Ramon Rodriguez says Season 4 will focus on Will Trent’s ‘rage’
Over its first three seasons, the Atlanta-shot ABC show “Will Trent” has placed its lead character in a series of traumatic story arcs.
Will has faced repressed memories of his foster mom’s murder, the death of a colleague he liked, the moral need to arrest his closest confidant and his accidental shooting of a teenager. Season 4 is not going to let up on tormenting Will, according to Ramon Rodriguez, the actor who plays him.
“We really were interested in exploring Will’s rage, his anger, and watching him unravel,” Rodriguez told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a Zoom call this week previewing the new season, which returned Jan. 6. “Will Trent,” based on novels written by Atlanta’s Karin Slaughter, is set and shot in Atlanta and has become one of ABC’s most reliable draws.
During a lighter moment in the debut episode, Will denies his rage to his unconventional therapist, Dr. Roach (Margaret Cho), who has him play pickleball. At a moment of frustration, Will’s anger boils up, and he slams the poor pickleball to high heaven.
“He doesn’t need to sit on a leather couch and do the ‘How do you feel?’ sort of thing,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve seen him chew up that type of therapist. Pickleball is a smart strategy. It gets him out of his head and into his body so Dr. Roach can poke and prod. Hopefully, he can really begin to look inward.”
One source of Will’s anger is the mourning of any potential long-term relationship with Atlanta Police Department detective Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen), his childhood foster home buddy. Instead, Angie is pregnant and engaged to Seth (Scott Foley), a surgeon who emotes calm stability.
“It’s the thing Will always wanted himself: to create a family,” Rodriguez said. “But as much as it pains him and hurts him, he also recognizes what a big deal this is for Angie to have this level of security. We end up watching them in this gray area of having to still be around each other and work together. Can they still be friends?”
Will also struggles with what should be seen as good news. Last season, he discovered the identity of his biological father: a by-the-books sheriff named Caleb Roussard (Yul Vazquez). He isn’t quite attuned to the new dynamics of Caleb’s family, complaining to Dr. Roach that they are “loud” and “oversalt their food.”
Dr. Roach: “Maybe you are looking for reasons for this not to work because you don’t feel worthy of a family.”
Will: “You make me out to be a rather sad man, Dr. Roach.”
Dr. Roach: “You’ve been surviving on crumbs, and now you have the whole cake.”
Will: “Yes. But it is a carrot cake with raisins.”
Rodriguez said Caleb evokes in Will a complicated mélange of emotions.
Caleb “seems to have a warm, loving home” that Will never had before, he said. “As open as Caleb is being, Will has to work through some resentments. By the end of episode two, you see Will offer Caleb coffee. It’s a beautiful moment because it’s an invitation he has never extended before.”
The producers for a time teased that Will’s real dad might have been James Ulster (Greg Germann of “Ally McBeal” fame), Will’s former foster dad and a cunning serial killer who killed Trent’s mom when he was an infant. During the Season 4 debut, Ulster busts out of prison and resumes a killing spree that includes multiple murders filmed at the former Buckhead Diner, which closed in 2021 in real life.
After Ulster kidnaps Caleb’s grandson, Will confronts Ulster and voluntarily swaps himself out at the end of this past week’s episode, which was Rodriguez’s second time directing on the show.
“I had a lot of fun directing this episode,” Rodriguez said, “and showing similarities between Ulster’s rage and Will’s rage.”
While there are no big new additions to the cast this season, the producers decided to promote Kevin Daniels, who plays Atlanta Police Department detective Franklin Wilks, to a regular cast member.
“We love Franklin as a character,” said Rodriguez, who is also an executive producer on “Will Trent.” “He was always there, but we wanted him to be more present.”
Daniels possesses a comedic streak the producers wanted to mine more this year. During the first episode, Franklin endears himself to a woman by singing “I Will Survive” with her after she discovers she was not Ulster’s only lover while he was in prison.
“He is just fantastic in that scene,” Rodriguez said. “It’s a blessing to be on a show for four seasons, and you get to promote people who are deserving and doing great work.”
And fans of Will’s beloved Chihuahua Betty (Bluebell) won’t be disappointed.
“She will be heavily involved in a case,” Rodriguez said. “That’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s always great reuniting with her. She comes running to me. She’s very comfortable with me in my arms.”
But since Will takes Betty everywhere, she spends an inordinate amount of time with him in the car. “We do these driving sequences, which are really hard,” Rodriguez said. “She has a person with a safety line in the passenger seat under a black tarp. She’s propped up on a pad. It looks casual and comfortable, but it’s weird and awkward.”
If you watch
“Will Trent,” Season 4
8 p.m. Tuesdays, available the next day on Hulu and Disney+
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
