THE EQUALIZER Post-Mortem: Tory Kittles Breaks Down Big Ben’s Family Bombshell—and Dante’s Reaction

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Sunday, May 5 episode of THE EQUALIZER.]

THE EQUALIZER’s Dante (Tory Kittles) survived an ambush, an injury, and even his father’s serious injury on the Sunday, May 5 episode of the CBS drama…but that wasn’t even the biggest bomb dropped on him.

Instead of breathing a sigh of relief after enduring the day from hell, the detective is reeling from the news Big Ben dropped on him: Big Ben (Danny Johnson) had another son he never told Dante about.

Here, Kittles talks with Give Me My Remote about the big reveal and what comes next…

What was your reaction when you found out Big Ben had another son? How does this impact Dante both short- and long-term?
Well, I think for Dante, in relation to his father, it’s sort of like, just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, it does. [Laughs.] I think Dante was holding out hope that he could build a relationship with his father, if only for the sake of his kids having a relationship with their grandfather. But now that the secret is revealed, Dante is rocked to his core. 

His ideas of who he thought his father was are made worse, because he had an idea—and he knew that his father wasn’t the best person—but how could his father keep something like this away from him? How could he, over the course of his life, be such a manipulator that Dante could not see it? And that’s one of the things where Dante’s like…I feel like a fool…even though he didn’t hold his father to such a high regard, he didn’t think that his father could ever do something that will betray him on this level. 

And that’s something that is making Dante rethink everything, not only about his father, but also about himself. Who is he, really, if this is the person that had a hand in raising him? Who am I? How much of [him] is in me? I think these are things that Dante is struggling with, and even when Big Ben is laying in a coma in the hospital, it’s such a major conflict for Dante. Which is a tribute to [showrunner] Joe Wilson and our writing team and the things that they laid out in this particular story. He’s still forced to reckon with his love for his father, even in this betrayal.



How does that betrayal and his sense of being unmoored impact both him as a detective and him as a man within this family unit for the rest of this season? 
Well, you know, I think it forces him to take a closer look at things. Even how he does things. When [this is] something that was sitting right under his nose his whole life, how could he not know? And as a detective, how could he not see that? How could he miss that? I think it really brings his antenna up on who he can trust. But the one person he knows he can trust now is Robyn and I think that makes him want to move their relationship forward.

To quickly look at the “who can he trust” element, he realizes he was betrayed by someone who claimed to be Big Ben’s parole officer. How much is he second-guessing the people in his work circle in the aftermath of being set up for this ambush? 
Wow, that’s so good that you caught that because in reading the script, this episode actually that aired last [week], you never see that coming [in the initial scene]. It’s just like, your father needs you to take him to this place and I’m his parole officer. And Dante, he has a second glance at her when he says, “I thought I knew everybody down there.” But you know how family makes you drop your guard sometimes because it’s family? And that’s one of the things that not only is this guy affecting me personally—my father is affecting me personally—but he’s also affecting my job. Because if it wasn’t his father, he would have saw that. So he missed that. And he missed the fact that he had a brother. 

And that’s the thing that he’s warring with inside of himself. This man, my father, makes me drop my guard. And he makes me miss things that are right in front of me, and that I can’t have. Along with [the fact] he’s not showing up for his grandkids. He’s disappointing them. He’s letting them down, too.

How is the brother coming into play for the rest of the season? Or is that a next season storyline?
We have actually been talking about it and it is very exciting. So you’re gonna get that next season.

Have you had any input in that potential guest casting? Or is it still very much in the early stages?
No, no, we’ve been talking about it.



What fallout will there be for Dante and Big Ben beyond this episode? 
Well, you know, after this episode, we’re left with Big Ben who’s in a coma. So we’ll have to see how that gets resolved as we go forward. But, you know, I think this ordeal that Dante and Big Ben went through makes him really want to take some serious steps in his relationship with McCall.

To look at that relationship for a moment, everyone is—correctly—pushing these two together. Aunt Vi (Lorraine Toussaint) very clearly lays it out for Robyn (Queen Latifah) that she has someone in Dante who understands her life. How much are they on a collision course in these final episodes?
Well, don’t you just love Aunt Vi? [Laughs.]

Absolutely. She is the audience’s voice at that moment.
She is. I think they’re both sort of bullheaded. You know Dante and McCall—they’re both a bit bullheaded, they’re both a bit overprotective, but rightfully so. Their jobs and their children, these are the things that come first to them. And so they are very protective when it comes to their families. And to invite an entirely new situation into this world, they have to be very careful about who they let into that. But, sometimes, the thing you need is staring you right in your face and all you got to do is take a leap of faith. We’re gonna find out whether Dante and McCall are ready to take that leap of faith. But they’re both going to have to make big, big choices. Big choices about their future, because as things come to a head in this season, they both have a lot of options on the table.

More immediately, we know that Dante’s boss is aware of him working with Team Equalizer. What will the professional ramifications of that be?
I think it’s fair to say his superiors hate the fact that he’s working outside of the system, and they know it. [Laughs.] But, you know, it’s one of those things where life is full of gray areas. And Dante, who started out as being completely opposed to doing this type of work—he was a specifically by-the-book detective. But Robyn opened up his world, broadened the scope of his thinking, and now he sees that what she’s doing is making a difference. And that’s something that he always wanted: to simply make a difference; make a difference in people’s lives. Those are the people that Dante really can relate to. And so, him spending time with Robyn has illuminated all of the possibilities of working outside the lines.



Dante got significantly injured in this episode. How will that impact him in the final episodes of the season?
He does—he gets a major injury to his leg, which he has to deal with this entire episode, along with an entire unit coming after him and his father trying to take them out. While he’s also dealing with this major family secret that his father has kept his whole life! So Dante has a lot on his shoulders in this particular episode. And going forward into the next episode, you never completely get away from the things that have come before; you’re carrying all of that into the new. And so Dante will be carrying all of his history of this entire season and previous seasons into the future.

Is he benched at all or on modified duty? Or is he shrugging it off and it’s business as usual?
The leg wound isn’t keeping him from things and new opportunities, And sometimes things are not exactly what they seem in terms of work. In terms of how the boss is going to deal with him.

THE EQUALIZER, Sundays, 8/7c, CBS

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