Archie Panjabi says she wanted to know fate of ‘Hijack’ passengers before accepting role

Archie Panjabi, who has several critically acclaimed titles to her credit including Bend It Like Beckham, The Good Wife, and Departure, is presently winning raves for her power-packed performance in the recently released Apple TV+ show Hijack, which also features Edris Elba in the lead role.

The series stars Panjabi in the role of a counter-terrorist agent Zarah, who gets a tip that there has been a “serious incident” on board a plane bound for London — a tip that is, at first, written off as a false alarm.

Recently, the 51-year-old actress revealed that after reading the scripts for the first few episodes of Hijack, she demanded to know the fate of the flight’s passengers before giving her final nod to the show.

“I could not put it down,” Panjabi said in a recent virtual press conference that took place before Hollywood's Screen Actors Guild strike earlier this month. “By the end of the third one, I wanted to know if my character had successfully saved the passengers, so I phoned up my agent and said, ‘I need to read (episodes) four to seven.’ She said, ‘Do you not want to do it?’ I said: ‘No, I would love to do it. I just need to know what happens to the passengers.’”

The actress added that she knew the show had the potential to keep the audience hooked to the screen throughout its seven episodes.

I thought, ‘This is a brilliant script! It's really thrilling. It's going to have audiences at the edge of their seat,’” she said.

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