When Will Trent airs tonight, it will mark Iantha Richardson’s television episodic directorial debut, and it’s quite an episode as it deals with capital punishment, giving her quite the topic to tackle.
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.
“I loved it,” Richardson exclusively tells Parade of getting assigned such weighty material to direct. “I never anticipated in my life being able to tell that lens of it. Even in playing a detective, I never anticipated being a detective on this side of capital punishment. I thought what an opportunity to shine a lens on what it looks like. To show that the people that you see, who you think are doing certain things, aren’t always there, and to eradicate stereotypes, to show that we aren’t monoliths. All of those things are genuine purposes of mine personally. So, I was really grateful that I was able to be a part of that narrative.”
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Both Ramón Rodríguez, who stars as Will Trent, and Christensen have directed previous episodes of the hit ABC series, so Richardson had the support of her cast and crew when she took the reins. But she says when it came to having to direct her own scenes, she trusted a lot on her scene partners and on her DP Tim Gillis.
“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.”
The one big difference between previous projects that Richardson has directed and the “It Was a Meat Cute” episode of Will Trent was the money. Previous projects include a short film and a web series, which had her scrambling to figure things out with the finances.
“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.
But time was also a fact. “There’s a lot more time than any short that I’ve ever done,” she continues. “So, I think it just felt a lot more easeful and streamlined. But you also have other people who have the idea that this is their baby, and so you want to be able to carry it to success as much as possible. Somebody’s handing something to you and you’re trying to hand it back as much as you can better than what they gave you.”
Read on for Parade's full interview with Iantha Richardson.
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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
Speaking of growth, one of the things I noticed in your directorial episode is that when Will goes on his date with Ava, he’s not wearing his three-piece suit. He’s actually wearing a very cool jacket and a sweater underneath that. That’s a very different Will. How did that come about that? That wasn’t necessarily my doing, but I would have said something about it. We have a costumer, Mary Jane [Fort], who is beautiful at what she does and knows story extremely well. So that was hers, for sure. But I think the divergence from his normal three-piece suit had a lot to do with the storyline that was being told. He’s not in his normal space; he’s trusting somebody in a way that he does not trust people at all, specifically a woman outside of Angie. That is unheard of. He is really letting go.The theme of this is that you could let go and life will not break apart. The overarching theme is rage. And so, this is a slice of life that takes us out of this overarching very angry, rage-filled and honestly, self-loathing version of Will and puts him in joy. It puts him in fun and adventure. And I think his clothing is a reflection of that.
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
But Faith has fun, because you have so many different hairdos. Most of those are wigs though, right, because you couldn’t do all that to your own hair?They weren’t, but now they are. Some of them were, some of them weren’t, which you know can cause damage to your hair, which is nobody’s fault but me wanting to be creative with the hairstyles. But now in this season, they are all wigs. A lot of them were like pieces to the hair that were added on, but a lot of that was my hair, actually, at that time – other than the braids, obviously.
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.
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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.
My grandma had diabetes for most of her life. She died at 96. And my vantage point from it was so removed because I was young at the time when I was around her when she had it. But it almost felt like it wasn’t a thing for her. She was so good at holding everything [together]. She had 10 kids, so that was one thing.
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.
There have been some really fun dance videos that have come from this set. I know that you have studied dance, and I think maybe you were with Alvin Ailey for a while? I wasn’t with the company, but I got my BFA in dance from a dual program with the Ailey School and Fordham University. I’ve performed with Ailey in their Peace Memorial and some of their City Center seasons, but I haven’t been in the company first or second. But I did go to the school, and I trained with them, and that’s where I got my college degree.
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.
Does everybody have moves?Yes, they do! Surprisingly. Even the people who act like they don’t or don’t want to, they are forced because we have to for the show, but they all can dance, and I love to watch it. It just brings joy to the set.
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
Betty is so much the heart of the show. We all love her. Is it difficult to direct Betty?No. She just has her own set of rules and way that she operates, and how she takes direction; you just have to be very clear with what you want her to do. That’s it.
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.
I was watching an interview that you did with KTLA, and you were talking about being a perfectionist. It was in terms of food, but are you just in terms of food, or does that translate into other areas of your life? Because Faith is so not a perfectionist. She’s not. I’m not as far right as her, or left as her, and outside of food, I wouldn’t necessarily label myself a perfectionist in all ways, but I do have perfectionist tendencies, if that makes sense. I definitely am not messy. My house could never be a mess. I would go crazy if I was like Faith, or my car, like those things are not me. But I can be a little bit more flowy with the way that I allow myself to go, and things like that. With my work, I can be a perfectionist. With my goals, I can be a perfectionist. But there’s room in between those things.
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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