Vinessa Vidotto Reacts to Vo Being Shot, Previews Midseason Premiere

When FBI: International headed into its midseason break, it did so with the fate of one of the Fly Team very much up in the air: Vo (Vinessa Vidotto) was shot in the pursuit of Csonka (Beau Knapp), the man responsible for Wes’ (Jesse Lee Soffer) partner’s death.

“It was shocking, but I guess it was Vo’s turn because the past four years everybody has kind of been shot. Smitty [Eva-Jane Willis] got shot, Heida [Reed, who played Kellett] was shot. So yeah, I was like, I guess it’s my turn,” Vidotto tells TV Insider with a laugh. “It was shocking, but the script was so delicious and prior to me getting shot, I was able to do really delicious scenes that I was able to take my time with. So yeah, I loved [Episode] 8 a lot.”

Vidotto raves about an earlier scene in that episode (written by Edgar Castillo) in which Vo faces off with Csonka during a meeting while he’s still behind bars; he escaped during a prisoner transport after a deal was made due to evidence that had been uncovered during the trial.

“Those were scenes that I was excited to wake up and go to work and do. There is a certain limit where you don’t want to keep doing the take over and over again. It’s just killing the actor. But I didn’t mind,” shares Vidotto. “I was like, I could keep playing around with this. It just feels good and we were able to slow it down and the lines are so delicious. The story is delicious and I really got to show off Vo’s skill as an interrogator. That’s one of her breakdown points, that she’s good at interrogations, and I missed that. I think Season 2, there was one, [“Call It Anarchy”], written by Rachael Joyce, directed by Milena [Govich], and I had the lie detector kit and it was so fun to whip that out. When things are written well and the actor gets excited by it, that’s when it’s a good story and it’s a good scene and it’s not work. It’s just a joy to perform.”

Filming that shooting in the midseason finale was a first for Vidotto, who details the “technique, like a dance, a choreography,” to moments like that. “Your body has to move in the right way,” she explains, praising the stunt team. “I’ve done training in college, hand-to-hand combat, so there’s all that reaction and stuff, but never being shot. So I had to learn on the day. [The stunt coordinators] really helped me pop the shoulder and we did several takes and I had to learn that for TV, slow is fast, which means you can’t do it in real time or else the camera can’t catch your reaction of you being shot and taking that in. How do you embody that, but allow the camera to hold onto your face for a few seconds before you fall to the ground?”

The star explains she watched movie clips of people getting shot as well as a documentary of what it’s like to get shot. “There’s so many different reactions,” she says. “It can be immediately excruciating where it’s really hot and painful or people don’t know that they’ve been shot or stabbed just because of the adrenaline, just how their body is. I just took my own interpretation from learning those things. It was fun. I got to check that off my bucket list.”

Fans will have to wait until the midseason premiere on January 28 to learn Vo’s fate; Vidotto won’t even hint at what’s to come with her character. But the rest of the Fly Team will be busy trying to find Csonka.

“Csonka ends up fleeing to Paris and everybody’s trying to go after him,” teases Vidotto. “That is going to be an epic episode. I mean, a manhunt in Paris? That’s pretty awesome. And it’s almost like a three-parter: It was from Episode 1 to Episode 8 to Episode 9. You get to follow a really big story, and I like that.”

FBI: International, Midseason Premiere, Tuesday, January 28, 9/8c, CBS