CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Paget Brewster and Kirsten Vangsness on the Complications of Voit’s Health Twist

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Thursday, May 15 episode of CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION.]

The BAU was thrown for a loop in CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION’s “The Zookeeper” when Voit (Zach Gilford) woke up from his coma—and had amnesia and is convinced that Rossi (Joe Mantegna) is his father.

“Well, I think Rossi’s been through the wringer,” Paget Brewster, who plays Prentiss, tells Give Me My Remote. “He hates Voit. Voit beat him up, kidnapped him, called him old; that’s probably the worst thing. Rossi could hold his own, but, boy, that was insulting. So he has a visceral hatred for Voit. And now this new Voit—is he brain-damaged? Does he have amnesia? Or is he the same guy that’s been having us chase our tails and making deals and getting away with s—? Is it that same Voit?”

But after Rossi prematurely promised a victim’s family they’d be okay (which turned out not to be true), Rossi needed to reconsider his approach. “He has to make that choice to agree to be around Voit, this person he hates,” Brewster points out. “And he doesn’t believe that Voit is damaged—but all of the science points to the fact that Voit is damaged. There’s no way to fake these brain scans that he’s getting. There’s no way. If Lewis is our psychologist, she knows. [Aimee Garcia’s Dr.] Ochoa is one of the best in the country.” 

“So it turns out he’s not faking—but now, what does that mean?” she continues. “Does it mean he’s going to remember? Is he going to turn back into that serial killer? Or is he so changed that he’s not guilty of his crimes? Our writers are so good. I just loved it; I love it, I love it, I love it.”

Brewster acknowledges that Prentiss was skeptical of Voit, too. “I think she starts out a naysayer, as well. She thinks he’s giving an Academy Award performance,” she says. “But she can’t negate the professionalism of her co-workers. She can’t say, ‘Oh, Lewis, you’re full of it.’ No. Lewis knows her stuff. This is her milieu. This is her specialty. She’s a psychologist. So she knows what she’s seeing when she’s doing these cognitive tests with Voit. She knows whether she’s reading a brain scan. Ochoa [is] also being great at it. So Prentiss has to come to this [place where] she has to break the news to the team, ‘Okay, he could get compassionate release. That’s just the law.’”

Not everyone is unhappy with this twist, though. “She really wants him to be telling the truth,” Kirsten Vangsness, who plays Garcia, notes. “She really wants it to be real. I think she’s highly instinctual, highly intuitive…And I think that she’s delighted in him wanting Rossi to be [his dad], because who wouldn’t? And she’s like, ‘He didn’t have a good dad. Let him have it. Give him something.’”

“And I think her friends are mad at her for it,” Vangsness continues. “If I believe in…[if I] take oregano oil when I have a cold, and someone who is a diehard [mindset of], ‘No, just medicine,’ you can really trigger them. So I really feel like we’re in these things, where Garcia is hopeful. They’re like [makes a negative noise], you know, [trying to] squelch it. And that is interesting because we all go through those things inside of ourselves and out with other people.”

Brewster praised the work her colleagues did with playing the concern about Voit, and admits she’s concerned about walking the line for Prentiss. “People can be awful, murder is terrible, and these are horrible things to see, but we have a job to do,” she says. “These are people who can’t fall apart. They are people who have to be aware of every trick in the book…these are human beings who can’t fall apart in the face of this despair and loss and pain and fury and cruelty. They have to keep moving forward, but they can’t not feel anything. And so I think we do a good job with that on the show. I hope I do a good job with it. Because we don’t want to make FBI agents look like they’re perfect or inhuman, or they’re just badasses. There’s so much more to it than that, because they’re still human beings facing terrible situations, but having to be hopeful or optimistic or move forward in the face of certain tragedies. We’re all very aware of wanting to honor the people who actually do this for a living, and anyone in law enforcement, first responders, emergency room, paramedics—that’s a high-stress job that we take for granted.”

One thing Brewster is unreservedly excited about is the addition of Garcia to season 18. “Aimee Garcia is such a delight,” she gushes. “I don’t even know if she was supposed to be with us as long as she is, but she’s so great. Day one, we rehearse this, the first scene with Aimee; she’s not even wearing her doctor outfit yet. The whole scene is this speech she gives. And she is word perfect before finishing hair and makeup. Some of us, we’re going to be there all day. We have to memorize the scene piece by piece as we go because you just can’t [do it all]. But, man, she flew through that speech.”

“And the director, Bethany [Rooney], said, ‘Cut rehearsal.’ I just went, ‘Oh my god, Aimee!’ and I hugged her, and she started laughing,” she continues. “But to have that kind of presence, she plays Dr Ochoa, who is Voit’s doctor in rehabilitation after his beating, when we find out what has happened to him…and she becomes an integral part of our investigation and our work and where we have to go with still trying to shut down Voit’s network. So lucky for us, we got Aimee Garcia, because she’s a lovely person and she’s a great actress. She’s a very hard worker. Our guest stars—we’re so lucky. It’s like casting is like, ‘No jerks allowed.’…Someone has to be the gatekeeper on that…clearly you’ve got to be good, but then they’re ready, they’re early, they know their lines, they’re nice people, and they’re funny. Maybe that’s what you get after 18 years. Maybe, if you’re lucky, that’s what you get.”

CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION, Thursdays, Paramount+

RELATED:

• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION Post-Mortem: Kirsten Vangsness and Paget Brewster Reflect on the Show’s Big Loss
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘The Zookeeper’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Kirsten Vangsness on Garcia’s Hope for Voit and the ‘Gross’ UnSub in ‘The Zookeeper’
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION Season 18 Premiere: ‘Swimmer’s Calculus’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Paget Brewster Teases Prentiss’ Season 18 Mindset, Trouble with Voit, and the (Brief) Return of Matthew Gray Gubler
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION Season 18 Trailer: Sicarius’ Followers Cause Mayhem for the BAU
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Paramount+ Sets Season 18 Release Date, Orders Season 19
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Matthew Gray Gubler to Guest Star
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION Season Finale: ‘Save the Children’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Stars & Stripes’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘North Star’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Piranha’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Message in a Bottle’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Conspiracy vs. Theory’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Kingdom Of The Blind’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Homesick’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Contagion’ Photos
• Paramount+ Renews CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Gold Star’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION to Return in June
• Pluto TV Adds CRIMINAL MINDS Channel
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION’s Aisha Tyler on the Differences Between Directing the Original Series and Revival
• Paramount+ Renews CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION’s Zach Gilford on the Joys of Being Directed by His Co-Stars
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Oedipus Wrecks’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION’s Kirsten Vangsness on Getting to Do ‘Dangerous, Emotional’ Acting with Joe Mantegna
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: ‘Moose’ Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION’s Aisha Tyler Previews What’s to Come for Lewis’ New Romance
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION Premiere Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Watch the First 4 Minutes of the Premiere
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Aisha Tyler Previews a ‘Tougher, More Hardened’ Lewis
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION’s Zach Gilford Warns Fans Will Experience ‘Feelings That You Never Thought You’d Feel for an UnSub’
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION’s Kirsten Vangsness Previews Garcia’s Reluctant Reunion with the BAU
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION: Paramount+ Sets a Thanksgiving Launch
• CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION Photos
• CRIMINAL MINDS Revival Adds Zach Gilford, Gets New Title
• Paramount+ Revives CRIMINAL MINDS

Follow @GiveMeMyRemote and @marisaroffman on Twitter for the latest TV news. Connect with other TV fans on GIVE ME MY REMOTE’s official Facebook page or our Instagram.

And be the first to see our exclusive videos by subscribing to our YouTube channel.

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases made through links/ads placed on the site.