Is Susan Kelechi Watson Sparking Romance With Will Trent? This Is Us Veteran Teases Her ‘Badass’ Season 2 Debut
If you thought Agent Will Trent and Detective Angie Polaski had chemistry, wait until you see the sparks blossom between Trent and fellow Agent Cricket Dawson in Tuesday’s Season 2 premiere (ABC, 8/7c).
Susan Kelechi Watson, best known to TV audiences as Beth Pearson on NBC’s This Is Us, plays a member of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s bomb squad. Cricket crosses paths with Will when a car bomb targeting guest star Clark Gregg sparks a thrilling investigation — and perhaps a romance.
TVLine spoke with Watson, who prepped for her Will Trent debut and had nothing but praise for her reunion with Iantha Richardson, who made the leap from recurring guest star on This Is Us to starring in the hit ABC crime drama.
First of all, I love a good character name, and Cricket Dawson is a great name.
I love it. I love that name. As soon as I heard it, I was like, “Oh, that’s cool!”
I love how Agent Dawson, by itself, sounds so official, and her first name, Cricket, adds a layer of quirkiness. Would you say Cricket Dawson fits her?
I just feel like she does. Like, when I get to know her, she’s really nice, a real farm girl, cool. With Cricket Dawson, I feel like all of that is bubbling under that name. You know, I played a character a long time ago on NCIS named Nikki Jardine, and I feel like I feel about that name the way I feel about Nikki. That name has stuck with me. There are some really cool names, for lack of a better term, and this is one of them. I really like it. It really fits.
Tell me a little bit more about Cricket, the bomb disposal expert. What is she like? What gets her up in the morning?
I think she loves the thrill of everything. She loves a challenge. She has a high-energy energy about her life. She’s very calm in the face of extreme danger. She can stay calm and really make the most of a situation. I like that about her, that she knows how to walk into a situation and do it. That’s very appealing to me, to see someone walk into a room and know how to assess things.
I can only imagine how rewarding it would be to have the time to really get to know Beth, to start to understand her better, to build that character with the writers and be a part of that development. Obviously, this is a very different situation. You come in as a guest star and you probably have to make a lot of decisions in a very short period of time about who you think this character is, where she’s been, and what her motivations are. Does that come with its own rewards?
It’s interesting. The challenge of figuring out who this woman is and who is very different than Beth. We all have overlapping qualities — that’s a universal human thing — but I love finding those unique qualities that make one character completely different from another. That’s what drew me to Cricket, that fun game of, like, what makes her tick, specifically?
I’m glad you came over there. I was worried that I was going to be the one to make the “tick” pun, but you did it for me.
Look, we’re probably going to have a lot of these puns by the time this interview is over. I mean, this is a great role. [Laughs]
Cricket shows an immediate interest in Will. What do you think it is about Agent Trent that Agent Dawson finds so appealing?
She’s watched his career and his ability to solve the unsolvable. He brings resolution to people’s lives that have been turned upside down. That’s very appealing to her as someone who’s also very good at their job. She’s at the top of her game and she sees someone else at the top of her game, and that inspires her. And, you know, he’s cute, she’s cool… you know what I’m saying? [Laughs] So she’s operating on both levels. She liked his quirkiness, and I think she saw him as someone to figure out. He was a puzzle himself.
