Warning: This post contains spoilers for episode 9 of Landman season 2.

The penultimate episode of Landman season 2 featured perhaps the series’ most intense scene yet.

Ariana (Paulina Chávez) was attacked and assaulted by Johnny (Mike Harkins), a patron of The Patch, where she works as a bartender. She’d previously thrown a beer on Johnny during a shift at the bar, and in episode nine, which aired on Sunday, Jan. 11, he was waiting by the bar’s back door to enact his revenge.

“It definitely took me by surprise,” Chávez, 23, tells PEOPLE of the intense scene that closed out the episode.

Ariana was attacked by Johnny, but fought back as he pinned her to the ground, ripped her shirt open and attempted to unbutton her jeans to rape her.

“I bawled my eyes out. It was just a woman’s worst nightmare,” Chávez says.

The scene was filmed in three sections: first, Johnny surprising her in the alley; then, him pinning her on the ground; and lastly, Cooper’s (Jacob Lofland) heroic arrival. There were three days of rehearsals, so by the time they were filming, Chávez says, “We were all very much comfortable with the movements and very comfortable with each other — that allowed me to bring the emotion on the day without fear.”

She wasn’t expecting the rush of emotions she felt after the first take. “I didn’t allow myself to think about it too much until I put myself in that situation,” she says. “It was insane, that first take.”

“The very first shirt rip was the most terrifying thing ever,” Chávez admits. “Even though it’s fake, your body doesn’t know the difference between reality and fantasy. It was so scary.”

“I’m, like, shaking, talking about it,” she says, the emotions from the day just as fresh now as they were on set in July. “I remember I couldn’t stop crying after that first take. I needed a good five minutes to get myself ready for the next take.”

It got easier as the day went along, she says, “because I knew what my body was gonna do and I could kinda control it and I knew I was in a safe space.”

“Everybody was just so respectful and it was wonderful to have that team around me,” she says, giving credit to the show’s intimacy coordinator, Mam Smith, in particular. “She really talked us through the breathwork and what we need to do afterwards so it doesn’t stay with us.”

“At the end of the night, we did take a tequila shot and then, you know, let it all go,” Chávez says. “I take aftercare very seriously and definitely just giving myself extra love that night was very important.”

She spoke to the show’s creator, Taylor Sheridan, about the scene before filming it, and she says that “the whole purpose of [the scene] is to show that Ariana is strong and she is a fighter.”

“I talked to Taylor and he was just like, ‘The thing about this scene is I never want Ariana to stop fighting.’ Cause she is a fighter,” Chávez says. “At the end of the day, she’s never gonna stop fighting, so that’s something that we always wanted to portray.”

The season 2 finale of Landman premieres Sunday, Jan. 18 on Paramount+.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.