'Will Trent's Ramón Rodríguez on How Denial Plays a Big Part in Season 2

Ramón Rodríguez

Will Trent kicks off an explosive sophomore season when a car bomb pulls Will (Ramón Rodríguez) out of Spanish class—he’s learning it to honor his late mother who he only six months before discovered was Puerto Rican—and onto a case in what appears to be a nice, non-threatening middle-class neighborhood. And, of course, it takes Will’s keen sense of observation to realize the Atlanta Police Department has got it wrong, so who can blame him for being a little cocky?

“He’s always like that at a crime scene,” Rodríguez tells Parade in an interview at the Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, when asked if Will is a little more confident this season. “From the pilot last year, he gets to a crime scene and he’s in his swagger, he has his own swagger.”

But crime scenes are the only place where the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent exudes that confidence. In his day-to-day life, he’s still dealing with dyslexia, which he tries to keep a secret; the newfound knowledge of his mother’s identity; the fact he may have an uncle; the knowledge that it was Amanda (Sonja Sohn), his boss, who rescued and named him as a baby; and the scary fact that his biological father could be serial killer James Ulster (Greg Germann).

“We started [the season] where he’s really vulnerable and awkward having to deal with the Spanish,” Rodríguez, who speaks fluently, continues. “He’s in this situation that doesn’t make him feel super confident at all, actually. He squirms. I’m excited that we get to watch him go down this rabbit hole, potentially exploring who he is and where he comes from. Will’s got some pieces [of his life] and some of them are being held by this pretty awful person, James Ulster.”

Needless to say, Will has got a lot going on psychologically and emotionally and one of the ways he deals with it is denial and avoidance. So, even though James Ulster’s DNA is on file because he’s a convicted felon, Will doesn’t take a test to find out the truth.

“He’s been avoiding a lot of things in his life,” Rodríguez says. “I think it’s a really scary thing that there’s a potential that this serial killer, who killed his mom, could be his dad. It’s a massive bomb. Part of it is ignorance is bliss, he’d rather not know. But I think that’s a bit of an ongoing theme for Will that we really get into this season, is him avoiding, not dealing with things. That has a compounding effect. You keep stuffing things under the rug it spills out somehow, some way.”

Related: Here's a Complete List of Karin Slaughter's Will Trent Series in Order

The situation with his GBI boss Amanda is another issue that Will is keeping locked up tight. In a very poignant scene in the Season 1 finale, Will discovered that it was Amanda who found him in a trash can as a newborn and attempted to adopt him, an option that wasn’t available to single women at that time, but she did give him his name.

“It is going to come up,” says Rodríguez. “It’s not a closed chapter and everything is fine and dandy. Amanda and Will share a lot in common in the way that they do not share a lot emotionally. They won’t go and talk about a vulnerable situation. For instance, it’s a beautiful scene at the end of the season last year. They’re in front of a coffee machine. They don’t say anything about the information that has been put out there that Will has gained. That’s a bit of cop culture, first responder culture, people that are constantly exposed to pretty harsh things. They’re not people that often go to those places and share vulnerable things or have the conversation of the elephant that’s in the room.”

Keeping that in mind, it may be a while before the two actually have a conversation about Will’s new knowledge. It may not even be this season because one thing Will and Amanda have in common is the ability to avoid emotional circumstances. So, for now, it’s business as usual between the two of them.

During our conversation, Rodríguez talks more about what Will is facing in Season 2, which picks up 6 months after the finale, how he’s dealing with having Faith (Iantha Richardson) as a partner, his breakup with Angie (Erica Christensen), filming in Atlanta, and what makes Will Trent, based on the novels by Karin Slaughter, stand out from other procedural dramas on broadcast television.

You speak Spanish, so how hard was it to speak such bad Spanish?

We had talked about it early on, about the potential of him trying to learn his mother’s language and that being a connecting point for him, which I thought emotionally is beautiful. But they wrote it out. Liz just wrote it out. It was this long thing at first. It’s been six months, he’s not fluent, he’s not going to be able to just rip this all out or this scene is going to take our whole episode. We condensed it.

I told Liz, “This is new for him and it’s going to also have to be through his dialect, he’s got to say the words.” So when we did it and we filmed it on the day, she was really happy. She found that the stumbliness and the way he went about trying to find the words just made it even more endearing. I thought it was pretty effective and smart and that’s something that we’re going to continue. It’s a connecting point for him.

Related: Meet Betty, the Real Star of Will Trent

Speaking about endearing, there’s the moment where Will tells his Spanish class that Betty is his family. You want to cry because she is, but he also has found a work family.

The work for him, which again keeps him busy, it’s a coping mechanism but it helps define him in a lot of ways because he gets to do what wasn’t done for him, which is try to help people, try to help solve crimes. I love that in that scene where he just is "really here’s my blanket, here’s my comfort animal, here’s my security.' That’s a beautiful thing about when we first brought on the concept of him adopting this dog. It’s like we get to see another side of Will that he doesn’t share with many people. It’s a vulnerable, softer side. He’s someone that is looking for longing and connection and family, which he didn’t have. He's creating his own sort of family. He’s got Nico (Cora Lu Tran) at the house, he’s got Betty now with him. And so, it’s his way of creating his own little sense of connection.

And he has Faith as his partner. Although they weren’t together as much in this episode, they seem to have achieved some kind of relationship where they’re accepting of each other now.

There’s some rapport. It’s building and we’re watching that evolve from when they first met. I like that it’s been a slow burn. That relationship didn’t evolve, because that’s just not Will’s nature. He’s not accepting and wanting to have that in his life so quickly. It feels a bit more earned. They’re still going to go at each other, but we are showing them sort of in swing or swimming together in a way where they’re able to bond and have moments together. It feels a little bit more like a partnership, but hopefully, it feels like something that’s been earned.

Faith still has in the back of her mind he’s the man responsible for her mother having to retire. That’s not something that’s easy to get over. Even though he has since worked with her mother [LisaGay Hamilton as Evelyn Mitchell].

Yes. There’s always that. That’s something that we try to track with a lot of things, some of the residual effects of what happens with these people. We don’t just blow them off. At the same time, it’s not something that’s at the top of mind constantly. Faith’s not always just talking about “you arrested my mom” or Will’s not always talking about “Amanda found me in a trash can and named me.” We try to find the moments when it feels like, “Okay, this might be a moment we can explore this personal relationship or something that happened.”

But the longest relationship he’s had is with Angie. We don’t see her a lot in this, but they’re no longer dating according to this. It’s like six months later, right? Which means that he’s starting to be ready to date. Is this like an opening where we can bring in Dr. Sarah Linton, who features so prominently in the books?

Potentially, but the relationship with Angie is so complicated. We got to really explore that in Season 1. It’s not like it’s over, I feel at the top of Season 2 it feels like there’s some caution around it. He can very quickly fall into the familiarity of this cycle that they’re in. They both trigger each other; it’s incredibly loaded. I think he’s a little cautious. But we introduce at the top of the season a new person that he’s not looking for but ends up getting somewhat smitten by and he’s piqued and curious and interested. She represents hope, a possibility of what this could look like. To answer your question, trust me, we talk about Sarah and how to do that and tackle that and bring that in authentically. It’s something that, definitely, we want to do right.

Related: Everything You Need To Know About ‘Will Trent’ Season 1

Did the shorter season change plans for how you were going to do the show?

I think there were some ideas that were there that had to be lifted. We talk about some stuff potentially maybe if there were to be a Season 3, some things we could explore there. Essentially, it just sort of truncated some things we were thinking about maybe playing with that might not be able to happen. It just makes you look at it and really go, “What do we really want to make sure we hit emotionally, character-wise for all our characters, what are the cases that we really think are going to really help highlight this. What cases can we have go on beyond just an episode?" Which I think is really fun because audiences get to really invest. They get to invest in this case a bit more. And you get to bring in some great actors when you give them a little arc. The shorter season allows us to be really economical. You’ve got to be really smart and just go, “Okay, evaluate what really do we want to.” If you stretch it out further, then you can play and introduce new ideas. But it really just became about consolidating.

These days broadcast TV doesn’t get a lot of respect, but this show is getting critical acclaim. What do you think it is about this show on broadcast that makes people have a different opinion of it than they do a lot of other procedurals?

I think we have some really great, smart writers. Obviously, it starts on the page. I think we’ve got some interesting, compelling characters. Will is somebody that’s left to center in a lot of ways. He’s complicated and he’s layered. I think the show in general is able to tackle drama, emotional stuff, yet have levity at times and sort of release the valve there, yet give you the crime and maybe some action stuff. It checks a lot of things, which isn’t easy to do. I give a lot of props and respect to our writers. We have a lot of conversations about that.

I feel like we thread the needle pretty well. Season 1 tackled tough subjects, yet found ways to include humor, kept its character but also gave you a crime that might be really interesting and we found ways to integrate that with our characters, which then you’re firing on all cylinders.

And I think the look of it is great. I think we were really smart about the visual language that we have for this show and how do you push that. I was just having conversations with our DPs recently, where we’re creating these languages for different styles for Will depending on what he’s dealing with emotionally and psychologically.

But it starts, first and foremost, with the story, with being written. I think we also have an amazing cast, really talented people that are coming in and bringing it. I’m pushing. I’m like, “How do we keep making it?" I thought we did a really solid Season 1, what are the lessons learned there and where can we elevate and capitalize further on?

You mentioned the look of it. The books take place in Atlanta and this films in Atlanta, so that does add an element that fans of the books can get into?

Yeah, Atlanta’s great. It’s a really fantastic city to film in and we get to go out on those locations where we get to show off Atlanta a little bit, sometimes rural, sometimes in the city. So, it’s great. It’s a different color, different texture, different flavor, some of the sounds when we get to hire locally, it’s really great. And there’s just a ton of talent now. Because they film so much there, the talent pool is pretty incredible. So, yeah, it’s great to be able to shoot on location where something takes place and not have to fake it.

Will Trent Season 2 premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC and streams next day on Hulu.