The subject matter comes up when a witness shockingly reveals that his testimony in a murder trial was false, forcing Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) and Faith Mitchell (Richardson) to race against the clock and reinvestigate a death-row case, trying to prevent an innocent man from being executed.
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“He not only served as a shepherd for things that I didn’t know, but he was a pioneer for my goals and my dreams, and I could trust him with that,” Richardson says. “To have him as well as everybody else in the crew surrounding you, I was really upheld in a beautiful way. I was able to relinquish some of the things that I would have felt precious if I was totally directing or totally acting to be able to have a split mind in those moments so that I could do both at the same time.”
“Here, you still have budget restrictions. But it’s like the world is your oyster, which can you imagine in terms of what you would want to do visually for this?” she says.
Read on for Parade's full interview with Iantha Richardson.
Did you learn anything new about yourself from directing this episode?One of the biggest things that I feel like I took away from this was people and people management and communication. The kind of leader or collaborator that I’d like to be I already knew, but to put it in action is a whole other thing. There were days where I had to give myself pep talks and be like, ‘Okay, well this is the roadblock, this is the obstacle, this is what you’re going up against, and how do you want to go about it. How do you want to actually show your character the way that you say you have it?’ So, I learned that I could do it in real time even when things weren’t or people didn’t feel like they were necessarily in ease side by side with me or alignment in some things, but it all worked out at the end of the day. Everybody is coming in for a common goal.
Ianatha Richard as Faith Mitchell and Ramón Rodríguez as Will TrentDisney/Daniel Delgado Jr.
In Season 1, Faith really disliked Will because he was responsible for her mother being forced to retire, but they have developed into this really great partnership. Talk about the journey along the way for you as an actress and how you develop the character.I sit with my coach, often every episode, Ted and I go through everything, and he really helps me track from Season 1 to now her feelings, her thoughts, her forgiveness, her reconciliations – all of those things, and how it all aligns with her relationship with Will. I think that Will and Faith’s story is one for the books. It requires a lot of empathy and compassion on her end and a lot of understanding and growth on his [end] also. I think they’ve both grown beautifully together as they’ve gone through different things, life-changing life-saving situations which brought them essentially closer and able to see each other’s point of view in a really beautiful way currently as it stands.
Ramón Rodríguez as Will Trent and Julia Chan as Ava GreenDisney/Matt Miller
At the end of your episode, it looks like Ormewood [Jake McLaughlin] might start a romance with Joanne Drexel [Ilfenesh Hadera]? Is that a tease for what may come?It was a tease. The writers wrote it in. Their chemistry was amazing. I just said press play, for lack of better words. Yeah, I think that there’s potential for romance for sure. We don’t know exactly where it’s going to go. Sometimes the writers say that they write to the chemistry of the show, and they do, but I think there is very good potential, given what they saw from my episode, for there to be more in the future, for sure.
Ilfenesh Hadera as Joanne Drexel and Jake McLaughlin as Michael OrmewoodDisney/Matt Miller
I really wanted to show that Black women specifically, and Faith being a Black woman, we change our hair so often. It’s normal for us to be like, I want my hair straight, and then I want it curly, and then I want braids. I was inspired by being on This Is Us, because if anyone would notice, Susan [Kelechi Watson] or any of the little girls had a different hairstyle almost every episode. And I was like, ‘That is so real.’ Just a mom every day, you might have this hairstyle when you go out, and it might just be normal or like whatever your normal is for another day. But I really wanted to highlight that in a creative way as Faith goes about her days.
Your character also has diabetes. Do you know somebody who has it? Did you have to research it? Why do you think it’s important for the character?I think it’s important for the character because Faith has, as well as Will, a large wall. It’s hard for her to be accessed, and when you have chinks in the armor it allows for vulnerability for people to get in. So, from a story standpoint, I can see that her diabetes is a place sometimes for people to seep in and to see her for not her weakness, but her actual self, her navigating this new thing as a very young woman.
Although her kids would make sure she took her insulin or pricked her finger and didn’t have too much sugar, it never felt like it was overriding her life. And so, stepping into this version with Faith, it feels like an override of life, and I can see how much she was carrying simultaneous to life itself. So, it was very eye-opening. It gave me a lot of information about her, this woman who I knew inside and out, or I thought I did, in a really beautiful way.
Are the dance segments something that the scriptwriters came up with and put in the episode? Or is something that you guys started doing on the set and then you said ‘oh we’re going to post these on TikTok and Instagram.’ Because they’re very fun.No! The scriptwriters, that’s them. Liz [Heldens], one of our showrunners loves dance. She had a whole show [The Big Leap] about dance right before this show came about. She loves to insert dance and music wherever she can. And I love it because I’m a dancer. So, that’s where it came from.
Do they bring in a choreographer, or do you just improvise?Oh no, we have a choreographer, and they’re amazing. They actually were nominated for an Emmy last year, surprisingly. Surprisingly, because we’re a procedural, not because they aren’t fantastic.
Bluebell as BettyDisney/Chris Reel
And her trainer can get her to do it?Her trainer, typically, as long as you tell them in advance, they can get her to do it. She has a lot of requirements of treats. So, that’s all she needs to get the job done.
Will Trent airs Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. Streams next day on Hulu.
Next,Will Trent Is Back! Season 4 Brings New Challenges and High-Stakes Cases for the GBI
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