Jurnee Smollett says she got 20 kg. To play a previous marine in smoke (exclusive)

Jurne Smollett is committed to her craft.

Ever since she landed her first gig on the camera in just ten months old, the actress, now 38, has had lots of experience in turning into challenging characters. She tells people that her latest role in Apple TV’s Crime Drama Series Smoke, opposite Taron Egerton and Greg KinnearThe is no different.

“It is very instinctive if a character feels like I have to play it, if I feel that there are some things in the character that I need to train in myself,” she explains. “I was really drawn to this character, Michelle, and when I met (the Creator) Dennis (Lehane) he told me something that hit me and really was my way into her. He said:” We all say we want to be happy, and yet we are drawn to just what wants to destroy us. “And that’s it.”

Smollett plays Michelle Calderone, a former navy who works as a fire fire investigator.

She describes Michelle as a well -meaning person who “makes very questionable choices” because of her past demons despite her goal of “righteousness.”

“It takes a very special person to say,” I will put my life on the line, and I seek danger to fight for this thing that I believe in or fight for justice, “she admits.” But with Michelle there is an extra layer of complexity because she is also a little single, and because she is a lonely wolf she does not always follow. ”

Fascinated by the depth of the character, says Smollett that she did a number of things to prepare, including “serious” workouts.

“She is someone who uses training as an escape, and she tries to drive quite hard,” she says of her character. “She runs away from many of her emotions and pours it into different aspects of her life to exercise, but overworing toxic relationships. She is a workaholic and very ambitious. So I physically knew that Michelle needed to have more muscular presence than I personally did.”

“I initially put on 15 kilos, and at the end of the photography I was up to 20 kilos, because I wanted that part to feel more truthful,” continues. “She’s a lonely. She’s a lone wolf. And so, yes, she has some body dysmorphia.”

Michelle also has a lot of trauma from her mother, which Smollett reveals made her use a darker side of her own childhood.

“I had a strange relationship with my late father grew up,” she shares. “My parents separated when I was really young, when I was 11 or 12 years old, so I could relate to what it is like to have that parental year. My mom and I am – that’s the opposite – I’m very close to my mom, so the relationship she has with her mother, I have to fill in the Bloms about how it relate to the relationship I had with my dad.”

In addition to her personal reflection, Smollett says she did research in fasting styles and how trauma affects people who “do not do the work to heal that wound.” She also excavated in the ways that Michelle’s work area can affect her by interviewing marine soldiers, firefighters and detectives.

“It was really just about inspecting her choice and asking, why does she make such choices?” Smollett notes.

When it comes to keeping her intense work and home life separate, says Smollett, a mother of 8-year-old Hunter, that she has several rituals.

“There is something with water that is always so soothing to me, swimming or cold showers or similar things,” she reveals. “Water has always been a way for me to be able to switch and physically wash the character of me. I also have a son, and so my process over the years it has just changed. I have had to become more effective with my process and I do not really have the luxury to stay in it too much.”

“I’m really thinking about the work, it’s your instrument,” she adds. “You either set it or you sue it down. You modulate it based on the need, based on the schedule. If you make a scene and you know you have to come back the next day, you modulate it so that the remainder of it stays with you and that you just learn to develop a level of endurance.”

Take people with you! Subscribe to the magazine People To get the latest details about celebrity news, exclusive royal updates, how it is more right to your mailbox.

Smoke Now streams on Apple TV+ with new episodes that lose every week on Fridays.