‘Cross’ Creator on the Season Finale’s Unsuspecting Villain and His Four-Year Plan for the Series

[This story contains major spoilers from the season finale of Cross.]

Ben Watkins spares but a minute getting to the drama in Cross, the Prime Video series he created based on the characters in James Patterson’s popular Alex Cross book series. In the shocking opening scene, the wife of detective and forensic psychologist Cross (played by Aldis Hodge in this refresh) is shot dead while the pair is enjoying a couple’s outing with his best friend and partner John Samson (Isaiah Mustafa). The shadow of grief is just one figure that haunts Cross throughout the eight-episode series, as he spends his days fixated on capturing a narcissistic serial killer by the name of Ed Ramsey (Ryan Eggold) and his nights painstakingly trying to uncover the identity of an assumed stalker who poses a threat to his family.

“When I started thinking about some of the things we haven’t seen yet that are in the books, D.C. is one and Samson is the other,” Watkins tells The Hollywood Reporter of how he shaped the series. “Samson is the more important one, because in every show you need a core relationship. For us, that core relationship becomes the love story between Cross and Samson. It’s not a romantic love story; it’s a brotherhood.”

The bond between the longtime friends is shaken when Cross pushes back on Sampson’s insistence that he needs to take some time to properly deal with his wife’s death. But when Cross finds out the real threat to his children and that Nana Mama (Juanita Jennings), the grandmother who raised him, has been in his house the whole time in the form of his son’s piano teacher Miss Nancy (Karen Robinson), it’s Sampson whom he calls on to help save his family — and his new love interest Elle (Samantha Walkes).

Below, Watkins talks with THR about creating two antagonists for the show’s debut season (“She didn’t know the secrets until [we filmed] the finale,” he says of one villain), planting seeds for the already greenlit season two in the cliffhanger finale, and tackling the relationship between police and the Black community with care.

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How did you become attached to this Cross reboot?

There was an executive at Paramount who I had worked with on a project before. He reached out to me and said, “Hey, would you be interested in adapting Alex Cross?” I said, “Hey, love the idea of that, but I’m only signing on to projects that are already greenlit. Otherwise I’m just going to do my thing.” A few weeks later, I get a ring, and he says, “Well, I didn’t tell you this when I first reached out, but the project’s already set up at Amazon. They can’t officially green light it, but they are going to make it, and they do want you to do it.”

So I met with Amazon, and it was a real question: Do I want to do this? At the time, there were a lot of people saying you shouldn’t really do anything related to cops and law enforcement. But I have always been a crime junkie, so there was part of me saying I can’t pass up a chance to tap into a book series with a legacy like that. And then I got some advice from an OG director one time when something controversial was going down. I asked him, “You would avoid the controversy, right?” And he said, “No, I’m an artist. If there’s a controversy, that’s when I lean into it.” That stuck with me my whole career and I thought, this was an example and opportunity for me to do that and be at the center of a conversation that a lot of times we are not. So on top of wanting to do a great thriller, I knew that if there was any conversation going on about the relationship between law enforcement and the Black community, I would be able to lace that in without being preachy but do it in a way that really reflects how we feel.

The death of activist Emir Goodspeed (Donovan Brown) in episode one brings to the forefront the relationship between law enforcement, media and Black victims. But throughout the series that intersection is presented more subtly than other series which have been accused of, in some ways, re-traumatizing audiences. What was your approach?

It was inspired by my lived experience. I have relatives and friends who are law enforcement, and at the same time I’ve been involved in protests regarding how law enforcement is dealing with the Black community. So, even within me, there are multiple facets of this conversation, and they don’t have to always agree. I know that’s how it is within our community. But most of the time when it’s portrayed, it’s very polarized. It’s an either-or conversation when the truth is that it’s never that, and I felt like this isn’t a show where I need to preach. This isn’t even a show where I need to take a side. This is actually an opportunity for me to build it into the fabric so you get all the nuances and facets of that conversation. But I did know that I could not do a show that centered around a Black detective and then tiptoe around that question [of his relationship with the community]. So I had to organically bake it into storylines so when it comes up it feels natural but it also reflects different viewpoints.

Cross’ interrogation of a murder suspect in that episode isn’t the first time audiences see him onscreen, but it very much introduces who he is. Talk about crafting that interaction.

So there’s a [Jay-Z] song, [“Public Service Announcement”] and one of the lyrics is “allow me to reintroduce myself,” and I feel like if you’ve read these books — hundreds of millions of people have read these books — or if you’ve seen the previous movies, you have perhaps already formed an idea of who you think Cross is. I felt like I needed to come out the gate with an announcement of who Cross is now, so I wrote this sequence that was designed to showcase his brilliance, his powers of observation, his perceptiveness, but also his swagger, his sense of humor, his sense of theatrics, his ability to read people. I wanted all that in there and I felt like the way we rolled out that interrogation scene where he plays that would make a big statement. It’s funny because I wrote that, and I sent it in, and I remembered there were two scenes in particular that I said if the studio and the network embraced them, I think we have a chance to do something special because they are two scenes that you could easily say you don’t necessarily need to go that far. They’re very specific but also create a character that resonates, that’s very compelling. The interrogation scene was one and the dinner scene was the other.

The showdown between Cross and Ed Ramsey (Eggold) at his birthday dinner in episode five could’ve been the end of their cat-and-mouse game. Why not have Cross catch him then?

That was a really risky decision. Even in the writers room, everyone was freaking out. The studio and the network executives were saying, “Wait a minute, they’re going to go toe to toe and they’re going to know?” And I said, “There’s a difference between knowing someone’s guilty and being able to prove it. That, in some ways, could be even more dramatic, that can create even more tension. There’s always a safe play to be made, but we’re going to take a run at doing this thing where there’s a showdown halfway through the season.” And from that point forward, we realized that these two people are evenly matched. We don’t know who’s going to win because now they both know everything. They know the landscape and they know who’s on the playing field.

How did you find your second villain in Miss Nancy (Karen Robinson)?

The reason I did a second storyline was because I needed the audience to invest in Alex Cross, and I think one of the most searing ways to do that is to put your hero in jeopardy. I already bit off more than I could chew by doing two major storylines. In fact, I told everybody, “We’re going to have two A-stories this year.” And, again, the writers room was like, “Oh, my God.” And I said, “Again, we can always play it safe, but if we pull it off” — and luckily this season we pulled it off. But in doing that, that meant one of them had to be like a time bomb. One of those storylines had to be set up and you had to hear the ticking the entire season, but it couldn’t really start to go off until towards the end. So I decided to create a character who would basically get embedded into the Cross household, and I did it through a very personal reason so that you would really think she was there as a savior for the family.

The funniest piece is when I went to cast that part. Who wants to play the piano teacher? (Laughs) And I wasn’t telling anybody any spoilers, so I actually had her audition for a different scene, and then I called and said, “Hey, here’s the part that you’ll be playing — hold on, it’s way more than that. There’s a lot of secrets to this character and they’re gonna get played out over the course of the season, so I can’t just hire anybody. I need somebody who can give me a tour de force performance.” Luckily, Karen understood and bought into what I was saying, even though she was like, “Well, what are the secrets?” I said, “I can’t tell you.” And she didn’t know the secrets until the finale.

Were you writing as you were filming?

No, but a lot of people that are twists in season one had no idea. Same thing in season two, because I don’t want them preparing for that. I don’t want them setting that up. It’s much scarier and much more believable when they have no idea. [Karen] thought the secret was that she had some deeper ties to the family in a friendship or relationship way.  She didn’t know she was going to be the threat.

Season one ends on a cliffhanger with agent Kayla Craig (Alona Tal) propositioning ex-police officer and Ramsey co-conspirator Bobby Trey (Johnny Ray Gill) in a way that suggests she could now pose a threat to Cross and Sampson even though she’s been presented as an ally.

Yeah, it’s adding another layer to Kayla. Those are two little signposts for some stuff that goes down in season two. That’s a real important part for us. Again, I like populating the playing field. There are some people everybody expected to make it through season one that don’t make it. And there are some people that people maybe didn’t expect to see make it to season two, and they do make it. All of those things are because I already had a four-year plan. We want this thing to go for 10 seasons, but in my head, I had already made a four-year plan, and it’s based on some things that I want to do to mine and pay homage to the characters that are in the Alex Cross book series. Even though I’m doing new stories, I want at some point for there to be a dovetail between these characters, so I’ve been planting these seeds.

When did you find out the series was renewed for a second season and did that affect your initial plot at all?

No, I found out after season one had wrapped. But my approach anytime I’m doing a show, I assume it’s going for multiple seasons because I think the experience is richer, even if you only get one season. When I write as if there’s going to be five seasons, then I start planting seeds. So in season two, you’ll see seeds from season one start to get paid off. There are also seeds from season one that don’t get paid off till season three, but they get enhanced in season two. Some people say, well, why would you go through all that effort, and you don’t even know if you’re going to get another season? And I just feel like as a viewer, when I see people layer the stories with more Easter eggs and more wrinkles and more angles to these characters, it makes me enjoy the experience more. So that’s what we’ve been doing.

What do you hope audiences take away from this first season?

I wanted to create a show that would really satisfy audiences who love crime and thrillers. I want you to really get that payoff. But at the same time, if I’m doing that, then I want to bring something else to the table. And I want that to be character and family and community. I want that to be a journey that will make you invest. In the audience’s shoes, the one thing that makes me stick with a show, even a crime show, is not the mystery, it’s the character. So that became the mantra for this show. You’re going to come for the mysteries and you’re going to stay for the characters. That’s what I hope people do.

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Cross is now streaming all episodes on Prime Video. Read THR’s interview with James Patterson on Cross’ legacy and the refresh.