Will Trent co-creator Daniel Thomsen credits the title character’s refusal to let life beat him as the main reason fans love the ABC series, now in its third season. “Will is somebody who has had a really rough shake, has the scars to prove it, and he isn’t going to give up. He’s going to do whatever it takes to get up every morning. I think people like that,” Thomsen tells The Hollywood Reporter.
That “rough shake” includes growing up motherless and being raised in the foster care system, often enduring physical abuse, before rising to become a special agent within the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and excelling, despite being dyslexic. At work, he’s assembled a found family.: Amanda (Sonja Sohn), his boss, is a mother figure; Faith (Iantha Richardson), his most recent partner, is like the little sister whom he squabbles but also adores and protects.
And then there is Angie (Erika Christensen). They met in foster care, so she knows where he comes from. And, like Will, she’s found peace in her job as a detective with the Atlanta Police Department, and a really great friend in her partner Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), with whom Will isn’t as friendly. She and Will might be soulmates, but they’ve been playing with each other’s hearts so long they may never have a happily ever after, especially following last season’s ending.
Those layers were what compelled co-creator and co-showrunner Liz Heldens to get the ball rolling for the series. “I was a big fan of Karin Slaughter’s books and I really invested in that character,” she tells THR. “His whole backstory, the way he presents himself to the world, his dyslexia, his thoughtfulness [is interesting]. He’s not a character that runs his mouth; he makes you lean in because you’re like, what are you thinking?”
The Will Trent series just added its 12th title, This is Why We Lied, back in August, and Heldens’ attentiveness to details moved the needle with Slaughter. “I met with Liz Heldens a few years ago and I could tell she was a reader,” The New York Times bestselling author shared, while helping to promote the series at the SCAD TV Fest weeks after it premiered in 2023. “She really loved the books; she asked questions that a reader would ask. I thought, she knows what she’s doing. She really gets the story so I can trust her.”
That trust extends to their cast and many collaborators behind the scenes, with BAFTA and Emmy-nominated Scottish director Paul McGuigan, who directed the show’s pilot, and costume designer Mary Jane Fort among them. Finding the right Will Trent was also key. “You have to give a lot of credit to Ramón Rodriguez,” Heldens says of their star.
Prior to taking on the role of Will Trent, Rodriguez worked steadily since 2005, with many credits across TV (The Wire, Gang Related and The Affair) and film (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Taking of Pelham 123). Will Trent, however, is his most high-profile role. In addition to starring in the series, Rodriguez is now an executive producer and made his television directorial debut with the premiere of the third season. Rodriguez doesn’t just fill out Will Trent’s signature three-piece brown suit, he also colors in his emotional profile throughout the series.
“What I really like about this show is how messed up Will himself is. So much bad stuff has happened to Will and I think Karin [Slaughter] gave him such a sympathetic backstory, and it gives us permission to explore it in a way,” says Thomsen. “Anytime you’re dealing with heavy emotions, humor is a tool that really helps a lot of us [cope with] trying to get through the day without going completely insane. We try to bring that ethos to the show.”
It’s an element that Puerto Rican-born, New York City-raised Rodriguez also appreciates. “Tonally, and it’s hard to do, our show threads the needle through humor and drama. That’s a very challenging balancing act, not only for the writers, but you have to be able to have a cast that is capable of juggling that. I think we do it pretty well,” Rodriguez told THR during an Atlanta set visit.
An example of that range is how the show picked up from its season two finale. After teasing the audience with the potential happily ever after for Will and Angie with kids and a white picket fence that few people saw coming, the finale went sideways. Instead of Will dropping to one knee, he took out his handcuffs and arrested Angie in front of everybody at the Atlanta Police Department.
Angie knew Crystal (Chapel Oaks) killed her stepfather, Lenny, who had been molesting her and took the fall herself because Lenny also molested her as a teen. Instead of telling Will, not to mention Faith and Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), that she suspected Crystal of being the serial killer targeting pedophiles, she took matters in her own hands. Sadly, Angie found Crystal in the woods, and she ran from her, accidentally falling and dying. There’s no denying that Angie crossed professional lines again, but these were also very bad men. So, seeing Angie free and not in prison in the first part of the season three premiere was a relief, not just to the audience, but also for the actress who plays her.
“Our writers love letting Angie gain some ground and then have another fall from grace,” Erika Christensen told THR during the set visit. “It is humbling, and [Angie] takes a hard look at how she failed, how she let her own emotions get in the way of her better judgment. She didn’t do the job the service that it needs.”
Erika Christensen with Ramón Rodriguez in season three.
Disney/Zac Popik
That failure and heartbreak sent Will into a tailspin. He left the GBI to hide out in Tennessee with his pint-sized four-legged security blanket Betty, ignoring all communication with everybody, including Nico (Cora Lu Tran) who’s been Betty’s caretaker. “Betty is such a soft side of Will and such a big piece of his heart,” Rodriguez says of Will’s connection to her. “I love when I see them together because it’s such a beautiful bond that they have. And she does not let him down.”
While they were hiding out, Will ditched his signature suit and clean-shaven appearance. Interestingly, a deadly attack on cops at a police cookout was not what brought him back to Atlanta. Instead, it was his surprise connection to the eclectic gangster Rafael (Antwayn Hopper) who was accused of masterminding the attack. In his foster care days, Will lived with Rafael and his grandma, Ms. Pearl, portrayed by legendary Jeffersons’ actress Marla Gibbs. Will not coming back to help solve the crime, specifically when needed, annoys Faith, Will’s former partner, and results in the two of them in a weird dance in early episodes of season three, until Will helps save her mother Evelyn Mitchell (LisaGay Hamilton), Amanda’s good friend and former partner, in episode five titled “Breathe with Me.”
“We see her revert, not completely, but revert back to her original thoughts. They’ve gotten over a lot of things in order for them to have gotten to where they were by the middle of season two, like her issues with him in regards to how he treated her mother and things of that nature. So where we are right now is a bit of a backtracking for their relationship. But, we have the rest of season three to figure out how they get over this,” Iantha Richardson tells THR of Will and Faith’s relationship.
Heldens is grateful to have found their Faith. “It took us a long time to find Iantha Richardson,” she says. “That was the missing piece. We looked all over, and she, to me, is so special.”
Aside from Will and the job, Faith has plenty going on outside of work, says Richardson, whose previous credits include This Is Us and Good Trouble. “Having been a teenage mom, Faith is in an interesting space for her because she’s not older. She is actually pretty much in her prime and an empty nester. She’s really trying to figure things out. It’s a new chapter in life, which is really exciting for her,” she says.
Will and Amanda’s relationship has always been a found family mother-son connection. Why Amanda feels motherly towards Will was revealed in the season one finale, only for another secret Amanda hid to create tension between them in season two. In season three, their relationship is neither overtly familial nor contentious.
“Because there’s so much story to serve, and we don’t have a lot of screen time serving our connection, a lot of that work I do on my own, on the side, and try to bring it to whatever scene we’re playing,” Sonja Sohn says. “I believe in Will’s absence, when he left for those six months, Amanda has been processing what this distance has left her with.” Amanda, however, does find her mothering moment as a guardian to Sunny, the teenage daughter of Will’s former foster brother Rafael, the drug kingpin.
In real life, Sohn has been able to witness Rodriguez’s growth in this industry. While the two did not share scenes or storylines when they were both on The Wire, Sohn has witnessed Rodriguez’s growth from his role as Renaldo, the last lover of Michael K. Williams’ iconic Omar Little in season four of the trailblazing series, to star and producer of his own series. “It’s just amazing to watch,” she says. “I’m really excited for Ramón to see what he’s done with his talent.”
Ramón Rodriguez and Gina Rodriguez in Will Trent season three.
Disney/Wilford Harewood
Rodriguez has used his profile and platform to incorporate more of his culture and heritage into Will’s journey. Will’s discovery that his mother Lucy was Puerto Rican resulted in him learning Spanish in season two, as well as meeting his maternal uncle Antonio (John Ortiz) and visiting Puerto Rico.
“It was a very fluid, natural progression that I thought really worked well and helped us touch on Will’s culture without feeling like it was being beaten down on anybody’s head,” Rodriguez says. “It is a proud thing for me to be able to represent that authentically, but in a different way, not stereotypically, and not perpetuating misconceptions. Will is a complicated character with a complicated path, and we’re watching him uncover who he is, which is really beautiful.”
Will, as fans have learned, also has a new love interest in Assistant District Attorney Marion Alba, played by Jane the Virgin and Not Dead Yet star Gina Rodriguez, that has the potential to go the distance. In episode four, “Floor Is Lava,” Angie did not mince words when she told Will their relationship was over. “We’re not lovers, we’re not friends; we’re co-workers,” she said. So, there is nothing currently holding Will back from a full-out romance with Marion, with whom he’s had sparks since this season’s very first episode.
“We wanted to see what it would be like if Will was confronted with somebody who was just really kind of emotionally intelligent and just not messed up. She’s a good communicator,” says Heldens. “He finds he can talk to her. And it’s just something that develops in a pretty normal, healthy way, and that is going to prove to be a little hard for Will.”
“There’s definitely an electricity,” says Rodriguez, who has known the Will Trent star for years now and, like him, is Puerto Rican. Unlike Will and Angie, however, the two don’t have a complicated history. Marion has no knowledge whatsoever of who Will is or is perceived to be, she says. “She is the one person that isn’t aware of Will’s position. She isn’t aware of the way he enjoys work to be done. She isn’t just falling in line. Because everybody is aware that Will is like the top agent, people either get out of his way or they are annoyed by his way, whatever it may be. She comes in with a blank slate.”
Joining a show in its third season is something Rodriguez has never done. She’s also never starred in a non-comedy on TV, and she’s never played a character like this one.
“Marion does say she’s Puerto Rican, which I’ve never been able to say on a show before,” says Rodriguez, whose famous Jane the Virgin character, Jane, was Venezuelan. “It was very liberating to just play this really bad ass lawyer who is somebody that is very calculated, very strong minded and Puerto Rican. When I said the words on set, I had chills.”
What lies ahead for Will and Marion on Will Trent as whole is very gratifying, she promises. “I’m excited for everybody to see the evolution of the entire season, because there are hills and valleys, and we climb mountains. We go to really great spaces of drama. We go into great spaces of comedy too, but [more so] some very extreme spaces of drama, which I enjoyed because I have never had that opportunity before. I’m stoked for people to see it.”
New episodes of Will Trent air Tuesdays on ABC and stream on Hulu the next day.
