Major Crimes interview: Jessica Meraz teases new role Camila Paige

When Major Crimes season 6 premieres on October 31 on TNT, there are some new faces you will get a chance to see. Jessica Meraz, best known for her part of Chasing Life, is going to be stepping in as Camila Paige, and over the course of the season you’ll see how she fits in within some of the longtime members of the Major Crimes Division.

One thing we do know from speaking with Meraz recently at the 100th episode party is that she’s very much enthusiastic about the role and excited for people to see it. In today’s edition of our Major Crimes Month interview series she gives a little background on who she is and also shares an especially entertaining story about her first day on set.

CarterMatt – It’s been a somewhat strange experience for you in that you’ve come on board, but then [the cancellation news at TNT came out]. Can you sum up what it’s been like?

Jessica Meraz – All-inclusive, emotionally — excitement, sadness, suspense. It’s been everything across the board and I could not be more grateful.

When you compare this to everything else that you’ve done, what stands out about Major Crimes?

The relationships and working with the cast. It’s been six months — I can’t even imagine [what it’s like being here longer]. I say that all the time to Kearran [Giovanni] because we’ve gotten so close — how much closer can we get?

When you first signed on to the show, what did you know about Camila Paige?

I knew that she was the oldest of six, and that she had a tragedy in her life and had an existing relationship with Provenza. I knew that she had a strong personality, and I knew that I was going to have great leaders in [executive producers] James Duff and Mike Robin who were going to give me a lot of leeway to do what I wanted.

Did you get thrown into the fire almost right away?

Oh yeah. The first day I showed up on the set I was surrounded by all-new people, wearing detective gear at a church, with hundreds of extras all in cop gear, and as we’re all marching out onto the set a swarm of bees shows up. We started marching out, but [when we saw the bees] we all turned around and started running like little babies (laughs). We had to cancel the day and reschedule everything.

So my very first day was a complete disaster — so we all went out to lunch (laughs).

Hey, it was memorable!

It was definitely memorable, to say the least.

So after all of this, what do you have coming up? Obviously it’d be great if the show lived on.

After this? All I can do is just hope and pray about this show continuing and my role continuing. Who knows about the future?

More Major Crimes interviews

If you haven’t see some of our other discussions yet with some other Major Crimes cast members you can just by visiting the link here!

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