CHICAGO P.D. Post-Mortem: LaRoyce Hawkins on Atwater and Celeste’s Confrontation

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Wednesday, January 12 episode of CHICAGO P.D., “Lies.”]

Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) had a double blow on the Wednesday, January 12 episode of CHICAGO P.D., as his informant went rogue and he finally confessed he was a cop to Celeste (Amanda Payton).

With Jimmy, it all boiled down to his brother: When Jimmy became convinced his brother was killed, he was desperate to seek revenge. Atwater tried to talk him down, explaining his brother was merely wounded, but Jimmy—already wary in the aftermath of learning Kevin is a cop—wouldn’t listen and killed the man.

“What breaks Atwater’s heart about the arc and where the story ends is that he wasn’t trusted enough to be counted on, to be able to help,” Hawkins says. “Every cop wants to be counted on. I think that’s part of that blue ego a little bit, but also as a Black man.”

“There’s another example of a life could have been saved if he trusted me enough and counted on me,” he continues, in-character. “I think that’s something that Atwater is going to struggle with moving forward: the capacity to be counted on. I think, even in his unit, sometimes, he might feel like he’s either not being given the benefit of the doubt, or isn’t trusted enough with certain information. There’s that interesting struggle which we all have to go through…So [Atwater] is doing his best to navigate that.”

Atwater was backed into a corner when Jimmy asked him to lie to Voight, to say Jimmy acted in self-defense. Ultimately, Atwater opted to tell Voight the truth.

“Of course there was a moment [where he considered lying],” Hawkins acknowledges. “It is the same moment that he had when he struggles with if he should tell Celeste that he’s a cop. Hopefully, the story connects to people enough to see that struggle—that almost [beat], or even that regret after making a certain decision. But he definitely struggled with it before he made the decision to do what he did. And hopefully the audience can connect to that.”

Unfortunately for Atwater, things weren’t any easier at home. After months of keeping work separate from Celeste, he finally told her he was a cop. The two fought, as she argued she knew the difference between the system being problematic and good cops within it—and that she would have given him a chance if she had been told the truth.

Much like Atwater sequestered Celeste from his real life, due to production scheduling, Hawkins and Payton ended up filming in their own bubble, too.

“What was interesting was the conditions of how we captured those moments was that we really had to do it separate, even before we shot the episode,” Hawkins shares. “Amanda, because she’s such a talented actress, had obligations in England. So, because of her schedule—and it was very important for us to have her in the story—we had to shoot our scenes in one day, a week before we actually started the rest of the episode.”

“So for our journey to feel so encapsulated, so to speak, for it to feel like only us, I thought was unique and honest, because that’s how they felt in their relationship as they grew—it was only them,” he continues. “Atwater was totally separating himself from everything else. Whatever storm that brought him drama and didn’t bring him the same kind of peace that Celeste offered him, he would cut off. And so the way that our shooting schedules were cut off, I thought was almost serendipitous the way that we were able to pull off the play.”

But could the duo move forward now that he’s been honest? “Atwater wants to heal more than anything,” Hawkins says. “As long as he feels safe and protected, as much as he does his best to save lives and protect others, there’s a safety and protection he needs, [that] I think we [all] aspire to. His gas tank would need the same premium gas that the Benz needs to drive as smooth as it does. So at the end of the day, I think that’s what he’s looking for more than anything. And if a relationship comes with that, hopefully he won’t run away from anything.”

CHICAGO P.D.,Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC

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