THE ROOKIE Post-Mortem: Shawn Ashmore Reacts to the Wild ‘April Fools’

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, April 1 episode of THE ROOKIE.]

Escalating April Fools’ pranks on the LAPD’s social media platforms led to absolute chaos on the Tuesday, April 1 episode of THE ROOKIE, “April Fools.”

The hour started off lighter, with Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) and Tim (Eric Winter) romantically reuniting for the day (with the excuse that the holiday meant it didn’t count and they were actually trying to trick their colleagues into thinking they were back together), plus Nolan (Nathan Fillion) being convinced his new rookie was actually a prank from Grey (Richard T. Jones).

But then the disgruntled LAPD social media employee sent out a message saying all crime was legal and mayhem broke out in Los Angeles.

“Well, when I realized there was a PURGE-like riot, [a] hellscape [in] LA thing, I always wonder if [THE ROOKIE creator] Alexi [Hawley]’s gonna, like, stab me or put me in the hospital—because he’s done that a lot!” Shawn Ashmore, who previously worked with Hawley on THE FOLLOWING before joining the ABC drama to play Wesley, tells Give Me My Remote in the video below. “So whenever there’s a huge, like, ongoing tragedy happening in the city, I’m like, ‘I wonder if Wesley’s gonna be involved in this?’” 

“He beat me up a lot in [THE FOLLOWING] and then also, even when I came on to THE ROOKIE, I think within the first season, I was stabbed in a hospital,” he continues. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. Again?’ [But] it’s good drama, though, and Alexi knows how to write and also make you care about characters—it draws an audience in when you start to care about a character and put them in jeopardy. So it all makes sense.”

After realizing his character would make it through unscathed, the twists and turns of the hour even surprised Ashmore. “That’s what I love about our show: The setup, to me, when I was first reading, it felt like, ‘Oh, this is going to be a fun episode,’” he recalls. “‘It’s all these potential April Fools’ setups. And they’re probably not all going to be April Fools’ jokes, but is [it] the Nolan thing? Is the Ben Dover case that Wesley’s dealing with? Where is the joke here?’ And then, all of a sudden, about halfway through the episode, everything shifts and becomes a life and death situation.” 

“I think that they—our writers and Alexi—have such a touch with walking that fine line between these characters having fun and enjoying the lives that they’re living, and then all of a sudden putting them in life and death situations as real officers and first responders would have,” he continues. “So, yeah, I was really excited when I read the episode…I thought it was so well done. Ryan [Krayser], who directed it, he’s one of our first ADs… He did a great job. And it looked incredible. And it was a very big episode. So I was really happy with it.”

Though there could be a lot of legal fallout from the social media message and the destruction of the city, this won’t be a big thing that comes back later in the season.

“Similarly to other seasons where department stuff happens, Wesley kind of is on cleanup,” Ashmore notes. “[In the episode,] he walks into the bullpen and it’s like, ‘Okay, guys, this is looking pretty bad.’ So there’s always a little bit of that, but we don’t focus on it too much. We’ve kind of handled department responsibility, and sort of what happens after the fact—we’ve covered that, and other things. So there is always a little bit of follow [up,] but it’s not major.”

THE ROOKIE, Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC

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