Will Trent Season 3 has been a wild and bumpy ride so far, and things are only going to get more intense in the last few episodes ahead, according to series lead Ramón Rodríguez.
The season began with Will living up in Tennessee with his best gal Betty and generally avoiding both the GBI and Angie (Erika Christensen) after he’d made the heartbreaking decision to blow up their romantic future and turn her in for covering up a murder. Then, he returned to Atlanta once Rafael Wexler (Antwayn Hopper) demanded his help with a false murder allegation as payback for something that happened in their youth — more on this later. Slowly but surely, he and Angie have begun to move on together and apart; in addition to forging a solid working relationship, they also each began new and healthy romantic relationships, with Mariona Alba (Gina Rodriguez) and Seth (Scott Foley) respectively.
Recently, though, things have taken a dark turn for Will. After he discharged his weapon and a ricocheted bullet hit and killed a teenage boy — it was self-defense, as he’d been fired upon, but that didn’t assuage his guilt — he fell into a depression. Marion then decided to call things off due to his sudden emotional distance from her, and he went deep undercover to infiltrate a cult whose message resonated with him more than he might care to admit.
In Tuesday’s episode, “One of Us Now,” Will managed to escape the compound with the help of his friends on the force, but not before he was dosed with a bit of “sacred water” that induces a fever dream-style hallucination. In that disco-tinged sequence, he broke into dancing with Angie, Faith (Iantha Richardson), Marion, and even Amanda (Sonja Sohn) and got to hear Betty talk for the first time — with a British accent, no less! Talk about a vibe shift.
Next week’s episode, “A Funeral Fit for a Quartermaine,” promises to bring the mysteries surrounding Will’s relationship with Rafael to a head at last, once Will attends Rafael’s grandmother’s funeral. So what can we expect from that clash ahead and the final stretch of the season? And how fun has it been for Rodriguez to explore this emotional roller coaster of a season?
Ramón Rodríguez stopped by the TV Insider offices to discuss. Watch the video above and read on below for the full question and answer series to find out!
Season 3 has put Will in some situations we hadn’t ever seen him in before, with him starting out in Tennessee, going through this breakup and a new relationship, and now with the shooting fallout. What’s it been like for you to explore these new experiences for him?
Ramón Rodríguez: We always talk about, “How do we continue trying to elevate the show and what’s new that we can bring to Will and his journey that’s hopefully interesting and compelling for audiences?” Starting Season 3, we all thought it’s a great way to sort of have him feeling like he’s starting anew. He left the GBI. He’s trying to walk away from what happened at the end of Season 2, arresting Angie. So it’s kind of cool to not see him in his suit — sort of in casual clothes, with a beard, just him and Betty. Obviously, he gets pulled back into the GBI.
And we kept talking as the season was progressing about what’s a moment that could potentially be something that could affect him for the rest of his life and the arc of this character. And so the shooting that happens in Episode 11, which is quite dramatic — he’s chasing a perp, he’s fired upon, he fires back, and a stray bullet hits a kid, Marco, and Marco ends up dying in his arms — I mean, it was really heavy. But then you have this week’s episode, where we see Will, who’s joined this kind of cult to try to crack that place, gets drugged, and then he has a whole dance-off episode with the whole cast. And we hear Betty has a voice, and Betty’s British.
It’s kind of one of the things I love about the show. We can go through different, various emotions that are quite extreme from something as heavy as watching Will have to deal with the loss of a kid that he’s shot, and then also go through this trippy episode that he’s dancing and trying to find his way through this hallucination.
Speaking of the hallucination, how did you prepare for this week’s dance hallucination? Did you take dance lessons or were you just waiting for a chance to bust out your moves?
No, I was not improvising. I was properly choreographed and properly rehearsed. Didn’t have a ton of time, but we had some amazing choreographers that came in. They also worked with us on a previous episode, so it was great to have them back. And they put together what I thought was a really awesome story of watching Will kind of weirdly feel himself in his body, start to move, and then start to lose himself. And we wanted to show how in this hallucination, everyone loves Will, even though, outside of that hallucination, they’re really not. They’re r
