Erika Christensen, whom Will Trent fans know best as Angie Polaski, has been an actress for more than 25 years now. Her many credits include the films Traffic (2000), The Banger Sisters (2002) and The Upside of Anger (2005) as well as the beloved Ron Howard-produced NBC series Parenthood, which ran on NBC from 2010 to 2015.
Since Will Trent premiered in 2023, Christensen has breathed complex life into Angie, a cop who shares Will Trent’s (Ramón Rodríguez) complicated foster care past. That experience trauma bonded the two who have been linked since adolescence. Angie is constantly fighting her many other demons. Suffering sexual abuse as a young girl fuels her reckless behavior as a young woman who uses alcohol, drugs and sex to numb her childhood pain.
Last season, she and Will’s would-be happy ever ending blew up when Will discovered that she covered up a young girl named Crystal killing her sexually abusive stepfather who also victimized her. She also failed to reveal that Crystal was behind the killing of other pedophiles.
Because Will is a straight arrow, he didn’t keep her secret. He, instead, did the unthinkable and arrested her. Their relationship has not been the same since. As the season has progressed, they’ve made their way back to speaking terms but mainly as co-workers.
Angie’s personal life has been quite interesting. Just as she was finding peace with Seth, the attractive doctor Scandal and Felicity star Scott Foley portrays, her biological mother Didi Polaski, who began pimping her out as a child, dies. Instead of feeling free, Angie is so emotionally wrecked she starts drinking again. And then she gets the surprise of her life when she finds out she may be a mother. That discovery sends shock and panic through every inch of her.
Unlike past seasons, Christensen wasn’t sitting on the sidelines for this one. In addition to taking Angie through all these lows and unexpected surprises, Christensen made her TV directorial debut with season three’s penultimate episode 17, “Why Hello, Sheriff,” arguably one of this series’ most explosive episodes. In a twist few could see coming, Will finds his biological father during an investigation. Caleb, played by Yul Vazquez from Severance, is also a cop who also had absolutely no idea about Will.
The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Christensen going into Tuesday night’s season three finale to discuss navigating her TV directorial debut with so much personal drama and if it’s really the end between Angie and Will.
How did you get so lucky for the penultimate episode of season three to be your TV directorial debut?
I did get lucky. I was originally assigned a different episode, and then, because of two big scheduling factors, we had to swap everything around. I ended up getting this one, and I was so excited. It pulls no punches. It’s just like nonstop bombshells throughout the whole episode.
How long did you know you wanted to direct? What kind of preparation did you do?
I have directed short films, and I have said previously that I wanted to direct TV, but I didn’t feel it as truly as I did with this show. Because I love this team, and I love collaborating with this team, and I love feeling like I’m part of the team, directing is just kind of the ultimate in that feeling of like I’m really on the team. And I really had been asking for this job, and saying, “Okay, here we are.”
I know the tone of this show. I know I’m in the trenches here. I know these characters, and I know what we do and I’d be so honorable to do it.’ And so then, they said yes.
And as I mentioned, I previously was scheduled to do a different episode, potentially an episode in which I had less on-screen crazy drama to contend with but I’m very happy that it turned out this way, and I really enjoyed tackling Angie’s storyline as well as the Will Caleb storyline and the cases and Ormewood’s ongoing health threat, which, confirms, as heavy as that is, that was where so much of the humor came from in this episode.
How long did you have to prepare for the episode?
Not long. The writers were really under the gun to get the scripts out. And because we had to shoot the episodes out of order, they had to write 317 before they were prepared to write 317 so I didn’t have much time. We had just the normal I guess a week or eight days of prep. It was a whirlwind of fun, and of course, I still had to shoot. But the team is really competent and tight and communicative, and they appreciate what I [had] to deal with. I was like, “Cool, you guys keep prepping this episode. Text me when you find out this and that, and text me photos of this and that, and I gotta go shoot some scenes.”
Did Ramón like directing give you even more confidence?
There are plenty of actors who direct their own shows. It’s your mental capacity for it, but it’s also a logistical issue. And since he often has way more on-screen [time] to contend with than I do, I was like ‘great, I got this.’ He was directing the first season. He just had the biggest grin on his face the whole time.
