’m making my own version of Amelia, there were things that I wanted to honour and continue, so people watching will go, ‘Yeah, that’s the Amelia I saw too,’ as well as, ‘Oh, she did this differently.’

How do you think and hope your character will resonate with the audience?

I hope well. I’ve played different strong characters before — like Lexi from Vampire Diaries, she’s 300 years old, so she’s badass to the bone; there’s nothing she can’t handle. With Amelia, as I said before, I feel like it’s really important to show how vulnerable she is and how that actually makes her strong. So she’s a different kind of strong. I think she almost surprises herself when she saves someone, because she doesn’t even know she can. I hope people can find their own inner strength in themselves as they’re watching Amelia navigate her own.

Has the show made you nervous about serial killers out in the world? When you leave the set, do you look around yourself suspiciously?

There are some things in the book that really were weird things that had happened to me recently in New York. I don’t even want to talk about it.  But I do a lot of energy work and I’m very sensitive, I always do a five-minute meditation when I leave work, just to kind of disconnect with my character, to leave her in my dressing room, disconnecting to any energy. I just find it’s really important to come back to being myself at the end of every day and I feel like that kind of takes care of that.

Do you have any other rituals?

I do meditation in the morning and, depending on how I’m feeling, will visualise different things along the way. And then I just find that, as I’m in hair and make-up, I kind of call in Amelia. I find that it really does allow her to just kind of take over when I’m on set. There are some things I don’t plan to happen in a scene, they just happen, and I’m like, ‘Oh, there she is.’ 

(The show is streaming on SonyLIV.)