Will Trent's Ramón Rodríguez, EPs Talk Angie's Fate, Will's Mysterious 'Debt' And Introduction Of Gina Rodriguez
A lot has changed since Will Trent torpedoed his life last year.
At the start of Tuesday's season opener — directed by series star/executive producer Ramón Rodríguez — we learn that six months have passed since the GBI's top agent arrested one true love Angie, then fled town. In that time, Will has started over as a private eye in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn. Meanwhile, back in Atlanta, Faith has a new partner at the GBI, and Angie — who, thanks to a lenient judge, has managed to avoid jail time — is working security at a gated community as she awaits a hearing that will determine her future (or lack thereof) with the APD.
Eventually, Will returns to Atlanta to assist on a case involving an old friend, Rafael Wexford (Antwayn Hopper) — who, along with his grandmother, Miss Pearl (Marla Gibbs), gave Will a home when he aged out of foster care. We're told that Rafael did Will "a big favor once," and they haven't spoken since. Twenty years later, Rafael has gone on to become leader of local gang The Piedmont Kings, and he's a prime suspect in the shooting of two APD officers, one of whom is dead. Rafael takes the fall for the murder, but only after the real killer — likely a dirty cop — kidnaps his daughter Sunny.
Along the way, Will meets (and bares his soul to) Assistant District Attorney Marion Alba (played by new series regular Gina Rodriguez), who agrees to keep the case open long enough for the GBI and APD to bring Chester Flynn's real killer to justice. Heading into Part 2 (airing Tuesday, Jan. 14), it's all hands on deck as Will, Amanda, Faith and Ormewood race to rescue Rafael's daughter.
In separate interviews, which have been edited and condensed for clarity, TVLine spoke with Rodríguez and co-showrunners Liz Heldens and Daniel Thomsen about Tuesday's Season 3 premiere....
TVLINE | When we first met Will, he was someone who buried his emotions so that he didn't have to face his issues. But Will opened up a lot last year — both to Angie and to his uncle, Antonio. Coming out of Season 2, having lobbed this grenade on his relationship with Angie and fled town, how well (or not well) would you say Will is dealing with his emotions now?
THOMSEN | His speech that he has when he first meets Marion — about how he's a pathologically scrupulous person, and if there was any other way that he could be, he would — is a great encapsulation of what he's dealing with at the start of the season. He's trying to figure out if his hopes and his desires — for what he wants his life to be, and how he wants to be able to relate to people and have a sense of family and intimacy — are compatible with his sense of the world and his sense of justice, and if he's able to have it all. I think he's feeling pretty burned out about it when the season begins.
TVLINE | Faith accuses Will of being a bad communicator, but he manages to open up to Marion in a big way. Why do you think he struggles to be vulnerable with his partner, but not with Marion, who at this point is a total stranger?
HELDENS | Sometimes it is easier to talk to a stranger... and it's sort of indicating a connection that's going to come later — that these two do connect on some level.
RODRÍGUEZ | I think that can be very true to life, you know? Sometimes you can tell a complete stranger things about yourself that are hard to tell people you know — some of your deepest, darkest secrets, your flaws, things you might be ashamed of. I think Faith's reference is in regards to him taking off, and not saying anything to his partner. They built a relationship in the first two seasons... and so, by the end of Season 2, when he just leaves and doesn't say a word to anybody, she feels betrayed, understandably.
TVLINE | What does Will's relationship with Marion look like moving forward? Is it strictly a professional relationship? A friendship? Something more...?
RODRÍGUEZ | When they meet, neither of them are looking for anything. Will is there, focused on a case, trying to get information. He runs into this woman who he doesn't expect to be involved in [this case], and she's an assistant district attorney, and he ends up realizing she's got information. But I think the one connecting point that we realized, at least in that first episode, is when he says something to her... I think it's something, like, "Doesn't anybody care about truth and facts anymore?" and she says it later on when they're at the office. There's a core value that they might share, as to why they do what they do, and I think that really resonates for Will. And so, at first, it is strictly a professional thing, and I think slowly we end up seeing that it's more than that. She's a very different person for Will that he has not really encountered, and that we have definitely not seen. I mean, there's been Angie, and we know that history.... there was Cricket, and that was so short-lived with a lot of potential... and then there's Marion, who comes in and is a very slow build, and a slow relationship, and I think a lot of the things that surprise Will about her are, you know, she doesn't judge him. She's kind of just there, and available and present, and shows up. And they connect, and the spark starts to happen, and we kind of get to witness that, which is really cool.
TVLINE | When Will returns home, he finds that Nico has done quite a bit of redecorating. Yet that dining table that Angie refurbished remains. What do you think that table means to Will now — and is it something that he will want to hold on to now that their relationship has ended?
RODRÍGUEZ | It's a cool moment when Will clocks that dining table. That dining table represented so much of his future with Angie, and we got to explore that really beautifully at the end of Season 2, where we did this montage of what the future could have been like with Will and Angie — their relationship and kids — and that this dining table represented something that Will longs for so much, which is family. You know, they talked about it at the end of Season 2 — like, maybe kids, maybe we need more chairs — so when he sees it, it's a really tough thing of what has been lost, what has been sacrificed. It's a heartbreaking moment, and we added a little editorially — a little flash of what things were like and what that table represented — so, we'll have to see what that table ends up becoming. I'll tell you, the table sticks around. Let's see what it gets used as.
TVLINE | In the premiere, Angie tells Ormewood that she only ever got high to forget things, and she doesn't want to forget about Crystal. But did you ever have a discussion in the writers' room about whether Crystal's death, or her subsequent arrest, would be the thing that leads recovering addict Angie to relapse?
HELDENS | It seemed interesting to me, after a lot of discussion, to have her not fall off the wagon for that reason. She has survived it and gotten through it, and I wanted the audience to be with her, and we wanted her to make her way back to the ecosystem of our show, and so we thought it was more interesting if she was just trying [to move forward], and a little bit lonely. She's in that weird, gated community, wearing that stupid uniform, and we just wanted to be with her. But we have talked about what would push her to the edge....
THOMSEN | This writers' room is probably the best writers' room that I've ever worked with in terms of sitting around and really living in the characters organically, as opposed to trying to figure out what story you know we want to tell. Everybody sits around, and it really just feels like you're inside Angie's head. And so we do have these discussions, but it's very much like you're exploring it like the character would — like, would this drive you to drink? Would this drive you to take pills? Of course, Angie is having all these thought experiments, too, about how much nicer it would be to be able to f–king zone out — but in the end, I think we all kind of felt like she would hang on. Liz found that way of articulating it in the golf cart with Ormewood, and I thought it was spot on. She's not in a place where she's giving up yet. She's in a place where she wants to hold on to the memory of what this was, and who Crystal was, and I think letting go of that would be a final betrayal of Crystal.
TVLINE | Rafael offers a glimpse into a period of Will's life we know very little about — the period between aging out of foster care and joining the GBI. What more can you say about how that storyline will unravel?
RODRÍGUEZ | Rafael has something over Will, which is something that happened when they were kids that we don't know when we first meet him — but we know that Will owes him. There's a debt of some sort, we just don't know what it is yet, and throughout the season that eventually ends up getting explored and uncovered.
THOMSEN | We have Rafael as a story that's going to arc through almost the entire season, and so you're going to have to wait a bit to get the story of what happened in the past when Will and Rafael were both 18. But we wanted to explore that period of time after foster care, but before Will finds his purpose in life. Will's trying to figure out, on a very basic level, how to survive, you know? He doesn't have any skills, he hasn't figured out how to process dyslexia in a way that is healthy yet, and he finds Rafael, who offers a lot of things that are complimentary to him. And it's kind of a shot at family.... Obviously, Rafael is the head of the Piedmont Kings, and so we know that, at some point, there was a tragic parting of ways, and we know that these two guys ended up in polar opposite places, but they still have this connection.
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