It’s taken Rachel Hilson until her almost-30s to do so, but she’s finally started to play adults. 

Hilson has become known for roles on projects like “This Is Us,” “Love, Victor” and “Red, White & Royal Blue,” but this spring she’s launched into a new stage of her career with “Duster,” the JJ Abrams crime thriller series on Max. The show also marks her first co-leading role, opposite Josh Holloway; set in the Southwest in 1972, Hilson plays Nina, the first Black female FBI agent, who teams up with a getaway driver (Holloway) to catch a major criminal.

“I definitely feel like I’m entering a new phase of my career. I’ve been calling it my adult phase,” Hilson says over Zoom from her apartment in New York. “I am finally graduating from high school and maybe even college on screen. Obviously early on in one’s career you just have to take whatever is offered and I definitely felt that for a little while. I’ve got to eat, got to pay rent. But I think I’m taking my time a bit more now…and I want to take on projects that I feel are really worth my time and my investment. I take these things seriously.”

Hilson, 29, had never met her costar Holloway and in fact had never seen the show that made him a star, “Lost.” 

“Which in hindsight maybe was good, so I didn’t come in as a crazy fan girl,” Hilson says.

“Duster” was initially greenlit back in 2020, and was delayed first by the pandemic and later by the SAG strikes. Hilson learned of the role in 2022 and so for the episodes to now be out in the world feels surreal to her. 

“I loved this story for a long time,” she says. “I’ve never gotten to play somebody like [Nina] before in my career so I was really intrigued by this person who, A, was from Baltimore like me, and B, just had this fire and vulnerability and strength to where she had all of these various colors, which I think is what makes up a human. I was immediately drawn to her.”

Hilson, who like Nina grew up in Baltimore, originally wanted to be a dancer. 

“I always say I fell into acting by accident,” she says.

At the age of 12, she traveled to New York to audition for a Broadway camp; shortly after, the camp reached out to say that an acting agent had seen her at the camp and was looking for young dancers of color, preferably under 5 feet tall, to come be part of a show in Iceland called “Lazy Town.”

A week later Hilson was off to Iceland, and when she returned she went to thank the agent for the opportunity — and came out of that meeting with representation. 

“My first two auditions I ended up booking and I was like, ‘oh, this is super easy,’” Hilson recalls. “And then obviously I found out later that it’s not. But going in a little bit more naively was probably good because I don’t think I felt like a pressure that I think some kids feel early on in business.”

Ahead, Hilson will be seen alongside Will Ferrell, Regina Hall and Zac Efron in a comedy called “Judgment Day,” another new chapter for her.

“It was definitely me stepping out of my comfort zone because I’ve not done a comedy like that before,” Hilson says. “I learned a lot. I’m planning on starting some improv classes — it inspired me.”