[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Will Trent Season 3 Episode 13, “One of Us Now.”]
Will Trent’s (Ramon Rodriguez) venture deep into the Olas Initiative revealed some shocking secrets… including details on what’s lurking in his own mind. In the episode, the woman who escaped the cult’s compound recovered in the hospital and revealed to Angie (Erika Christensen) that their leader stole her baby and left her to suffer a postpartum infection, which is why she and her friend were trying to flee.
Meanwhile, Will attempted to find someone with doubts in the community to potentially help his infiltration — until the leader plied him with “soul water” and induced a hallucination fever dream in which Will danced disco, his pup Betty turned out to have a British accent, he confessed his love to Angie multiple times, and he admitted his unreadiness for a real relationship to Marion (Gina Rodriguez). Only part of that was real — once Angie and the team snuck onto the scene to rescue Will, he said those three words to her again, but she brushed them off as high talk.
So how was it for the cast to film such a lively fever dream moment? And what does Angie really think of Will’s emotional confession? TV Insider caught up with Christensen to break it all down!
To start, what’s it been like for you to explore a new romantic connection for Angie this season with Seth (Scott Foley)?
Erika Christensen: So interesting. I think it’s nice that everyone is kind of conflicted — I say everyone, but I’m not sure. [Laughs] What I like is that Scott’s character, Seth, is such an undeniably good human. He’s just really grounded. He’s such a good person, and specifically for Angie. He’s such a stable person. He can relate to her sobriety, and he’s just a very, very healthy, grounded person. And so wanting to just see Angie, who’s been through so much in the last three years, experience some moments of joy and some hopefulness is really nice. I mean, personally, I’m also conflicted about it, but it’s so nice.
Yeah, is there a part of you that’s rooting for them to work out? Or are you with the fans that say Will and Angie are endgame?
I’m not black and white about it because I go back and forth between trying to treat them like real people — as if I knew them all, and they were my friends — and just the characters that I love on TV.
If they were my friends, it would be like, I think that Will and Angie’s trauma bond is something that makes them family, and they have a beautiful, supportive relationship, but they probably should not be romantically involved. It would be nice to have each other in their lives, so that there’s always that person that fully understands, but then also someone that can help you be more forward-facing. That’s if they were real people.
As far as television goes, yes, I want them to be together. They so obviously love each other, and they have something that that isn’t necessarily better, but it’s different. It’s something that no one else could ever actually have, right?
We see that play out a little bit in the response to the officer-involved shooting when she just shows up and wordlessly walks in, and it seems like maybe she’s the only person that he even wants to talk to. What does that moment say about their relationship at this point?
That’s exactly what it is. It’s that they know each other. Not only have they grown up and lived every part of their lives together, but those types of shared experiences and what Angie went through last year or with trying to do the right thing and harming a young person, that sort of guilt and shame and everything that she had to work through there is — and that Will did not help her with. Now he ironically needs help through a similar situation.
Do you think that she’s gonna expect him to forgive her now that he’s gone through something similar?
You would think that he would gain some [perspective]. Of course, for me, it’s more about her forgiving him, but yeah, you would think that he would be able to relate more through this lens of his latest experience.
This episode has a really fun little moment with the hallucination and the disco scene. How fun was it for you guys to kind of dig into that little bit of ridiculous fancy?
Oh my God, it was the most fun. The rehearsal process was the most fun. We kept all sending each other videos of our rehearsals, and the smiles could not stop. And I mean, every department, too. During rehearsals, we also saw the lighting [team] rigging and setting up all the party lights, they were having a great time. I think it was awesome, also specifically because it was such a departure. That’s the joke. That’s been the joke since the beginning, especially from Jake McLaughlin. He’s always been like, “When’s the musical episode?” Not joking; he wanted it. He was like, “Let’s do it.” I don’t know what he was thinking, but I feel like this must have at least partially scratched that itch of finding a way to really make it story-wise make sense, and yeah, we did the musical episode.
The sequence also keeps the Will-Angie storyline going, when he says “I love you” to her. Do you think she’s really chalking that up to soul water, or does she know there’s more there?
I think she knows that deep down, the connection that they have won’t go away. So it’s there, but it was just the sacred water talking.
All season long, there’s been this recurring arc with Rafael Wexler [Antwayn Hopper] and Will. Considering Angie also goes back that far, is there something between them, too? Will we see them cross paths at some point?
Not that I know of so far. And I mean, I do know the rest of the season, so no. It’s interesting to see that they may have had little parts of their lives away from each other — just little chapters away from each other in the whole process of growing up. Rafael and Will had such an interesting, intense chapter together that it makes sense that they are fairly bonded, even though they hadn’t seen each other in 20 years. But yeah, I don’t know what specific overlap Angie and Rafael might have had, but I like that it’s there to be found at some later point also.
This season started out with Angie being reinstated, but she seems to really be leaning into taking more risks again. She took a risk with Jon the maintenance worker and then in this episode, she gets in right into it. Does she feel confident at this point that she’s in the good graces of the department?
I don’t know that she will ever fully know because there isn’t an official, “We all trust you now!” But I think she’s getting back toward trusting herself, which was sort of that biggest hurdle: being aware of the problem, being aware of the fact that she 100% thought she was on the right track with Crystal and was blinded by essentially their similarities and her empathy for this person and that she had to be sharper and be even more self-aware than she normally is in order to do her job and stay safe and keep other people safe. I think that’s kind of what she was putting on Will when he wanted to go undercover. Her thing was, “Don’t you understand that you fit exactly their target type? You are at risk.” Like, “Yes, you want to do it for your work, but also don’t do that.”
Disney / Wilford Harewood
Angie’s partnership with Michael is really strong this season. Are they doing a little bit of trauma bonding by having gone through breakups that were terrible for each of them?
Yeah, I’m sure. It’s really special, their relationship. I feel like Jake and I found something early on in shooting. And then, of course, it can only grow from there, both through the personal experiences and the characters’ experiences. And both going through the bad breakups or him having to choose to help Angie when she asked for help in kind of doctoring evidence in the Crystal-Lenny [murder] situation. Thank goodness he didn’t get implicated in it later. But yeah, I think they’re getting to that point where they’re fairly inextricably linked. It would be difficult for each of them to function without each other, even though they’ve been working on that, too. And it’s great to see Ormewood and Faith being roomies, and it’s great to see Angie having a romance and all these things. But in a way, I feel like, I mean, my joke has been that Angie and Ormewood are fraternal twins, separated at birth — somehow he got the good family life, but she didn’t. I feel a deep similarity, a frequency, between those two.
What else is to come from the last few episodes of this season? And what’s your reaction to the renewal for Season 4?
Oh my gosh. Okay, the amount of the story that they have crammed into the last six episodes is astonishing. I don’t know where to start. I mean, I can tell you, I directed Episode 17 of 18, and the amount of story that is in 17 alone is astonishing, and that’s just one of the upcoming six episodes. So there’s a lot to tune in for and a lot that changes to our view of this world we have created. And it sets up Season Four to be a whole new exploration.
And then my reaction to that is I’m excited. I have to recognize that this is how I felt last hiatus, too; I’m not a writer, so I don’t [know] … I’m kind of overwhelmed by the possibilities. I don’t know exactly where everything is going. I have some sense of an idea — things could change, but there is an idea of where Angie is going. But I’m just excited to go back to this work environment because it’s a place where it’s a safe, creative space, and it seems like, collectively, cast and crew, we’re grateful to be there, which is really special. Like, the crew is vacationing together as we speak. Not everybody, but the day after we wrapped, five people went to go snowboarding together and skiing together, and we got invited, too. Like, “Oh, we’re having a party over here, and we’re having a party over [there].” I don’t want to say the trite thing and say it’s a family, but it is a very tight-knit community. And in a time when not everyone is working, there’s not enough work to go around, we know how lucky we are. And then to, on top of being lucky to be working, work on something that we love and we are actually all invested in, with the cast and crew invested in the creative endeavor of this show, I’m super excited to get back into that place.
Will Trent, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
