Over three seasons, ABC’s “Will Trent” has staked a claim as one of television’s all-time best cops-and-crime series. Critics, and increasingly larger audiences each year, have praised the show’s uniquely smoky mixture of atmosphere, character, humor and action, revolving around a crack investigator for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation with intriguing personal quirks and a mysterious past. Novelist Karin Slaughter, the title character’s creator, describes Special Agent Will Trent as “a very traumatized person who’s devoted himself to helping traumatized people.”
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And it’s Ramón Rodríguez, the man who stars as Will, who merits a lion’s share of the series’ explosive success. That’s according to those in the best position to know, including executive producers and showrunners Liz Heldens and Daniel Thomsen.
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“It’s tough to be the lead,” notes Thomsen. “To be No. 1 on the call sheet is a lot of hours, a lot of episodes, there’s a lot involved. From the jump, you could see Ramón doing the calculus: ‘Could I do this? Do I want to do this?’ When he made the decision to commit, we knew he was somebody who understood the job and was throwing himself into it. It felt like we were getting somebody special in that respect.”
Somebody special was definitely called for, since the star, who was born in Puerto Rico, was charged with portraying one of the most unusual and complex characters broadcast TV has seen in years.
How so? Well, for starters, Will is the product of a flawed foster care system, abused in group homes and exploited by foster parents (he begins the series not knowing who his real parents were). Before joining the GBI, he was homeless. Now he wears an old-fashioned, three-piece suit to hide his scars, though his severe dyslexia is harder to hide; the resulting diffidence can be taken as arrogance, and it angers others. Especially other cops.
Quite a lot of baggage there, to which Rodríguez’s response was to throw himself into research. A dialect coach led him to the sound of someone Atlanta-bred, down to the placement of vowels in the mouth. Specialists, who work with people who have dyslexia, helped him realize the range of their experiences, as well as the trauma that many share.
Slaughter notes that the actor’s own upbringing by a single mom, and surrounded by sisters, “plays well into who Will Trent is. He works for a woman, he is partnered with a woman. He really understands that women aren’t these mythical, unknowable creatures. They’re human beings. Ramón has that same quality in spades.”
Heldens praises Rodríguez’s work ethic. “The way he methodically approaches material and breaks it down for himself as an actor — that’s extremely Will-like. [Ramón] once told me that he thinks of Will as this beat-up alley cat that keeps going,” she says. “The first time I went into his trailer in Season 1, he had a picture of that cat. That’s a very Will way to approach this whole thing, to do the homework.”
Slaughter concurs, adding: “He has really put in the work to get into Will’s mindset. Will is a guy who trusted a lot of people very early in his life and got kicked in the teeth for it.”
“Kicked in the teeth” is a mild expression for what Will had to endure in Season 3, which welcomed new characters including a potential love interest, played by Gina Rodriguez. The third installment concluded on May 13.
Previously, on “Will Trent”: Having been forced to arrest the love of his life, Angie (Erika Christensen), at the end of Season 2, Will tosses his job away to hide out in Tennessee, only to return to help solve a cop killing. Later, he’s sent into a tailspin after accidentally shooting a young boy, which complicates his undercover work within a sinister self-help cult. Eventually, Will is drugged and hallucinates a full-out dance number (including giving a voice to his faithful pet Chihuahua, Betty Maria White Trent) before breaking the cult and returning to the job full time. “I’m proud that our show has found the ability to hold a range of emotions in the same frame, to play in the [dramatic] lane but bring in comedic elements and levity,” Rodríguez says.
For Season 3, the actor moved into the director’s chair on the show for an episode, which was no surprise to Hollywood veteran Howard Deutch, executive producer and helmer of seven “Will Trent” episodes so far. Deutch calls Rodríguez “easy to direct because he comes with a directorial kind of thing that’s rare. He’s very collaborative. There’s a feeling of, ‘I’m in it with you; it’s going to be OK.’ So, if the other actors in a scene are uncomfortable, he’ll open up to that and be available to them all. He creates an atmosphere where it’s, ‘OK, let’s talk about it, and make the scene work and tell the story.’”
Rodríguez confesses, “I came in extra early. I love to be overprepared. That’s a big key for me.” His best opportunity to direct was the premiere episode, a murder investigation and kidnap story with a large cast, plenty of action but slightly fewer Will scenes than usual. Particularly challenging was an extended fight scene with Rafael (Antwayn Hopper), an old friend now on the other side of the law. “It was so much fun to introduce history, a sibling feeling almost,” says Rodríguez. “They’ve known each other, they haven’t seen each other; it’s violent, yet it’s fun.”
Rodríguez chose to score it to a rhythmic 1980s song he used to listen to, “Din Daa Daa.” The recognizable beat plays as two muscled dudes take apart the front room of a two-story house. “It worked like gangbusters,” he says. “And then Rafael’s grandma just comes in and deflates the tension. Such a fun thing to put together with the stunt coordinator.”
In the end, Deutch concludes, “He killed it. He was on time and did beautiful work. Most of the time, actors who are leads in shows come to the job saying, ‘I want to get great shots, cool photography and camera stuff.’ And he didn’t fall into that trap. He was like, ‘I’ve got to tell this story and I’m going to make everybody in this episode cook.’ And he did.”
While many a series lead performer has accepted a producing credit out of vanity, Rodríguez’s accession to executive producer status was very much earned. “He’s not somebody who clocks in when it’s time to act, and then clocks out and goes home,” reports Thomsen. “He’s there 24/7, with feedback on directors, who we’ve hired and who we should bring back.”
Heldens adds, “Ramón’s always been a guiding voice on the show. He weighs in on casting. He’s got great taste. In post, it’s score, song selection, weighing in on cuts. We found the more we look to him as a partner, the more joyful the relationship becomes. Though you never want to put anything more on No. 1’s plate, I haven’t found the end of his bandwidth yet.”
Reflecting on the appeal of “Will Trent” the series, Rodríguez characteristically takes the focus off himself to laud the quality of his co-stars, the crew, his partners, the writers and what he calls “its old-school, throwback vibe, like a lot of ’70s noir films.”
As for Will himself: “His heart is so huge. His loyalty — he’s got a very clear code in terms of how he operates. And people like to root for an underdog, which he is, but someone who has been able to overcome a lot. Someone who’s yearning for connectivity and family, though you might not know that off the top because he keeps people at a distance. He’s just a complicated human that’s struggling with some things. And aren’t we all?”
That modesty is real, but there’s something else, an X factor that’s simmering under the surface of any scene involving this leading man. Heldens recalls a day on set in Season 2, as a scene was being rehearsed by the stand-ins. “I was talking to Ramón, and there was a crash, something happened. There’s a puff of smoke where he was standing. He was off the road, he saw it before anybody did, he was the first person there. And really, that’s the kind of guy he is — the first one to notice something, to go investigate and help and save. I thought, that’s who Will Trent is. And that’s who Ramón is.”
While the team takes a recess and prepares to return to the writers’ room for Season 4, which will premiere in early 2026, Slaughter praises their work on Season 3 and its thrilling finale, calling it “some of the most compelling television I’ve seen.”
“They write to all four corners,” she says of the show’s broadcast success and overwhelming audience response. “Just the way they explored that story was so riveting and compelling. The way Ramón brought his own humanity and perspective to it was really transcendent. I loved it. I thought it was fantastic.”
