Danielle Macdonald really liked the script for The Tourist which is good because she was cast in the show

It’s always reassuring to know that an actor actually likes the project they’re promoting. For every teary final table read or video of the cast of The Good Place being genuinely shocked at the twist in their own show, there’s, well, a Madame Web. But for Danielle Macdonald, the appreciation for her writers’ work goes back even further than a series or even a season one finale. In an interview with The A.V. Club, she revealed that she was enamored with her Netflix show, The Tourist, before she had even secured the part.

“When I first read the Tourist scripts, I was blown away,” Macdonald said, recalling that her roommate was watching a movie that she also loved in the living room when she first opened the document. “I remember I sat down on a chair for four hours and read the first four scripts back to back, and I completely ignored one of my favorite movies on the TV because I was so blown away. I was like, I need to know what happens next.”

She was so excited to talk about the Netflix show, which stars Jamie Dornan as a man who wakes up in an Australian hospital with amnesia after a bus crash, that she forgot to tell us what movie she didn’t watch. But it wasn’t just the movie—it sounds like Macdonald would have ignored a lot to know the end of the series’ first season; like, say, the fact that she wasn’t even officially in it yet. “I met with the writers and with the director the next day, and I think one of the first things I said was, ‘If I don’t get this that’s fine, but can you please tell me what happens because I feel like a junkie right now. Like I really need to know what happens next. I’m going crazy’” she recalled.

One of the things that was revealed after Macdonald accepted the part was the fact that her character, probationary constable Helen Chambers, has a bit of a love story with Dornan’s protagonist, Elliot. (She had only read the first four episodes of the season before signing on.) In this particular arc, she was actually able to help craft some of the scripts she loves so much. “The writers were amazing,” she said. “They’d watch the rushes (raw footage) every day and they kept writing more and more for us and what we were bringing to the screen, and that process was amazing.”

The Tourist seasons one and two are now available on Netflix.