On the edge of your seat watching Thursday night’s episode of “Scandal”? So was Katie Lowes.
The Queens-born actress who plays Quinn on the series said she was “petrified” to watch the episode that flashed back to reveal what went on in Rowan’s basement the night her pregnant character was supposedly shot to death.
“It’s so weird. I knew this episode was coming, obviously,” Lowes said, adding that shooting the scenes in which her character gives birth to her firstborn daughter, Robin, was “one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my entire life.”
After being tricked into believing we’d seen the last of the new head of QPA, “Good People” revealed Quinn’s death was all a bunch of “Scandal” trickery (for now). Still, the episode had Lowes’ pregnant character chained to a bed in Rowan’s basement on her wedding night, and in typical Shonda Rhimes fashion, gory shots ensued.
The episode hit a little too close for Lowes, who was nearly nine-and-a-half months pregnant at the time of filming.
“It was like Quinn’s life and my life colliding,” she said. “For so many reasons, it was a very physical and emotional episode. I was able to call upon and use a lot of the things I was going through in my own personal life for the character.”
Lowes announced she’d welcomed her first child, a son named Albee, in October, just about two weeks after filming the high-intensity episode that had her fighting the fictional world’s highest-trained assassin and giving birth without proper medical attention on a cot.
“It was such an opportunity for me to really go there as an actress,” she said. “I was also at the point of my pregnancy where you’re having check-ins with your OB like every other day to make sure the baby isn’t stressed. I can remember being in the middle of really intense scenes and then when they’d call ‘Cut’ I’d look down at my stomach and be like, ‘It’s pretend! It’s pretend! None of this is real, you’re safe! Mommy just has a really crazy job.’ ”
Lowes kept tight-lipped on whether or the episode — which seemingly left off with Quinn (alive) striking up a deal with the former head of B613 — had sealed Quinn’s fate for the rest of the final series’ seventh and final season. She added, “There’s also only so much I know. I only know what I’ve read thus far.”
“Scandal” airs new episodes Thursdays at 9 p.m. on ABC.
