Zach Gilford as Elias Voit, Adam Rodriguez as Luke Alvez, Kristen Vangsness as Penelope Garcia, Ryan-James Hatanaka as Tyler Green, and A.J. Cook as Jennifer “JJ” Jareau in CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION – “Save the Children” | ©2024 Paramount+ / Michael Yarish

All episodes of CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION Season 2, aka CRIMINAL MINDS Season 17, are now streaming on Paramount Plus, along with Season 16/Season 1, and all fifteen seasons of the original CRIMINAL MINDS. The series has been picked up for (depending on how one views it) Season 18 or Season 3.

CRIMINAL MINDS launched on CBS in 2005. It is a procedural drama involving the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, or BAU. These are the special agents who profile and track down serial killers. The series spent fifteen years on the CBS network. That run ended in February 2020, but CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION began in November 2022 on Paramount Plus, with most of the cast and creative team from the network run still involved.

Kirsten Vangsness has been part of the CRIMINAL MINDS cast since its 2005 beginnings as squeamish but loyal computer genius Penelope Garcia. She has also written five episodes of the series, and was a regular on its short-lived CBS spinoff, CRIMINAL MINDS: SUSPECT BEHAVIOR. Vangsness executive-produced and starred in the 2015 feature KILL ME, DEADLY and was twice nominated for the Indie Series Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress for PRETTY THE SERIES.

Adam Rodriguez joined CRIMINAL MINDS in 2016, Season 12, as Supervisory Special Agent Luke Alvez. Luke was a U.S. Army Ranger before he joined the Bureau, and has a peculiar work relationship with Penelope. She used to genuinely resent him for replacing her good pal Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore, who left to head up his own CBS series, S.W.A.T.), but Penelope and Luke have now developed an affectionate, teasing banter.

Rodriguez has directed four episodes of CRIMINAL MINDS, two on the network edition, “Pay-Per-View” on CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION last season, and the third episode of this season, “Homesick.” Rodriguez was previously a series regular on CSI: MIAMI, for which he won a Favorite TV Actor – Leading Role ALMA Award, and was nominated for two Actor in Television Drama ALMA Awards. Other credits include the MAGIC MIKE film trilogy, and I CAN DO BAD ALL BY MYSELF, for which Rodriguez earned an NAACP Image Award as Supporting Actor.

Zach Gilford became part of CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION when the series came to Paramount Plus in 2022. Unlike most of the other series regulars, Gilford doesn’t play a BAU team member. His character, Elias Voit, is not only a prolific serial killer in his own right, but also runs a dark web chatroom where he gives advice to other aspiring murderers.

Elias was finally captured at the end of last season. He starts this season in a cell, but relishes it when the BAU has to turn to him for advice. Elias wants to reunite with his estranged wife and daughters, to regain his freedom, and to cause everyone in the BAU to have a meltdown in the process.

Gilford made his television directing debut with the eighth episode of this season of CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION. He was previously a series regular on FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, OFF THE MAP, THE MOB DOCTOR, LIFELINE, THIS CLOSE, GOOD GIRLS, and L.A.’S FINEST, and costarred in three Mike Flanagan-created Netflix miniseries, MIDNIGHT MASS, THE MIDNIGHT CLUB, and THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER.

CBS and Paramount Plus have organized a Zoom call where Vangsness, Rodriguez and Gilford join in from their separate locations to talk with Assignment X about of CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION.

For Vangsness and Rodriguez, who have done both the network and streaming iterations of the series, is there a difference in doing the current serialized version, versus the usually standalone episodes of the network edition?

Kristen Vangsness as Penelope Garcia, Zach Gilford as Elias Voit, and Adam Rodriguez as Luke Alvez in CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION – “Save the Children” | ©2024 Paramount+ / Michael Yarish

Both Vangsness and Rodriguez nod. “It is,” Rodriguez confirms. “And I would daresay that it is refreshing, it’s invigorating. We all now get shift gears and broaden the scope of what the audience gets to experience with these characters that they’ve been creating relationships with for so long. On the standalone episodes, it really is limiting in terms of what you can do character-wise. You might get a moment, and then there’s very little follow-up, just because of the format, but with the serialized episodes now, we really get to dig in and go deeper with relationships, and the characters themselves. We’re all loving it. We’re really enjoying it.”

Vangsness nods again in emphatic agreement.

The actors also appreciate that streaming allows their characters to use more colorful language, in line with what people might well say when confronted with some CRIMINAL MINDS-type situations.

“We were, I think, all pretty skilled at doing things the other way,” Rodriguez offers. “We’ve all had a ton of experience in doing self-encapsulated episodes, and all of the way of speaking and the way of doing that goes along with that format. Now, we’ve got an opportunity to do things with a bit more creative license, and dig in in ways that are real that I think when you play a character for so long, you really do want to get a chance to speak the way that you feel like that character speaks and reacts fully, the way that you know that that character would, and not have the limitations of the Standards and Practices that go along with being on a [broadcast] network, the way we would when we were at CBS.

“And so now, to be on Paramount Plus and to have the latitude that we have with language, with how dark we can go – I think this show always pushed the boundaries of what was there to push, even on a network, and now we get to go even darker, even deeper, and this long, seventeen seasons into a show, although it’s the second season of CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION, these characters have been around for a long time. So, this is just breathing new life into everybody, including the show.”

Vangsness and Gilford begin to respond at the same time. Gilford apologizes, but Vangsness urges him to speak first.

What Gilford wants to do is compliment his colleagues. “With you guys, I think it really shines a light on what amazing actors you are, because, yes, you’ve been doing it for so long, but that sh*t you guys were doing is hard. I couldn’t do it. And now, we get to flesh it out.

“I got to see it the most when I got to direct, it was the end of the season, and there are things where I was like, ‘I know this feels weird, or whatever’ and Adam or you [Vangsness] or A.J. [Cook, who plays SSA J.J. Jareau] were like, ‘Oh, I get it, I know how to do it,’ and make it not campy, like, ‘Oh, doh-der-der-der,’ but then you can also do the more serialized acting stuff, and I was blown away. Last season, I barely worked with you guys as well, and getting to work with you all this season, I got to see how talented you guys are, in the way you do it, not just the finished project, that I was able to watch over the years.”

“Thanks,” says Rodriguez.

Paget Brewster, Thomas Gibson, Kirsten Vangsness, Joe Mantegna and Matthew Gray Gubler in CRIMINAL MINDS – Season Six – “Middle Man” | ©2010 CBS

“That feels fancy,” Vangsness agrees. “Thanks for that. And I was going to say, it feels like behind the scenes – that’s how I always describe this. It’s like watching us at work, behind the scenes at work, because it feels more grounded and real, because it is, even though it’s imaginary.”

At the end of Season 15, which at that time was thought to be the series finale, Penelope quit the BAU because she couldn’t take the darkness anymore. However, it only takes her one episode when the series resumes to get back in the BAU saddle. Did Vangsness had to make any adjustments to her thought processes about the character to justify the turnaround?

It turns out that this resonated with Vangsness in her real life. “Yeah. I think as a person, I’ve gone through adjustments. I feel like the job we have [on CRIMINAL MINDS], it’s the greatest job any of us have ever had. I have zero complaints about it. I’ve had this same job [for many years], and it can put things in your brain, and that’s why I do a lot of theatre, and do a lot of [other] stuff, because it puts things in your brain, like, ‘Oh, I’m a one-trick pony. I’m the girl on that show, that’s all I do, that’s all I know how to do.’

“And so, I think that for me to agree to come back, there was this feeling of, it does feel like you’re going back to chewed-up gum? It’s delicious, it’s Willy Wonka Lasts Forever flavor, but I’ve done it, I know how to do it, how do you keep making it [fresh]? And that is the job. You just hope, you know what I mean? And I work less than everybody else. Sometimes, I just work two days out of the week. I get sad, because …”

Rodriguez cuts in to point out, “You also have some of the hardest stuff to do. You couldn’t do what you do seven days an episode. You would be exhausted.”

Still, Vangsness says, “I try to make it new and different. I do like to think that she’s new and improved, a little more relaxed, a little less uptight.”

“I would agree, a hundred percent,” Rodriguez concurs. Vangsness thanks him.

Given that Elias is a character who is revealed layer by layer, what was Gilford told about him when he began on CRIMINAL MINDS? Was there anything he found out later that he wishes he’d known at the start?

“Well, I didn’t know much. If you go back to the first episode of last season, I’m literally digging a hole or something. I don’t know, I did nothing. And that’s the only script I saw, so I was like, ‘I don’t know what you guys want me to do, I don’t know what you want me for,’” Gilford laughs.

“And so, I had a Zoom with [showrunners] Erica [Messer] and Breen [Frazier], and they told me the way this show is evolving, and that he was going to be this family man, and we were going to see his at-home life, and that sounded really cool and exciting and fun to me.

“But with TV, you never really know until you get the next script, which you usually get a few days before you shoot it. So, I don’t really have an ‘I wish I’d known,’ because I know that’s kind of the way it happens. But they’ve just given me so much good stuff to do. There hasn’t ever been a time where I’m like, ‘Ecch, God, this is kind of corny, or kind of very TV.’ I think they’ve really embraced this character. And they’ve been super-collaborative. Any thoughts I have, or whatever, they’re always like, ‘Yeah, that’s great, let’s do that.’ So, it’s an amazing workplace.”

Gilford is also delighted with another aspect of his work on CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION.

“These people gave me my first opportunity ever to direct an episode of TV, which is something I’ve wanted to do for decades now. And half the cast directs. Five episodes [of the current season] are directed by cast.”

Vangsness and Rodriguez nod enthusiastically.

“It’s so fun on this show,” Gilford continues, “because being directed by actors is just a little bit different, and especially when they’re actors who are on the show. They understand the show more than anyone, they understand the characters more than anyone. And so, last season, in [the episode that Rodriguez directed], I had one scene, but he gave me this one little note that I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s f***ing awesome,’ and you [Rodriguez] just made the scene so much better. So, this is like the best job I’ve ever had.”

Related: CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Actors A.J. Cook, Aisha Tyler and Ryan-James Hatanaka on Season 2 of the spin-off on Season 2 – Exclusive Interview
Related: CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Showrunner  Erica Messer on Season 2 – Exclusive Interview
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Related: CRIMINAL MINDS: Matthew Gray Gubler and Joe Mantegna talk Season 13 – exclusive interview
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Related: CRIMINAL MINDS: Paget Brewster talks Season 12 and her return to MINDS – exclusive interview
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Article: CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Actors Kirsten Vangsness, Adam Rodriguez and Zack Gilford on the latest season – Exclusive Interview

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