‘Empire’ Season 3 Spoilers: Bre-Z Talks Jamal And Freda’s Relationship, Impact Of Shooting

Jamal Lyon and Freda Gatz were extremely close last season, but their friendship fell apart after Freda accidentally shot Jamal at the ASA Awards. In a new interview, rapper Bre-Z dishes on the fallout from the shooting and where that leaves Jamal and her character, Freda.

On Wednesday’s episode 3, viewers witnessed Jamal (Jussie Smollett) and Freda reunited for the first time — in prison — but their meeting definitely didn’t go smoothly. Ever since the shooting, Jamal has been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. When he decided to meet with Freda, the singer kept having flashbacks to the day he was shot.

“It was very emotional, it was very serious, it was very real,” Bre-Z told Us Weekly Thursday about filming the prison scene with Jamal. “There wasn’t no time to play around. The story is highly anticipated — people want to know what’s going on between Freda and Jamal.”

The rapper said she doesn’t think Freda realizes yet how much she hurt Jamal, even though the bullet was intended for his father Lucious (Terrence Howard). “I think it’s something she may think about, but I don’t think she really has a clue. Someone gets shots, it hurts — but I don’t think she understands how detrimental that was to him as a human being,” she explained. “She’s got a little bit of growing up to do before she can acknowledge certain things.”

To help Jamal deal with his PTSD, his mother Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) brought in pop sensation Kitty (Mariah Carey) to record a song with him. Jamal struggled to get through the song in the beginning, but was able to finish the track.

In a synopsis for next week’s episode 4 it teases that everything isn’t finished between Jamal and Freda and he makes a “big first step” towards recovery by coming face-to-face with her again. Hopefully, their meeting goes a lot better the second time than it did the first.

“Empire” Season 3 airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EDT on Fox.