Well, Erika Christensen promised Will Trent Episode 17 would be packed with big story developments, and she didn’t oversell it one bit.
On Tuesday’s (May 6) episode, in which Christensen makes her directorial debut, her character Angie gets some very unexpected news from her boyfriend and doctor Seth (Scott Foley): She’s pregnant. His manner of delivery is uniquely thoughtful; he tells her he’ll go along with whatever she chooses to do because the relationship with her is what matters. He’s in love with her, he declares. Seth’s stable support isn’t just limited to the baby news. He’s also got a very measured approach to her prior news that she has been drinking too much lately thanks to her complicated feelings about the death of her abusive and neglectful mother. He doesn’t know all of the details about the latter, of course.
Meanwhile, Will (Ramón Rodríguez) and Faith (Iantha Richardson) are sent to cover a double homicide case with a stern local sheriff named Caleb (Yul Vazquez), and things go off the rails thanks to a loose cat trampling all over the crime scene. This results in a door being broken, with glass shards cutting all of the officers. The blood samples from the scene are all separated and tested by forensics, resulting in yet another jaw-dropper: Caleb is Will’s biological father. After the two strangers have a few awkward, even hostile exchanges, we’re still left with more questions than answers, so it’s a good thing he’s rumored to be returning for Season 4. Because they won’t have time to forge a father-son relationship right now, however fraught it becomes.
See, the perp in their case hasn’t just killed three people. He’s also unleashed a biological weapons attack on Atlanta as part of his plot to renew the world by destroying it. At the end tail end of the episode, we see Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), Nico (Cora Lu Tran), and Betty all being trapped in a chaotic hospital setting as it goes into lockdown with a swarm of infected patients. To break down the biggest beats of the episode and dig into her directory debut, TV Insider caught up with Erika Christensen!
What made you want to direct an episode this season?
Erika Christensen: The reason I wanted to go directly was one of my favorite parts of participating in movies and television, the whole art form, is the collaborative aspect of it and really feeling like I’m part of a team. So directing is the ultimate in that, feeling like I’m part of the team, and getting to collaborate more directly with all departments in a way that’s different than acting. So I just lucked out as far as that episode was, because it ended up being just the crescendo on the way up before the season resolves. It’s a good one.
The episode starts out with Angie in the hospital, and she doesn’t really get time to feel her pain of the bar fight. What did she take away from that encounter?
It’s such an instant — you don’t want to call it karma, because it’s more personal than that, but it’s just proving you made a decision that goes against yourself and what’s right for you. And here’s proof, immediately. Like “Yes, that backfired immediately.” I think it’s interesting because she tries to have such kind of a heroic moment, and then it goes so poorly, and who knows how long it would have taken her to process that and sort of find her way back, had she not been presented with more pressing news.
She does kind of hold herself accountable, though, a little bit, by telling Seth about it right?
Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, too, because she doesn’t often wallow in shame; she just owns it. But she’s having a shameful moment, and it speaks to the fact that he’s a very safe person, and he can really relate because he’s been there, and they’re in a relationship, and he just found out. But he’s not holding her accountable. So she steps up and, in a way, she would have preferred him to be angry. She would have preferred him to laugh and to call her the names that she would like to call herself in that moment. But he’s too good for that, and certainly, he’s distracted by the more pressing news as well. But he’s just a good, stable, non-judgmental, healthy person through that whole scene, navigating both bombshells.
So the pregnancy news is obviously huge, and like you said, it’s delivered in such a considerate and kind way. He’s talking to her as both her doctor and her boyfriend. Can you talk about — as director and actor — crafting the tone of that moment? It’s so unique.
Yeah, it’s fascinating because Scott and I had such a lovely time. He had a completely different idea. And I kept trying to get him to see my point of view, and he kind of was digging in and laughing at me, going, “Wow, you hate my idea.” …Basically, I wanted [Seth] to recognize how high the stakes were because he knows Angie so well, and he knows that this could be the last conversation they ever
have. She could fully just be like, “This is too much.” Whether she decides to keep it or not, she’s just gonna ghost him, which would be the absolute worst-case scenario coming back from that. Maybe she doesn’t want the baby but then wants to be with him, and he’s like, “Yeah, I think I was cool with that, but I’m not sure…” There’s so many different ways that it could go, and he’s trying to be really open to all of them and just say, “I’m here for you. This relationship is what’s important to me,” which is beautiful…
Angie ended up feeling, in a word, undeserving of essentially really good news, and he’s emotionally intelligent enough to read that and try to give her grace, but also be concerned about the endless possibilities of where she might go from here. So for us, it was really finding the vulnerability of it and the crux of it was that he hadn’t had any time to process it. Someone handed him the iPad with her sheet on it right before he walked in the door, and he went, [gesturing scrolling] “Angie Polaski, scan, blood level, alcohol, pregnancy test,” everything right as he’s walking through the door. So he’s like, “Okay,” having to play the scene going, “Okay, do doctor things while I get my feet under me.”
What was Scott’s idea for the scene?
That [Seth] knew that she may completely act out, and he was completely prepared for any potentiality and was just like, she was it for him. She was his person. And so basically, I said, “Well, yeah, but what if you don’t speak to her for two years?” Because he was kind of like, “Even if everything blows up, you’ll wait for her to come around.” I’m like, “Yeah, what if? What if she won’t talk to you for like, two years before she comes around? That’s not sustainable. The stakes are higher than you know.” His idea was that he knows her so well that he’s emotionally prepared for any eventuality. And I was saying, “No, he knows her so well that he has to know this could be the end of everything.”
Speaking of knowing her so well, the conversation that she later has with Will, it’s not about the pregnancy, but about Didi. He cuts right to the chase of what she needs to hear, talking about how she is who she is in spite of her mother. How does that play into their whole relationship that they are at least friend soulmates?
Yeah, well, you nailed it … When Angie tells Seth that the mom died, he has no context, and she has to explain she was in a coma. She can’t even get into like how incredibly abusive she was before that. There’s too much to catch up on in that moment, and she’s more just surprised that Seth gives her the opportunity to kind of examine what the impetus was, which is just not judging her anyhow.
So then the conversation with Will, where she chooses not to tell him about the pregnancy but to tell him about Didi, their shorthand is — because they are essentially family, and it’s just they know that, and they appreciate that about each other — that they don’t have to explain everything. They have … probably 25 years of friendship that they just cut straight to the heart of things because the context is all there, and Angie still puts up a front with everybody, but it’s definitely so much easier when the context is already laid in.
I loved the scene with Faith and Angie in the bathroom, and she kind of overhears it when she’s talking to the toilet. How much did it mean to Angie to have that thoughtful reaction from another woman who maybe doesn’t have all that context, but is still speaking pretty well about it?
Yeah well, she is a mother. She can actually speak on the subject from a point of view that Angie can’t even fathom. There’s, there’s such a wisdom to Faith. Having experienced it, and having experienced it at such a young age, Angie has to respect Faith for everything that she’s been through, and anything that’s like really genuine catches Angie so off guard. So for Faith to have something so subtle and encouraging and beautiful to say when Angie’s just sort of, in the moments before that, going, “All right, I’m not cut out for this.” And then for Faith to say, essentially, “You are cut out for this,” kind of throws everything back in the air again.
Do you think it’s gonna sink in?
Yes.
