‘This Is Us’ Alum Susan Kelechi Watson on Branching Out With Murder Mystery ‘The Residence’

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Residence Season 1.]

If you have yet to tune into Netflix‘s Shondaland White House murder mystery series The Residence, then you’re missing out on the cleverly crafted comedic crime tale bringing together a strong ensemble of stars, among which is This Is Us vet Susan Kelechi Watson.

But don’t expect to find Beth Pearson in her role as White House assistant usher, Jasmine Haney. Playing opposite Giancarlo Esposito‘s A.B. Wynter, a role originally filled by the late Andre Braugher, Watson’s Jasmine finds herself among the suspects when her boss winds up dead on the evening of a State dinner.

Frustrated over the realization that she won’t be getting the promotion she’s waited years for, viewers meet Jasmine as she drinks her worries away, unaware that A.B. has been killed and is lying out on the third floor’s game room. When Detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) arrives, Jasmine is the one to walk her through the halls of the storied residence, uncertain of where the investigation will lead.

Ultimately, Jasmine has no hand in A.B.’s death, but in an hour-and-a-half finale installment, Cordelia walks several of the potential suspects, including Jasmine, through the White House to share the version of events she’s figured out, applying metaphorical pressure on the attendees so that the killer might reveal themselves.

[Spoiler] It turns out that the killer is Lilly Schumacher (Molly Griggs), the White House’s social secretary, who had it out for A.B. as he opposed the changes she wished to implement in the home. A series of convenient events allowed Lilly to kill A.B., while others picked up the pieces, unaware of who the true killer was, and a carefully torn page from a journal allowed Lilly to plan the item to look like a suicide note, stirring confusion as A.B. suffered from blunt force trauma on the back of his head, had ingested poison, and also had slashed wrists.

Below, Kelechi Watson opens up about her newest role working alongside this impressive ensemble, discusses the reshooting process following Braugher’s death, and discusses an interesting link between this White House murder mystery and former costar Sterling K. Brown‘s presidential murder mystery series, Paradise, among other exciting details. Read more below.

The Residence has quite an ensemble of characters. What was it like to collaborate with such a varied group of performers?

Susan Kelechi Watson: It’s so fun. The energy you see on the camera, we have behind the scenes as well. I feel really fortunate to have been a part of it because you just can’t imagine better people, and that’s always great when you have really talented folks, but they’re just really good people as well. So much was going on when we did this show between strikes and between Covid, and we lost our dear Andre [Braugher], and there are just so many things that we were kind of up against, and yet this show inspired so much joy. It was such a beautiful thing to have to help us get through all these tough things that were going on around it.

Did you have to reshoot a lot of scenes since so many of Jasmine’s moments onscreen crossover with A.B. Wynter, who was originally played by the late Andre Braugher?

Yes, we did. We had to redo all of the first four episodes. Any parts that Andre was originally in, Giancarlo reshot. So I basically shot most of my scenes from episodes one through four

How was it welcoming Giancarlo Esposito into the ensemble and working on those reshot scenes?

So amazing. There was so much love in getting to know him and hearing all his stories. He’s just so prolific with all the work that he’s done throughout the course of his career. He has such iconic roles that I really admire, some of which start with Spike Lee and then go into Breaking Bad, and then most recently, the show that he had done on Netflix, [The Gentlemen]. He’s such a mainstay in our industry, and to be able to get to know him and work with him and find out what a beautiful person he is to collaborate with was awesome.

You also share some scenes with J.D. Hall, one of the actors playing George McCutcheon. Did you ever acknowledge the fact that he features as a White House worker in your This Is Us costar Sterling K. Brown’s series Paradise?

We talked about it. J.D. probably has a better story than I do, but we definitely talked about it. I thought J.D. was wonderful. So however it happened, I knew that he either got the role or was going in for the audition of the role, and you see what beautiful work he did on Paradise that was such an amazing episode and he was so fabulous in it and he, he’s just amazing in our show as well.

You’ve taken on other roles since This Is Us, but none as prominent as Jasmine. Was it fun playing a character so different from Beth Pearson?

It’s always so fun to play somebody completely different than the last person that you’ve played and to jump into a totally different world of the White House, the residence of the East Wing, which we don’t get to explore that very often. And to have a woman who is running the East Wing was phenomenal as well. I was able to learn more about that job through Haley [Rivero] O’Connor, who was actually one of the White House [consultants]. So it was great to have that hands-on knowledge there when we were beginning shooting and be able to speak to her separately. When I first read [Jasmine], I fell in love with who she was and how she saw this whole world and the mystery of her, and the depths of her commitment and love of the White House.

Did you know who the killer was from the start, or did you and the cast learn as you received scripts?

I think we all went in blind, but then at a certain point, I might have asked [Paul]. I just really wanted to know. And then some people waited until they read the last script to know, and then some people never knew. Some people in the cast are literally just finding out as we all watched the last episode together the day before it premiered. So it was a really well-kept secret.

How did you feel about the reveal? Did you predict that outcome?

No, I did not predict that. I thought Paul William Davis just did such a brilliant job weaving this together, and that final episode is so epic in the way that you see how all the clues come together. It’s quite complex, and I think that’s what makes it a really good murder mystery. You want to hide the secret deep, and you want people to question [everything] up until the very last minute. And that’s what makes it really fun and exciting to watch.

Much of the finale episode follows the characters as Cordelia walks them through the White House. What was it like filming on those recreation sets?

Just the scene in the Yellow Oval Room alone, when she’s recalling the case, it took about four days. So it was a pretty massive undertaking, especially since there were so many people in the room. Most of the cast was there for the big reveal, and the White House itself, the attention to detail that they paid in recreating it was so helpful as a character because it just dropped you really into the center of the action, and it made you a part of that world immediately.

Jasmine gives the first tour of the White House to Cordelia in the premiere. Did you get a crash course in the layout of the famous abode?

No. But the good thing about it was I would ask somebody, like, “Wait, where’s this? And where’s that?” But they gave us a whole tour of the set in the first couple of days. But for me, it’s a lot to try to memorize. So the good thing about the White House is that every room, like the Yellow Oval Room, is a yellow oval room, the Lincoln Bedroom, you’re going to see Lincoln in there. So it does help that everything is descriptive in the title. And that made a lot of it really easy for me to remember.

Every episode is titled after a famous murder mystery. Do you have any favorites from the genre?

Not that I leaned into it for the performance, but I’m a huge fan of Knives Out, and I loved Colombo back in the day. I used to watch reruns of that with my dad when I was little, and I loved that show. The funny thing with Colombo was that we already knew who it was from the beginning. So the big mystery was how he uncovered it, and that’s what I love is watching how detectives have their particular style and how they get to the bottom of the case.

Cordelia may have solved this case, but who knows what others there could be on the horizon? If the show were to return, would you like to see Jasmine back in the mix?

I would come back in a heartbeat.

The Residence, Season 1, Streaming now, Netflix