“Anybody that's in the business knows you don't do scenes with dogs or babies,” actor Ramón Rodríguez said of his canine costar in Will Trent during a TCA press conference for the new ABC series. “It's a risk. It's a gamble. You don't know what you're going to get. [Betty]’s a bona fide pro. Look at her.” Ramón motioned to his lap, where Belle, the adorable dog who plays Betty, calmly sat throughout the entire conversation. “This is what it is on set. She's very relaxed. She's looking at her trainer for the treat, and she's got the best job, honestly, out of all of us. She comes in, knocks out her scenes, goes home in, like, an hour. It's amazing. We lucked out. She's amazing.”
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There is, perhaps, nothing as universally bonding to human beings as an adorable dog and Betty, played by Belle, serves as a great entry point to Will Trent as a character. “One of the brilliant things in the pilot that I thought was a great way to introduce a character, which they did brilliantly, is to have this scene with the chihuahua where we see him adopt Betty,” Ramón shared. “There was just a lot of things about the character that I really, really loved. Obviously, Karin [Slaughter] did an amazing job creating this sort of underdog, somebody that's a really resilient human being that had a complicated past and has figured out a way to navigate the world in a unique way and with a unique perspective that actually helps him with cases and crime and try to do the right thing. There was a lot of characteristics about the guy and his code, his moral compass, his empathy, his heart. Adopting a dog that he doesn't want.”
“I was really flattered and excited,” author Karin Slaughter said on being approached by ABC to adapt her best-selling books as a television series. “Liz [Heldens] and I had dinner in Atlanta before the series was even available, just because she was a fan. And she asked questions that a reader would ask. I don't want to slam anybody in Hollywood, but normally they're like, ‘Oh, I love this,’ and you can tell they've never read it. But Liz had actually read it, she's a reader. And Ramón gets the character. The book is the book and the show is the show, but what really matters is that they get what they're doing. They get the storytelling and they understand.” Fans of the books will undoubtedly spot a few changes, but as an executive producer, Karin’s personal touch is still on the series. “This show gives all of the things that I wanted to do always in the books, which is just deliver a fantastic story that's well told. And they've done that. And I've read other episodes, and I've seen other things that they've done, and I'm incredibly impressed and flattered that something that I did in my pajamas in my cabin in North Georgia, now these people are bringing to life in such a tremendous way and bringing their own imprint into it, because they're creative people. They're not mimeograph machines. So they're taking it and expounding upon it in a wonderful way that, as the originator, I'm very pleased with.”
“We are pulling from the books,” co-showrunner and executive producer Liz Heldens confirmed about the cases Will Trent will solve in each episode. “We're pulling from Broken, Unseen, obviously Fractured. There are a couple of cases that we just used our imaginations for. But as much as we can pull from Karin's work, the better, because there's no better thriller writer.” As fans of the show thusfar will know, Will Trent is full of interesting characters, from Will’s childhood friend turned love interest Angie to his new protege Faith. “Everybody's really fun to write for on the show,” Liz added. “This is a fantastic cast. Everybody can handle whatever you throw at them. And we keep pushing it in terms of tone and what the show can hold. We are constantly surprised and delighted, and that's a really fun challenge.”
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“In the pilot, one of the things that we wanted to end with was this notion that as Will and Faith are being partnered, that now Angie and Ormewood are being partnered, and that was a structural decision to help us in our storytelling,” explained Daniel Thomsen, the other co-showrunner and an executive producer on the series. “It's always challenging to make television no matter what the show is. But we like the pairings, and we actually have some episodes coming up where the pairings intersect and we get to see everybody working together… As fans of shows like ER and ensemble dramas from that golden era that did an amazing job of having a workplace that felt like a family and everybody has organic connections and also plot connections, we really tried hard to be thoughtful about how we were going to set up the storytelling for the season.”
The season is already off and running, with the first two episodes having completed the case of the abducted daughter of Will Trent’s childhood bully, played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar. “He was great,” said Ramón Rodríguez, who serves as a producer in addition to starring as the title character. “He came on and just brought Paul to life in a great way in that dynamic. And that's what's really great again about the pilot, is you do get a sense of the history and what was going on, and you learn it through character… I love the fact that there's someone that was bullying you your whole life, and now you're a special agent at the GBI, and here you are able to actually do something great and potentially rescue his daughter. So it was a lot of fun playing with Mark-Paul. He brought it every scene. And, yeah, he may come back. I mean, it was a great character.”
Time will tell if Paul will be back on the show, but you know who is guaranteed to be in every episode? Betty! I don’t get starstruck easily, but meeting her was a career highlight that seems hard to top. New episodes of Will Trent air on Tuesdays at 10/9c on ABC, with episodes available to stream the next day on Hulu.
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