CHICAGO P.D.: LaRoyce Hawkins on How a Recent Tragedy Impacts Atwater’s Reaction to Dawson’s Spiral

As the CHICAGO P.D. team gets looped into Antonio Dawson’s (Jon Seda) escalating addiction issues in the December 5 fall finale, the crisis with one of their own hits them hard.

Of course, the 21st District is no stranger to loss and tragedy, and the still-recent death of Olinsky (Elias Koteas) has tinged everything with a bit more gravity. “I think Antonio’s character is similar to Olinsky’s character for Atwater,” LaRoyce Hawkins (Atwater) says. “He [was] one of the big homies. And Voight is in that world, too, [of people] who, in Atwater’s humble opinion, are immortal.”

“What crushed Atwater so heavily about Olinsky was no matter what, no matter how, no matter who, Olinsky [was] going to be able to find his way out of that jam, in a very Olinsky way,” he continues. “When he saw how Olinsky went out, I think that planted a seed of darkness and doubt.”

And though the officers had, seemingly, moved on after losing their friend, “what we learn, through Antonio’s vices and how they creep up on him, is how heavily Olinsky’s death is hitting all of us,” Hawkins points out. “I feel like if Olinsky was still here, none of this would have happened.”

“What I love about the story is that it shows no one is safe, even our great Puerto Rican knight,” he continues. “No one is safe from the vices of the job and the frustrations of what the world brings. You’re going to see that impact all of us. And we’re all going to have to make decisions—some harder than others—about how we’re going to react to Antonio and what feels like his decline. But we’re all going to do it in our own way.”

CHICAGO P.D., Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC

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