Joe Mantegna Explains the Unusual Origins of his 'Criminal Minds' Character
"Criminal Minds" (8 p.m. Wednesday, WBBM-Ch. 2) isn't a show that one associates with off-screen controversy, but there was quite a kerfuffle over the summer when Mandy Patinkin unexpectedly quit the drama and Chicago actor Joe Mantegna was hired to take his place.
Patinkin’s sudden decision to stop playing lead profiler Jason Gideon riled up one of the most affable executive producers in the business, former Chicago cop Edward Allen Bernero, the head writer/producer on the CBS procedural.
“He left us completely in the proverbial lurch,” Bernero told the “Criminal Minds” Fanatic site in July.
But in a recent interview, Bernero sounded very pleased about the arrival of Mantegna, who makes his first appearance in Wednesday’s episode. Bernero said he’d actually been frequenting Mantegna’s Los Angeles-area food emporium, Taste Chicago, for years, though he’d never met the actor.
For Christmas Eve dinners, “we’d go to Taste Chicago and get the Italian beef and Chicago hot dogs,” Bernero said. And so far, their “Criminal Minds” collaboration is going swimmingly, at least from a culinary perspective.
“He gave me a pizza and a beef-sausage combo for my birthday,” Bernero said.
In Wednesday’s episode, Mantegna’s character, David Rossi, joins the Behavioral Analysis Unit, a team of FBI agents who profile and apprehend serial killers and other criminals. Actually it would be more accurate to say he rejoins the BAU, because Rossi actually helped found the original unit.
But the old-school approach of Rossi, who’s become wealthy thanks to the books and consulting he’s done after retiring from the FBI, causes some friction at first, especially with Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), who’s now the leader of the BAU. And Rossi is a bit at sea when confronted with all the cutting-edge technology the unit now uses.
“He really doesn’t know how to fit into a team. He didn’t really have the team concept” when he helped found the BAU, Bernero said. “There’s a little conflict with him and Hotch — they just don’t know how to deal with each other.”
In Wednesday's episode, the team tracks a killer who makes “Have you seen me?” fliers for his victims, and Rossi takes some bold steps without checking first with his new boss. And while the rest of the team is in awe of Rossi’s accomplishments, the veteran agent isn’t used to sharing his hunches and insights with the group.
Rossi “is a guy who has had a history with [the BAU], has been out of it for a good long time and now has come back,” Mantegna said. “So that in itself creates a whole interesting dynamic. He’s financially well-established, and he has his own way of doing things, which is based on what that initial work was, but that has changed a lot. He’s one of the originators, but he has to play a little catch-up.”
Still, the team respects Rossi’s groundbreaking work in establishing the BAU.
“A lot of what they do is theoretical,” Bernero said. “He actually talked to these [notorious criminals]. At one point he said, ‘That’s not what the guy said. I know because he said it to me.’?”
Rossi also has personal reasons for rejoining the BAU. A case from 20 years ago is still preying on his mind, and as Mantegna said, Rossi doesn’t rejoin the BAU “out of the blue.”
But Rossi’s reason for delving into the old case is “a mystery he keeps to himself,” the actor said.
Mantegna, a fervent Cubs fans, said that his own transition into the “Criminal Minds” team had been smooth so far.
“To put it in terms of sports, I’ve had a long career playing on a lot of teams, and I’ve been traded to another team. I know the game; I just have to adapt to this team,” he said.
He was pleased to find that that at least half the “Minds” crew was from the late, lamented CBS show “Joan of Arcadia,” where he played Will Gerardi for two seasons.
“It was like old-home week in that respect, and then to meet Ed Bernero, an Italian-American former cop from Chicago — I couldn’t have cloned a better human being to be my go-to guy,” Mantegna said.
The two former Chicagoans are so simpatico that Bernero let Mantegna choose his character’s name. Mantegna said he chose the name David Rossi in part as a tribute to a Los Angeles police officer who testified in the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial.
Mantegna said he was struck by how relentlessly the defense lawyers grilled the cop.
“He was just the guy who happened to take the call” the night of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, Mantegna said.
Mantegna recalls thinking of Rossi, “From the outside looking in, job well done.”
Mantegna said the real Rossi reminded him of characters in the work of David Mamet. Mantegna, who was a mainstay of the fertile Chicago theater scene of the ’70s and ’80s, won a Tony for his portrayal of salesman Ricky Roma in the 1984 Broadway production of Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
“David very often instilled in his characters the idea of what he described as ‘the excellent man,’” Mantegna said. “Everyone falls short of it, but the excellent man is really just trying do to the best he can under the circumstances, that’s all. That’s all any of us can hope to do. When we were talking about the character, somehow that came to my mind.”
And Rossi’s Italian name is no accident..... on TV and in the movies, if you have a last name that ends in a vowel, you’re a gangster. And every other noble character’s name is Smith or Johnson.”
Whatever the character’s name, Bernero said he’s not worried about the transition from Gideon to Rossi. “Criminal Minds” is still doing well in the Nielsen ratings, despite Patinkin’s absence from the third season (his character briefly appeared in scenes that explained why he left the BAU).
“I don't think it’s ever been the Mandy show,” Bernero said. “It really wasn't that. It’s very much an ensemble.”
Mantegna does, in my opinion, bring a welcome warmth to the show, in contrast to the more dour Patinkin. And for his part, Bernero said he’s not worried about fans rejecting the BAU’s latest addition.
“I don't think there's going to be a Joe Mantegna backlash,” he said with a laugh.
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