Rick Gonzalez plays Bobby Reyes in Law & Order: Organized Crime, which is in its fifth season. New episodes stream weekly, Thursdays on Peacock. I caught up with the actor to discuss the experience of evolving with his character, Bobby’s goodbye scene with Jet, the franchise’s truthful storytelling, and more.
Season five explores the dangerous worlds of cross-border smuggling, high-tech domestic terrorism and a crime family intent on repaying Stabler for the injury he did them in Rome. As his worlds collide, Stabler will put everything on the line to protect the vulnerable and fight for justice.
“Art gets to take real life and just sort of superimpose it for us and I think the idea is to just, in the most truthful way, allow us to tell our stories, to tell ideas and things that have happened, and sort of report it in such a way that we can digest it and appreciate it,” he shared. “The beauty of Law & Order is there are a lot of themes within these cases, right? And so, the idea is to really highlight these themes and to sort of use that as the barometer and the North Star in terms of us storytelling, and just really connecting our audiences and really engaging with them and saying, ‘Hey, this really bad person is dealing with this thing. This case is about this, but really we’re talking about these themes,’ and I think that’s super important and I think that’s where art comes into play.”
“I think the most important thing with me with how I feel about Reyes is like, he’s a kid who grew up in foster homes and has dealt with a lot of abandonment and loss, and I always feel as though I never want to abandon that feeling he has inside of him that’s never really been resolved. It only gets worse because of the loss that he’s continuously had to deal with, and because he doesn’t deal with it, I always want that to be present in him,” Gonzalez explained. “In terms of the writing, and I think they do a really good job of this, is just always to kind of force him to find levity because he’s always dealing with stuff, but to find that levity, which is real. In real life, we don’t always want to feel down; we want to get out of how we feel, and I think that’s something that he works really hard on. I think the beauty of him being a cop, being undercover, and working with Stabler, the Captain, and Vargas, these people sort of help him to come out of what he’s feeling, so I think those things are always present.”
Watch my full interview below:
