‘Will Trent’: Erika Christensen on That Pregnancy Shocker & Making Her Directorial Debut

[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Will Trent Season 3 Episode 17, “Why, Hello, Sheriff.”]

Well, Erika Christensen promised Will Trent Episode 17 would be packed with big story developments, and she didn’t oversell it one bit.

On Tuesday’s (May 6) episode, in which Christensen makes her directorial debut, her character Angie gets some very unexpected news from her boyfriend and doctor Seth (Scott Foley): She’s pregnant. His manner of delivery is uniquely thoughtful; he tells her he’ll go along with whatever she chooses to do because the relationship with her is what matters. He’s in love with her, he declares. Seth’s stolid support isn’t just limited to the baby news. He’s also got a very measured approach to her prior news that she has been drinking too much lately thanks to her complicated feelings about the death of her abusive and neglectful mother. He doesn’t know all of the details about the latter, of course.

Meanwhile, Will (Ramón Rodríguez) and Faith (Iantha Richardson) are sent to cover a double homicide case with a stern local sheriff named Caleb (Yul Vazquez), and things go off the rails thanks to a loose cat trampling all over the crime scene. This results in a door being broken, with glass shards cutting all of the officers. The blood samples from the scene are all separated and tested by forensics, resulting in yet another jaw-dropper: Caleb is Will’s biological father. After the two strangers have a few awkward, even hostile exchanges, we’re still left with more questions than answers, so it’s a good thing he’s rumored to be returning for Season 4. Because they won’t have time to forge a father-son relationship right now, however fraught it becomes.

See, the perp in their case hasn’t just killed three people. He’s also unleashed a biological weapons attack on Atlanta as part of his plot to renew the world by destroying it. At the end tail end of the episode, we see Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), Nico (Cora Lu Tran), and Betty all being trapped in a chaotic hospital setting as it goes into lockdown with a swarm of infected patients.

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'Will Trent' Finale Details Revealed: Biological Attack on Atlanta Ahead

To break down the biggest beats of the episode and dig into her directorial debut, TV Insider caught up with Erika Christensen!

What made you want to direct an episode this season?

Erika Christensen: The reason I wanted to direct was one of my favorite parts of participating in movies and television, the whole art form, is the collaborative aspect of it and really feeling like I’m part of a team. So directing is the ultimate in that, feeling like I’m part of the team, and getting to collaborate more directly with all departments in a way that’s different than acting. So I just lucked out as far as which episode was, because it ended up being just the crescendo on the way up before the season resolves. It’s a good one.

The episode starts out with Angie in the hospital, and she doesn’t really get time to feel her pain of the bar fight. What did she take away from that encounter? 

It’s such an instant — you don’t want to call it karma, because it’s more personal than that, but it’s just proving you made a decision that goes against yourself and what’s right for you. And here’s proof, immediately. Like “Yes, that backfired immediately.” I think it’s interesting because she tries to have such kind of a heroic moment, and then it goes so poorly, and who knows how long it would have taken her to process that and sort of find her way back, had she not been presented with more pressing news.

She does kind of hold herself accountable, though, a little bit, by telling Seth about it right? 

Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, too, because she doesn’t often wallow in shame; she just owns it. But she’s having a shameful moment, and it speaks to the fact that he’s a very safe person, and he can really relate because he’s been there, and they’re in a relationship, and he just found out. But he’s not holding her accountable. So she steps up and, in a way, she would have preferred him to be angry. She would have preferred him to laugh and to call her the names that she would like to call herself in that moment. But he’s too good for that, and certainly, he’s distracted by the more pressing news as well. But he’s just a good, stable, non-judgmental, healthy person through that whole scene, navigating both bombshells.

So the pregnancy news is obviously huge, and like you said, it’s delivered in such a considerate and kind way. He’s talking to her as both her doctor and her boyfriend. Can you talk about — as director and actor — crafting the tone of that moment? It’s so unique.

Yeah, it’s fascinating because Scott and I had such a lovely time. He had a completely different idea. And I kept trying to get him to see my point of view, and he kind of was digging in and laughing at me, going, “Wow, you hate my idea.” … Basically, I wanted [Seth] to recognize how high the stakes were because he knows Angie so well, and he knows that this could be the last conversation they ever have. She could fully just be like, “This is too much.” Whether she decides to keep it or not, she’s just gonna ghost him, which would be the absolute worst-case scenario coming back from that. Maybe she doesn’t want the baby but then wants to be with him, and he’s like, “Yeah, I think I was cool with that, but I’m not sure…” There’s so many different ways that it could go, and he’s trying to be really open to all of them and just say, “I’m here for you. This relationship is what’s important to me,” which is beautiful…

Angie ended up feeling, in a word, undeserving of essentially really good news, and he’s emotionally intelligent enough to read that and try to give her grace, but also be concerned about the endless possibilities of where she might go from here. So for us, it was really finding the vulnerability of it and the crux of it was that he hadn’t had any time to process it. Someone handed him the iPad with her sheet on it right before he walked in the door, and he went, [gesturing scrolling] “Angie Polaski, scan, blood level, alcohol, pregnancy test,” everything right as he’s walking through the door. So he’s like, “Okay,” having to play the scene going, “Okay, do doctor things while I get my feet under me.”

What was Scott’s idea for the scene?

That [Seth] knew that she may completely act out, and he was completely prepared for any potentiality and was just like, she was it for him. She was his person. And so basically, I said, “Well, yeah, but what if you don’t speak to her for two years?” Because he was kind of like, “Even if everything blows up, you’ll wait for her to come around.” I’m like, “Yeah, what if? What if she won’t talk to you for like, two years before she comes around? That’s not sustainable. The stakes are higher than you know.” His idea was that he knows her so well that he’s emotionally prepared for any eventuality. And I was saying, “No, he knows her so well that he has to know this could be the end of everything.”

Speaking of knowing her so well, the conversation that she later has with Will, it’s not about the pregnancy, but about Didi. He cuts right to the chase of what she needs to hear, talking about how she is who she is in spite of her mother. How does that play into their whole relationship that they are at least friend soulmates?

Yeah, well, you nailed it … When Angie tells Seth that the mom died, he has no context, and she has to explain she was in a coma. She can’t even get into like how incredibly abusive she was before that. There’s too much to catch up on in that moment, and she’s more just surprised that Seth gives her the opportunity to kind of examine what the impetus was, which is just not judging her anyhow.

So then the conversation with Will, where she chooses not to tell him about the pregnancy but to tell him about Didi, their shorthand is — because they are essentially family, and it’s just they know that, and they appreciate that about each other — that they don’t have to explain everything. They have … probably 25 years of friendship that they just cut straight to the heart of things because the context is all there, and Angie still puts up a front with everybody, but it’s definitely so much easier when the context is already laid in.

I loved the scene with Faith and Angie in the bathroom, and she kind of overhears it when she’s talking to the toilet. How much did it mean to Angie to have that thoughtful reaction from another woman who maybe doesn’t have all that context, but is still speaking pretty well about it?

Yeah well, she is a mother. She can actually speak on the subject from a point of view that Angie can’t even fathom. There’s, there’s such a wisdom to Faith. Having experienced it, and having experienced it at such a young age, Angie has to respect Faith for everything that she’s been through, and anything that’s like really genuine catches Angie so off guard. So for Faith to have something so subtle and encouraging and beautiful to say when Angie’s just sort of, in the moments before that, going, “All right, I’m not cut out for this.” And then for Faith to say, essentially, “You are cut out for this,” kind of throws everything back in the air again.

Do you think it’s gonna sink in? 

Yes.

Disney / Wilford Harewood

About the case of the day, I really like some of the stylistic choices you made, like with the cat running in the crime scene and how that all was filmed, and just the chaos of the hospital, and then the glass breaking in slow-mo. Can you talk about bringing those little moments to mix up the momentum of the episode?

Sure. The tone of Will Trent is distinctly both the heavy moments and the weight of the crimes being addressed, and so much humor. And so the writers really just tee it up where you can see it…. They write for the actors. They know us. They know what we can do, and they know everyone’s sense of humor… And April, who is Betty’s trainer, hooked us up with trained cats, which is pretty impossible….

Basically, I allowed myself to become obsessed with what I actually wanted to see. The one with the cat was a big old scene with so many moving parts, and we got to dedicate as much time as we possibly could…. The cat was a major pro, and the effects team and the stunts team were totally set with the glass. So, we were down to the second where we had to pull the plug on production, and they nailed it, and it was just beautiful and amazing and such a relief. I had nightmares afterward that we shot it at 24 frames, that we didn’t shoot it in slow-mo, nightmares I have now. I had to go back and watch it, and I was like, “Okay, thank God, okay.” But yeah, reading the script and wanting to kind of let my hopes and dreams become true for what this thing should be was the most fun. And Tim is our DP for this episode, he was so game, and he’s so creative and such a good storyteller that we had a great time.

In this episode, we get a lot of humor through Michael and the VA system and Nico. Can you talk about bringing that energy to bear when there’s so much weight with what’s happening to Angie and even Will?

Oh yeah. I mean, basically, I just treated it like they were completely [separate]. They’re not even part of the same show. You were shooting two different movies. And I wanted to bring sort of the dryness of it, to let the humor shine, and basically get out of their way. Just let them do their thing, not do anything fancy, make sure they have this space where we just watch them and see how funny they are. The actress that works at the VA… I just love her so much. And you know, the clock changing was — that happened in real-time on the set as a little effect that we did with the clock. Our onset dresser, Brock, was like, “Watch this. We can do it. We can do it. Watch it change from 4:29 to 4:30.” [I was like,] “No way we’ll do that. We’ll do that digitally in post.” And he’s like, “No, we can do it.” I had to stop myself from cheering when that happened. But yeah, to answer your question specifically, I basically treated them stylistically like they were completely not even on the same show, to allow those tones to be what they wanted to be.

What can you tease about the finale with this biological attack that’s taking effect? 

What’s so interesting about this episode, 317, is that there is a story arc that is closed. The case is solved, but it’s just we cover just the tip of an iceberg, and it becomes clear that we have a much bigger problem on our hands. And as you saw in the final moments, like it’s all just act six, where we’re in the interrogation room and in the hospital going back and forth, realizing this is out of control already. This might be a very big problem. We pick up 318 right from there. … So yes, Ormewood and Betty and Nico are still in lockdown in the hospital [with] Dr. Seth. Oh my gosh, yeah, it’s chaos.

Will Trent, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC