We know her as Emily Prentiss, from Criminal Minds. In the season seven finale, Prentiss receives an offer to run Interpol’s London office. While still pondering her decision on the offer, Prentiss decides to leave the BAU. In the season eight premiere, Morgan and Garcia mention seeing her while they were in London and that Emily is doing fine.
Brewster returned for guest appearances in the season 9 episode “200” in 2014 and the season 11 episode “Tribute” in early 2016 before returning as a regular cast member in the season 12 episode “Taboo”. She is now the Unit Chief of the BAU, following the departure of Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson).

How do you feel about being back on the show?

Very grateful, very happy. Emily died…well, nearly died few years ago (season 6) but I’m also pleased she had the opportunity to survive.

You left after season 7 and except for a couple of special appearance, you are just back as regular. How was for you coming back on set?

It was emotional and it was difficult because the reason why I came back this time was just because Thomas Gibson was no longer on the show. And he was great. It was a difficult decision to make. So, when he was gone , the producers and writers asked me if I would like to come back and I thought: ‘Why not?’ It’s a great show. I love who is in it. I like everybody. I met Adam Rodriguez who was new and I’d have to work with he is a great guy, very handsome; so I signed on for a full-time return.

Do you miss Gibson?

Yes, everyone does. It’s hard. Loosing people who are your work-family, your friends, it’s hard. But at the same time it’s still a work place, so obviously during 12 years, people come and go; changes you have to adapt to and we are doing it well.

The atmosphere on set is very violent, very dark. Are you affected by it sometimes?

Yes. Specifically I was in the beginning because the FBI gave us their study manuals. And there are a lot of photos and full real case-study transcripts that are extremely upsetting, because they are true. Our show is fictional, that stuff is real; so I went a little crazy and I became so afraid and a little bit paranoid even in my house/neighbourhood. It happened to all on the show. Also the writers read that book and started freaking out. Than you have to take distance and remember that you are doing a TV show so, on set, we started to laugh and to say jokes and having a good time. And we are not FBI, those guys have to see all that crap in real life, so our job was…is to honor what they do for people like us.

But when you read or listen to the news, do you ever react as an agent?

Yes. We all do but in all our life aspects … you know for example talking to someone, you start to look his body-language and you are all in your FBI mode thinking: ‘ Ok, he said that but his eyes were doing this so he was lying to me.’ It’s weird, but we work a lot with real FBI agents. They supervise our scripts and every week we present a case and discuss it with them. So now we think we know everything. For example when people lie they look up on the left and when they  are remembering something they look up on to the right. I didn’t talk about this with my family so I always enjoy to look to my brother lying.

Do you prefer emotional scenes or physical ones?

It depends. Honestly. Oh, and here another cool stuff: when someone says ‘honestly’ it is because he is afraid of something; so apparently I’m afraid to get in trouble for this answer: some writers are better than others. If emotional scenes are well written and make sense they are great and they can be very emotional; but if they are not it’s when troubles come. Physical scenes sometimes are just hard: running in the rain, in high heels at 4 a.m….so it depends.

Which end would you like to see for your character?

 Not a tragic one. What I would like is that the show ends and we move all together here in Monaco…no, seriously, I’d like just to be in there until the end. We all do.

Criminal Minds series starts September 27th