‘S.W.A.T. Exiles’ Star Ronen Rubinstein Explains Jude Reaching His ‘Breaking Point’

S.W.A.T. Exiles reveals Jude’s (Ronen Rubinstein) undercover assignment when he’s forced to go back in in the latest episode — and the person he had to be back then and must be again now is not one that he, Hondo (Shemar Moore), or the rest of the 44 like very much. TV Insider spoke with Rubinstein and executive producer Jason Ning about that. Warning: Spoilers for S.W.A.T. Exiles Season 1 Episode 6 ahead!

Jude was previously undercover with a white supremacist group, and it’s when Shayla, the sister of one of the guys — with whom he was involved — calls him to tell him she’s pregnant that he gets pulled back in. With the group planning something big and the leader locked up and his son, Shane, running things, Jude must remain “Bobby” — but that means the rest of the squad seeing just what he had to be like, including punching a Black security guard who interrupts a robbery multiple times to keep him from being shot. As he reveals over the course of the episode, he shot a cop; body cam footage shows that he did so in self-defense, since the other officer was about to shoot him.

As the 44 discovers, the group’s going after the sister of the accountant who flipped; Jude goes dark and goes with them, despite the risk, and does what he can to protect the family. But when Jude has to break cover, Shane pulls him aside to hit him around and reveal that Shayla lied to him and there’s no baby. When Hondo and the agent, Elliot, running the op show up, Shane takes Jude hostage. Jude tells Hondo to take the shot, which his leader does once he ducks down.

After, Sammy (Lucy Barrett) tells him that she realized that while she opened up to him, he never did the same with her. He couldn’t, he says. She can’t reconcile sleeping with someone who’s done what he did.

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Jude then goes to see Hondo at his house. Hondo says his father was a Black Panther, so just think what it felt like for him to sit across from the white supremacist group’s leader describing in detail the joy of hanging a Black man. He couldn’t say anything because justice mattered more. He also watched Jude beat an innocent Black man for the sake of doing his job and had to defend why he did it, something that most Black people would call him a sell-out for, but he believes in the badge and what it can stand for and fights for the good in people. Jude says he thought he was doing the same thing but he doesn’t know anymore. He hated every second of what he had to be. Hondo knows that, which is why he’s not taking his badge. But he has to remind the team and himself that it’s not who he is.

Below, in separate interviews, combined for clarity, Ronen Rubinstein and executive producer Jason Ning break down Jude’s backstory.

Last time we talked, you said this episode was the proudest work of your life and I can see why because it is heavy for you. Let’s start by talking about that Hondo and Jude conversation at the end, because that was such a good scene. What did Jude want and need to hear from Hondo there? Was it what Hondo said?

Ronen Rubinstein: I think Jude, especially when I first read it, I think Jude very much assumed that Hondo was going to let him go from the squad, which in my opinion, he had every sort of justification to do so. I don’t think we could have been upset with Hondo if he did choose to do that, but the fact that Hondo, being such a veteran, I’m sure he’s seen a fair share of his own traumatic experiences and missions and all of the above — the fact that he, I think, understands Jude and understands that it was still part of the job, and that’s just sometimes the really difficult things that you’re going to have to do on the job, this is kind of the extreme level of it.

So I think that Hondo might understand Jude more than anyone else in this situation and not necessarily come at it from an emotional standpoint. So I think that’s kind of where Jude’s head was at coming to his house and the fact that Hondo basically said, “Listen, man, I’m going to give you another chance, but don’t ever do that s**t again, and you are now going to have to earn the trust back of all of us.” So what a wrench Jude gets thrown in the relationship with, first of all, Hondo, which didn’t get off to a smooth start in the beginning of the season, and the rest of the gang now, especially Sammy and how much all that information affected her personally.

And you know what was so beautiful? It was my first scene to really get to share with Shemar, who I’ve been just dying to get a meaty scene with. And the fact that I mostly just had to sit there and listen to him murder this monologue, it was such a treat, and I felt like I had courtside seats to a very, very special performance. So I’m very grateful for Shemar and the writers for that scene, and it was such a treat to just sit there and listen.

Courtesy of Starz

That last conversation between Jude and Hondo was, I think, one of the best scenes of the season.

Jason Ning: I cosign that completely. It really felt like, from a personal standpoint, that I realized in that episode that we really had something special as far as the storytelling, and we’re still the procedural, we still have a case of the week, but given this format that we have on Starz, we have the opportunity to be boldly and unabashedly action forward, but also not afraid to really explore character, and the cases don’t end with each episode. The effect of those cases resonates and carries from episode to episode, and so you build on what happened in the prior episode, and I think [Episode] 6 was a great example of how things came to a head with his character and really paid off in an emotional, cool way.

Why did you add killing a cop to Jude’s backstory?

Ning: Yeah, look, Jude’s one of my favorite characters to write because he’s somebody who spent so long pretending to be someone else that he’s not entirely sure where the performance ended and the real person begins. And so he spent years in this incredibly dark world, and we wanted to have a starting point which really put him in a very dark place that conflicted him morally, internally, messing with his identity, and the scenario where a cop died in this event that he feels partly responsible for felt like a great starting point to really have this dark soup that he’s coming out of when we meet him initially. As you know, on the surface, he’s confident and charismatic and sometimes arrogant, but underneath that, there’s somebody who just desperately wants to belong and isn’t entirely convinced he deserves to. And so coming from that really dark place, that’s what makes his relationships with the other members of the team so interesting, and just the challenge for him is to actually let somebody know who he is.

Why did Jude tell everyone about killing a cop? Because I don’t know if any of them would’ve found out if he didn’t. Or did he not want to risk that being something else they found out another way?

Rubinstein: I think Jude hit a breaking point… Luckily, I found out that something along the lines of this episode would happen very early on. So I had something to think ahead to and also, in a way, plot little moments in each episode leading up to 6. I’ve kind of played Jude throughout the season as somebody that really is simmering underneath the surface and is about to explode at any moment, but hides it with his charm and his grin and his smile and his very funny one-liners that I’ve been really enjoying. But knowing that we would get to a breaking point, I think that was it. And I just don’t think he could keep it in anymore, especially after what he did at the very beginning of Episode 6. I think he felt disgusted with himself and horrified that he got pulled back into that world… This is not protocol and he absolutely should not have been doing that — but I think he truly wanted to hear from his maybe romantic partner back in that world. And the fact that her terrifying brother showed up, I think changed everything that Jude had in mind. So I just don’t think he could keep it anymore, otherwise he would lose his mind or worse. I think he’s just been keeping that in for over two years, and at some point people break, and I think that was it for him.

Courtesy of Starz

Yeah, because Jude finds out that his one safe place while he was undercover was a lie with Shayla saying she’ll be glad when Shane kills him in that moment. And then he also loses his safe place for who he really is, as Jude with Sammy. So how is he doing at the end going forward without that?

Rubinstein: I don’t think very well. I will forever be thanking our writers, Jason Ning and Kendall [Lampkin], because this was really… As the kids say, they were in their bag with this one because this was a brilliantly written script. I just had to show up on set and do it. But the amount of different dynamics that they were able to squeeze into this episode, especially the Shayla and the Sammy sort of parallels, it’s so brilliant. And I don’t know if he has a safe place now at the end of Episode 6. And I think he’s probably going to walk into the 44 headquarters into a very cold and icy environment, and we’re definitely going to see that in the upcoming episodes. I think it’s going to take a very, very intense effort to gain people’s trust back, and especially Sammy…. Yeah, that was so heartbreaking that that’s the wrench that they got thrown into their relationship. It’s kind of unfathomable, especially killing a police officer.

Something that stands out is how silent Jude gets once at the beginning of this episode, the others are told about what he did undercover and the video shown and as he’s getting ready to go back undercover. And the way you played that sequence was so, so good.

Rubinstein: Thank you. Yeah, I went to a very pretty intensely dark place for this episode because I knew when I first read the script and I knew this was the subject matter we were going to handle, I kind of felt like I couldn’t give it anything less than 150%. This episode destroyed me spiritually, physically, as I’m sure you see later in the episode. I get my ass beat, but kind of deserved it, too. So yeah, this episode really took it out of me, and I’m very happy that I went to that place because I think this is what the material deserved.

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