After ten seasons, The Blacklist finally came to an end on NBC on Thursday, July 13, and it was a tear-jerker of a series finale. After the show closed out with an international manhunt, stars Harry Lennix and Hisham Tawfiq reflected on their many years as Harold Cooper and Dembe, respectively. The duo opened up about their time on the show and losing their longtime co-star Megan Boone as Liz Keen.
When Megan Boone was announced to be leaving The Blacklist, it was a question of how the series would say goodbye to her beloved profiler. The decision to kill off Liz in the Season 8 finale definitely changed the series for good, and it was hard to watch how everyone struggled with the aftermath. As part of Harold Cooper’s task force, she brought a lot to the team. Harry Lennix – who played the assistant director of the FBI Counterterrorism Division – tells TV Insider just how Liz’s death affected both him as an actor and his character:
Well, this loss of Liz Keen, of course, gives the opportunity, my wife and I on the show, played by Valerie Pettiford, to raise Agnes Keen. And that is, of course, our biggest mandate, our greatest obligation, really. And obviously, losing Elizabeth Keen, such an important figure to the task force and to the show, and Megan Boone, is a hurtful and tragic incident. But life goes on through the child of Elizabeth Keen. And so, therefore, the cause continues to go on as well.
The Blacklist has lost stars over the years for different reasons, and Megan Boone’s exit was definitely hard to get through, especially since it called for the storyline to make some dramatic changes. When it was revealed that Harold and his wife took in Liz’s daughter Agnes, it was both heartfelt and heartbreaking. While Harry Lennix seems to have loved the opportunity to do that storyline for Harold, it’s clear that Boone’s absence on the show was definitely still felt.
That being said, being on a show for its entire run when that run is for ten seasons is impressive, and Harry Lennix and Hisham Tawfiq had been on the series since the beginning. However, fans will remember that Tawfiq’s Dembe Zuma wasn’t a huge part of the show for the first two seasons, and because of that and more, he’s calling his journey on the NBC drama a blessing:
Harry Lennix is a veteran here. I came on as kind of the newbie and wasn’t really scripted at the beginning of the show. So it was unexpected. It was definitely a blessing and humbling to go on this journey for the last 10 years. As I look around at my peers, no one else has been able to have that type of journey in the luxury of building on a character. [Laughs] So, I definitely have a tremendous amount of gratitude for having this experience.
After Dembe rose to become a key character, it’s clear Hisham Tawfiq is grateful for the long ride that he had on The Blacklist. Going from recurring to series regular over ten seasons is impressive. Of course, Harry Lennix was a series regular from the start, and he expressed his gratitude for the show, reflecting on how much changed since the series first premiered in 2013:
Gratitude is the word I would use, too. It’s rarified air to have 218 episodes of anything in the history of television [for the] decades that it’s been around. Hisham talks about how I’m the veteran now. But after 10 years, he’s a veteran, too! [Laughs] So yeah, it’s great. And I think that to be able to mature with a show, through so many important world events that were going on — presidents were elected, wars have been fought, pandemics have been gone through… So we were able, with the characters that we are playing, to experience life. And that’s really the great goal, I think, of any actor, is to be able to live an authentic experience outside of his or her own skin. And that’s what The Blacklist allowed us to do.
With over 200 episodes and ten seasons, The Blacklist took fans, characters, and the cast on a ride. It’s not surprising that Harry Lennix and Hisham Tawfiq are grateful for their opportunity on the series. James Spader revealed how he felt about the show’s ending, even saying that it “completed a circle.” While it is going to be hard to move on from The Blacklist now that the show has ended, fans can always watch the last few episodes of the final season with a Peacock subscription or watch the first nine seasons with a Netflix subscription, as Season 10 will likely come to the streamer at a later date.
