Beaten, shot and now this: Burgess actress talks ‘really intense episode’ of ‘Chicago P.D.’

Marina Squerciati’s character on “Chicago P.D.” is no stranger to danger.

District 21 patrol officer Kim Burgess got a beating last season while posing as a prostitute. She took a shotgun blast to the chest in the fall finale. On Wednesday’s “P.D.,” she steps in it again.

“It’s a really intense episode for Burgess,” said Squerciati, a native New Yorker who studied theater at Northwestern. “When the writers talked to me about it they said go watch ‘Reservoir Dogs.’ ”

Like the unfortunate uniformed cop in the Quentin Tarantino classic, Burgess is taken captive by the bad guys, along with her partner, officer Sean Roman (Brian Geraghty, “Hurt Locker”).

“It was like filming an indie movie,” Squerciati said. “All of us — the crew, the director and Brian and I — were stuck in a warehouse for six days, just filming, getting dirty. We had to put on the same clothes every day we came in for continuity. It was really an intense, different way of shooting the show, and I think the audience will see that.”

The episode, titled “What Do You Do,” starts off with Roman and Burgess going about their daily routine.

“She’s realizing that maybe she’s in a rut,” Squerciati said about her character, who recently turned down her dream job on the department’s Intelligence Unit.

In real life, the actress was all set to return to her “survival job” as a paralegal until getting word last March that NBC picked up “P.D.” for a second season.

While working the beat, Burgess and Roman stumble upon a smuggling operation that gets them kidnapped. They’re stripped of their weapons and radios.

“You just have your training and your wits to try to get out of a really terrible situation,” Squerciati said. “To have to use your humanity to connect to these criminals instead of using your gun, it’s really different.”

Burgess’ other partner — boyfriend Adam Ruzek (Patrick Flueger) — puts his detective skills to work to try to find the missing officers.

“I love working with Patty,” Squerciati said about her co-star and on-screen love interest. “We can both be neurotic about a scene, just talking about it for hours and hours. We have — spoiler alert — a fight coming up that we just filmed [last Wednesday], which is why we couldn’t live-tweet with the fans. Our characters haven’t really gone there yet, so it was great to be able to explore that.”

Something that gets explored this week: the strained relationship between police and minorities, a topic very much in the zeitgeist.

“I have a conversation you don’t see a lot on network television, a real talk about how some communities think they’re being profiled and what the cops are doing about it,” she said. “It’s a conversation … that puts both parties’ feet to the fire.”

Squerciati’s character gets into a lot of serious situations, so it’s no wonder that when the cameras stop rolling, she likes to lighten things up. She’s taking classes at Second City, continuing the training she got back home in New York at Upright Citizens Brigade.

Her gig in Chicago also makes it convenient to revisit her days at Northwestern, cheering on the Wildcats.

“Tailgating is one of God’s great gifts,” she said. “I just went up there a couple months ago to do it again. I didn’t stay as long this time. In college, I must have had a higher tolerance for the cold.”

“Chicago P.D.” airs at 9 p.m. Wednesdays on WMAQ-Channel 5.

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