Roxie Mohebbi: NZ actor discusses her new Australian series, Critical Incident

Roxie Mohebbi in Critical Incident. Photo / TVNZ

Kiwi star Roxie Mohebbi discusses her new series, Critical Incident, its take on the Australian juvenile system and how she approached the project with empathy.

Nobody wants to play the “bad guy”, especially in a story currently being told in different variations across the globe. But Roxie Mohebbi found playing bad cop both a challenging and revealing experience.

“As artists, we have a responsibility to tell those stories.”

Her new series does just that, shining a light on the Australian juvenile system.

A contemporary drama set in Western Sydney, Critical Incident centres around another police officer, played by Akshay Khanna, who, when chasing a teenage suspect onto a busy train platform, unexpectedly hurts a bystander. Soon after, turmoil unfolds and the lives of both the pursued and pursuer shift course into chaos.

Police brutality, racial profiling, youth crime and the law enforcement system are portrayed on the screen, and Mohebbi believes approaching these heavy topics through art is a safe way to create conversations.

“At the end of the day, what we want to do with the show is we want to foster empathy,” the former Shortland Street star explains.

“There’s a real question that’s asked in the show,” she adds. “Is it the system? Is it the people? Is it the circumstances?” Shared through the lens of different characters’ perspectives, both sides of the law come into focus.

Despite the Australian setting, Critical Incident’s story is universal.

“I think that in New Zealand we have so many of these issues going on as well,” Mohebbi says. “We have so many young people being punished when they should be protected and educated and given opportunity.”

Juvenile offenders and their experiences with the system have been in the headlines here, following the publication of the abuse in care inquiry in July and the return of boot camps for young offenders. There have been calls for a tougher approach to crime.

The actress, who in the past year has also appeared in Kiwi productions Head South and Miles from Nowhere, admitted that playing a cop in the show was “challenging”.

“Especially given that I resonate with experiences on the other side.”

But how did she prepare for the tough role?

“I actually stalked cops for like, I don’t know ... two weeks,” she says when talking about her preparation for the series. “Whenever I’d see cops in public, I would be videoing them and following them,” Mohebbi says, laughing.

Having supportive co-stars around helped the actress too.

The “rich community” of people on set helped bring a lightness to her time filming the weighty series.

“The cast and the crew were so amazing,” she says. “We had such silly times despite the things we were doing. I think that kept us sane.

“That stuff sticks on you.”

Humanity, says Mohebbi, is at the centre of the show - whether it be the series’ nuanced characters, the relevance of its subject matter or the actors behind the multi-faceted characters.

Human error, human empathy and human choices become central to the plot, but it’s the human approach to its storytelling, via Mohebbi and her castmates, that drives the message home.

“We just want to show different audiences what it’s like on these different sides of the coin,” she says. “And let people make up their own minds about it.”

Critical Incident is available to watch on TVNZ+ from August 20.