The Season 17 finale of the Paramount+ series Criminal Minds: Evolution wrapped up the Gold Star storyline as the final puzzle piece fell into place when the last member was revealed. Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster) had to confront Jade and her newest partner, in order to unravel the conspiracy they’d convinced themselves of, with the hope that the truth would save the BAU. But resolving the Gold Star case does not sever their ties to Elias Voit (Zach Gilford), who will inevitably continue to be a thorn in the side of the BAU until they can finally prove that he’s Sicarius.
Still experiencing guilt over what happened to Deputy Director Doug Bailey last season, Prentiss feels a little bit lost and even contemplates leaving her position at the BAU. After sharing a moment with JJ (AJ Cook) and realizing the importance of seeing Gold Star through to the end, Prentiss was ultimately able to save herself and the team, so that they could live to fight and catch unsubs another day.
During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Brewster talked about how returning to Emily Prentiss for Criminal Minds: Evolution felt like riding a bike, adjusting to the streaming format, sharing a stoner moment between Prentiss and JJ, her zip-tied stand-off, her hopes for Season 18, whether she’d like to see the return of characters like Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) and Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), and why she hasn’t directed an episode when so many of her co-stars have.
Collider: When this series and these characters came back last season, for the audience like me who had been watching for 15 seasons, it felt familiar. But when you return to a character after some time away from playing her, did she feel as familiar to you? Did you have to find her again? Did it feel weird in any way?
PAGET BREWSTER: It sounds so cliché, and it’s so stupid, you hear people say it all the time, but it’s because it’s true, it’s like riding a bike. I know Prentiss and I knew we were in a new format. That’s what was jarring. It was, “Oh, this looks different, and it feels a little different, and it’s written a little differently.” All of us were afraid we’d forgotten how to act coming out of the pandemic and it was like, “Oh, my God, how did I ever memorize this many lines?” But it happened pretty fast. We all felt like we didn’t have our sea legs and that this was new, but like the old show. After maybe 14 or 15 days, we were like, “Oh, we’re in it. We know how to do this.” And then, it was full steam ahead. It’s something you do fall back into. We were all concerned about, has it changed? What is the show gonna be now? It is different, but we know where this is going. It’s an ongoing case. It’s not one case per week. We’re just so damn happy that we have our job back.
And now that you can add some swear words, it feels extra naughty.
BREWSTER: It’s like the first time you hear your mom swear. You’re like, “Woah, mom’s mad.” It’s really fun, but I’m glad that they’re not overdoing it. We’re not all suddenly naked and having sex, or showing even more brutal murders. I think our writers were really respectful of the format and the audience. We know kids watch the show. We know that 10-, 11-, and 12-year-old watch the show. Nobody wanted to become HBO. We really wanted to honor and provide the show that people like. We’re still hoping that the changes that have been made, like the lighting or certain shots or the storylines, haven’t deviated too much from the original. We hope that it’s a judicious use of looser parameters.
Paget Brewster Loves the Season 17 Finale Episode, Even Though She Didn’t Love the Challenge of Shooting It
I thought it was a really interesting way to end the season to have Prentiss be the one to face off with Jade. How was it for you to pull your character away from the rest of the team and actually have a moment like that, especially with the way the season played out?
BREWSTER: Those scenes were pretty challenging to shoot, being zip-tied to a wheelchair and alternating between trying to reason with these kids, who had been brutalized into believing something that seems insane to Prentiss, and trying to explain to them why they’re wrong, but she understands why they think they’re right. And so, it was this dance of losing patience by going, “You killed him, babe.” She’s trying to talk for her life. She’s trying to stay alive long enough, and then realizes, “Oh, they’re gonna kill the team.” It’s this horrible realization, with just the sadness of recognizing what Pete Bailey had gone through and what his brother was trying to save him from. It’s retroactively looking back at another year of sadness. This family lost their son, and the other son was lost before that. It’s just tragic. I loved that episode. I didn’t love shooting it, but I loved the episode. I’m really excited to hear what people say when they see the final episode, and if they’re excited about it, if they’re happy about it, and if they’re excited about where we can go from here. It raises really interesting questions about these kids who are not just criminals, they are victims. We know how they got there, and the BAU is partially responsible because the White Paper Jill [Gideon] wrote was the template for Gold Star to create this. There’s so much more we can look at. And I would love to work with those kids again because they were great. But those were some long nights in Pomona in an asbestos-filled former sanitarium. It was rough.
I also particularly enjoyed getting to find a very high Prentiss hanging out on the couch. When you do a show like this that is so dark by just the nature of the story that it’s telling, is it a nice diversion to have some of those more lighthearted moments like that or things that you may not have ever had time to get to on a show when you were doing a case every episode?
BREWSTER: Yeah, and that is part of Evolution that’s really exciting. We have that freedom of time and storylines to follow a personal situation, which was ultimately about work. On the one hand, A.J. [Cook] and I were gonna be eating Cheetos in our PJs and that was gonna be awesome, but it was also a really important conversation that they had to have. Prentiss is high because she’s insecure and is trying to figure out what to do. She thinks she’s gonna be fired, so she’s gonna quit first. JJ has been struggling with knowing about BAUGate, but Prentiss didn’t tell her. And so, what does that do to them? JJ talks Prentiss down from wanting to quit by saying, “This job gave me you.” Even though it gave them both pain and loss, it’s too important to both of them. So, what is a stoner scene ends up being this really beautiful story about friendship and depending on each other and reaching back out to each other, as friends and co-workers. But there were a lot of Cheetos. We were drinking a lot of water. It was tough on props because obviously they weren’t actual edibles, but there were a ton of salt and vinegar potato chips and Cheetos over that set, and everybody was eating them. Props would have to run back in and fill up the Cheeto bowl because everybody was eating them.
Paget Brewster Is Just Fine With Leaving Directing to Her ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Co-Stars
So many of your fellow cast members have directed episodes. What’s it like to be directed by your co-stars? Is it always different with each one of them? Is it something that you also want to jump in and do?
BREWSTER: Oh, no, I have no desire to direct. I don’t understand it at all. Directing is just a headache. It’s maybe a little bit more money, but it’s too many people asking too many questions. And you have to do pre-production. You have to go look at locations while you’re acting as an FBI agent. They have to memorize lines, and then go look at torture chambers. Our actors are great directors, and that’s not necessarily always gonna be the case. We’re extremely lucky that they are as passionate about it as they are. It’s not just, “Oh, I wanna have another career. I wanna get more money. I wanna direct because the director is important.” They direct because they’re so invested in telling the story. It makes me feel like a really lazy, unambitious piece of crap. But I just know that I’m good at being Prentiss, and I love doing that. I couldn’t handle the responsibility that they revel in. We’re extremely lucky. I can guarantee you that there are actors who said they wanted to direct and did a terrible job, and other people had to cover up for them. There’s no way that hasn’t happened. We’re just very fortunate that our actors are so unbelievably great at it and invested in it. I love those guys. It’s shorthand. Our days are really cool because you know what they want, and you shoot the scene. No one needs to give you a hug or has to finagle anything. We just wanna get it done. It’s great. It’s fun.
Although I feel like you had to probably give Zach Gilford a little bit of a hard time, coming in as the new guy and also directing.
BREWSTER: We were gonna prank him, but he was so nervous because it was the first time he directed. We were like, “Oh, no, we can’t prank this guy. He’s really scared. He’s really nervous about not getting this right.” And we watched him, day after day, get more confident and more excited. He was texting everybody to tell them that they’re awesome. He was so in it and so into it. In one episode, he went from a scared newbie to awesome and excited by the end of the episode. It was so funny. That guy is great.
Paget Brewster Is Just As Excited To Learn About What’s Next As the Fans of ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Are
Do you know anything about where things will be headed next? Do you think we’ve seen the last of Voit?
BREWSTER: I don’t know what I’m allowed to say. I hope we haven’t seen the last of Voit. I hope we haven’t seen the last of Pete Bailey and Jade. I hope we haven’t seen the last of Brian Garrity, who’s played by one of my best friends, Paul F. Tompkins. I wanna see him in that hat and wig again. I love him. I think there are ways to ask questions and follow up with how we ended this season, next season, but I don’t know what it is. We wanna go back to work and we wanna know what we’re doing. I think they’re gonna send us an email soon, telling us what’s coming this [next] season because we just can’t wait. We can’t wait to get back to work. We wanna know what we’re doing. We wanna know who we’re gonna see and who’s coming back.
There’s been quite a bit of talk about legacy this whole season, when it comes to the BAU. We’ve heard mentions of Gideon, Hotch, Morgan, and Spencer Reid, and both Shemar Moore and Matthew Gray Gubler have talked about being open to returning. Would you also like to see either or both of them come back, at some point and in some way?
BREWSTER: Of course! I know that Matthew has been writing New York Times bestselling children’s books, and he loves it and is great at it. But yes, we would love it if he came back. Shemar is still the star of his own show, SWAT, but that would be great. Those are not decisions I can make, unfortunately, or I’d have everyone come back, here and there, and get everybody involved. That’s fewer workdays for me, so I would love that, but it’s not in my hands. Sometimes that can also become a weird political thing where a studio or network says, “We can’t work with that person because they’re part of that franchise,” and that’s just stuff I don’t understand. I put on my boots, I holster my gun, I memorize my words, I get my hair blown out, and I do my job. But it would be great. It would be lovely. It’s always exciting when we have people from the past come back, like Brian Garrity. We’ve had agents come back, we’ve had cops, we’ve had local detectives. It’s so exciting because the fans are also part of this family, and they’ve seen all these people. It is really nice to bring people back, and my fingers are crossed for next season.