‘S.W.A.T. Exiles’ Star Shemar Moore on Who Hondo Can Trust

S.W.A.T. Exiles told viewers in the first episode who’s spying on the team (Adain Bradley‘s Malik), let Hondo (Shemar Moore) in on the fact that there is a mole in the third, and featured another major moment in the fourth. TV Insider spoke with Moore, Bradley, and executive producer Jason Ning about that and more. Warning: Spoilers for S.W.A.T. Exiles Season 1 Episode 4 ahead!

Hondo faces questions from a review board — including Carrero (James Le Gros) and Pike (Lenora Crichlow) — when he shoots who appears to be a civilian during a hostage situation. Footage from a drone on scene should show what happened, but he tells Ethan (Freddy Miyares) not to recover it just yet. Instead, he uses that to set a trap for the mole, and so he sees that it’s Malik who goes to get it from his office in hopes that turning it over will be the final nail in Hondo’s SWAT career coffin.

According to Moore, Hondo “was looking more toward Jude [Ronen Rubinstein]” as the mole, but notes he doesn’t know them well enough yet. “I think he had his ideas of Malik, but it was tough for him, to be honest, one African American man to another. It’s like, why would a brother take another brother down? He struggled with that,” he admits. “And so then when Ethan comes along and helps him out and they find out the truth, not only was it a surprise, but it was heartbreaking, a letdown, that a man of color would buy into the machine and be used as a pawn to take out the legend and the legacy and the dignity of what this man has built. But they’re such Gen Z, they don’t appreciate and maybe haven’t done their research to understand the dignity and the trials of what Hondo has been through and earned.”

For Ning, Hondo has to find out when he does because he doesn’t want viewers “to be too far ahead” of him. “He is our smartest character on the show, and it just felt like there wasn’t too much story to be drawn out in having this mole working against him, and I thought there was more interesting conflict and drama that would occur once he knows who the mole is,” the EP explains. “What does he do with that information? Does he confront him? Does he weaponize him? And it’s where the story took us, and I’m so glad it did because I think it really pays out well.”

According to Bradley, while Malik may be “probably the most capable recruit on paper,” he doesn’t realize it’s too easy for him to get that footage because “he’s not as smart as Hondo. He still has that naiveté. He’s 25, he’s young.” He also wants that footage to prove that there wasn’t a gun so that Hondo is guilty of what he’s accused of and he’s right to be spying on him. “He wants to be vindicated,” the star says. “It would be easier and make him feel better if he did. There’s a mix between the want and the actual belief.”

As for what’s next now that Hondo knows, “If you’ve seen the original show, you know Hondo — and Shemar — does not play,” teases Bradley. “There may be something a little physical that fans will be into. It really comes to a head and you see them have a real conversation and you may see him get down a little bit.”

While Hondo has learned that he can’t trust Malik, Ethan has proven himself, by helping him set up the camera to catch whoever went after the drone footage. So, why does Hondo trust Ethan?

“Ethan is transparent in that he is very good at what he’s good at. And so what Hondo is great at, Ethan can’t touch, but Ethan is great at something Hondo doesn’t know anything about. And the fact that the nerd, the quirky guy and the alpha male are able to blend and trust each other, I just think that’s interesting,” Moore tells us. “I, Shemar, in reading it, didn’t see it coming. The audience isn’t going to see it coming. But then when it happens, it’s a very cool relationship. It’s actually similar to Criminal Minds with Derek Morgan having that buddy love affair with Penelope Garcia [Kirsten Vangsness]. It’s just this interesting dynamic of you would never see these two worlds collide, but they do and it’s beautiful. And so Hondo and Ethan, there’s something really cool about them. They each know how to play their position and in that comes a lot of trust.”

Adds Ning, “As we were building it, it happened organically. We realized that Ethan becomes somewhat of a vault for all of the characters, and that each one of them throughout the season will come to him and unload their secrets because they realize there’s no hidden agenda with Ethan. He is who he is. And so Hondo realizes very quickly that he is becoming the member of the team that he kind of trusts and implicitly. And so in that moment, it felt like he needed an ally and Ethan was the obvious choice.”

Before the truth comes out, Malik pushes Cassidy (Zyra Gorecki) to say she didn’t see a gun, since she’s the only one who was in a position to. She’s torn, unsure about what she did see, but she does eventually say she didn’t see a gun. That was “hard” for Bradley, since Gorecki is one of his best friends. “You see the internal struggle with Malik soon around mid-season. So yeah, I think it was tough and we get to explore that, too,” he says.

For Ning, “that’s the fun of doing my job as a writer, is you get to put your characters through the worst experience as possible and see how they come out on the other side of it. And I’ll say this, it gets worse for Cassidy before it gets better, but her character is so interesting in that the impetus for her character was there was this Navy SEAL that had lost his leg and worked his way back for years to active deployment with an actual prosthetic leg. … [For Cassidy,] the tragedy of the loss of the leg is fairly recent, and so she’s overcompensating a lot. She’s very internal and she’s all about trying to be the best. I thought that’s such a great journey for her character and that we could really put her through the ringer of she really wants this and idolizes Hondo, but then is put in this really tricky position where she thinks she has to betray him, then realizes she’s wrong. And so that push-pull and the valleys and peaks of that relationship continue throughout the season, and it really does pay off well.”

Elsewhere in the episode, we learn that the woman Malik has been meeting with is the mayor’s chief of staff. And according to Bradley, he’s not sure how much he can trust her. “You really see the doubt starting to crop in,” he adds. “To be honest, I think he’s most worried about whether or not he can trust himself.

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S.W.A.T. Exiles, Fridays, Starz