The actress explains that Cindy’s decision to kill Breen to prevent him from killing more inmates and officers “changes a person forever.”

*Mayor of Kingstown *star Laura Benanti, co-creator break down that ‘absolutely terrifying’ prison scene

The actress explains that Cindy's decision to kill Breen to prevent him from killing more inmates and officers "changes a person forever."

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and *NME*.

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December 21, 2025 3:01 p.m. ET

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Laura Benanti as Cindy Stephens in 'Mayor of Kingstown.'. Credit:

Jeremy Parsons/Paramount+

**Warning: This article contains spoilers for *Mayor of Kingstown* season 4, episode 9, "Teeth and Tissue."****

Cindy (Laura Benanti) will never be the same after surviving the horrific mass shooting at the end of the penultimate episode of *Mayor of Kingstown* season 4.**

The Tony-winning actress tells ** in a joint interview with costar Hugh Dillon that it was “terrifying” to film the heart-pounding sequence, in which Cindy’s increasingly isolated coworker Will Breen (Matthew Del Negro) goes on a killing spree to murder a corrections officer and several ad seg inmates trapped in their cells.**

“I found myself actually thinking about my children,” Benanti, who is a mother of two daughters, says. “A mass shooting anywhere is absolutely terrifying.”

Matthew Del Negro as Breen in 'Mayor of Kingstown'.

Jeremy Parsons/Paramount+

After sounding the alarm, Cindy shoots and kills Breen just before he can murder the last prisoner alive in the cell block: Kyle McLusky (Taylor Handley). While she may have been able to save Kyle’s life, and perhaps even more within Anchor Bay, the action of having to take Breen’s will stick with her moving forward. **

“To have to kill someone who is also a corrections officer — the person who, frankly, I communicated with probably more than anyone else [this season] — it's a really terrifying thing to do that changes a person forever,” Benanti says. “I cannot even imagine seeing what she saw and then having to do what she did, even though she had to, even though it was the right thing to do. There's no way that doesn't change a person.”

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Dillon — who co-created the series, wrote the episode, and also stars as Det. Ian Ferguson — adds that the scene was the culmination of meticulous planning and decision-making long before they ever arrived on set. **

“We needed to cast Laura. We needed to cast a great actor to do those things. And we built the Breen character up from the season before. I mean, this is the really the intricacies of storytelling and human emotion combined," he says. "As a creator, to land that — because this is a big swing, and we're putting it late in the season, and we're building all of these things, and there was a Doors’ song ['End of the Night'] I always loved at the end of it — it was like, ‘I just made a movie.’” **

Dillon notes that the key to unlocking each character’s motivation within the sequence was to put himself in their shoes — a technique that he gleaned from his *Mayor of Kingstown *co-creator, Taylor Sheridan. **

“That's how I can feel the emotion and find the honesty, because I want it to resonate when people see it,” he says. “I can't just, ‘Oh, then this happens.’ I have to think, ‘What would he do? What would he *really* do? And what would she do?’ That particular episode was everything to me, because I had planned it so far in advance. And when I finally finished writing it, and then we shot it, it was like, ‘We did it.’”

Benanti adds that Del Negro did “such an amazing job of, weirdly, making Breen sort of empathetic” within the scene, too.

Taylor Handley as Kyle McLusky in 'Mayor of Kingstown'.

Jeremy Parsons/Paramount+

“But it goes back to casting,” Dillon replies. “I worked with him* *when Taylor cast us on *Wind River* with Jeremy [Renner] and so as I've been moving through the universe, I meet people and I go, ‘This person is exceptional.’ And Matt was exceptional.”

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.*****

Benanti also points out that while Cindy and Kyle are “the people operating from the strongest moral compass” in the series, they’ve also been “the most sheltered” from the travesties playing out in the world around them. “Well, maybe me,” she amends a moment later. “He’s had some terrible things [happen to him this season].”**

But Cindy’s kindness is the part of her that Dillon loves most. “This is a moral observer who's thrown into this world of violence,” he adds. “These are real people who don't have a lot of options sometimes, and they need the health care, and they need a job, and they need to support their family.” **

*Mayor of Kingstown* airs Sundays on Paramount+.

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