Graceland Stars Aaron Tveit and Daniel Sunjata Talk Season 3

Graceland interview recap: Aaron Tveit and Daniel Sunjata on season 3

USA Network's undercover-cop drama Graceland left viewers with a hard question at the end of its second season. Lead character Mike Warren, played by Aaron Tveit, went into cardiac arrest and flatlined after a visit from a vengeful enemy, and the audience was left to wonder whether the show's lead was dead. The question was still open in the spring of 2015, when Graceland star Aaron Tveit and his co-star Daniel Sunjata, who plays senior agent Paul Briggs, appeared at NBCUniversal's Summer Press Day in Pasadena, California, and talked about what comes next.

Season 3 premiered on Thursday, June 25, 2015, at 10/9c on USA, with thirteen episodes, and it turned out to be the show's last. The series, created by Jeff Eastin, follows a group of law enforcement agents from different agencies who share a confiscated beach house in Southern California while working undercover. That setup makes it an unusual procedural: the personal lives of the housemates matter as much as the cases. The season 2 finale put that structure under heavy stress, and the actors were frank about how much repair the characters had to do.

The stakes for Briggs and Mike had been framed as two sides of the same coin: one is a veteran agent whose methods are ethically questionable, the other a younger agent who started the series investigating him. Their relationship is part friendship, part mentorship, and part suspicion, and the actors said that mix is where the show lives and where its conflict comes from. The season 3 plan was to lean into that relationship, not away from it, with Sid anchored as a more consistent antagonist than in earlier seasons.

Neither actor wanted to give much away, which is the normal rule at these events. They did, however, make clear what the tone would be. The new season would pick up almost exactly where the previous one stopped, Sunjata said, out of necessity. The story could not move forward until the loose ends were handled, including a plot with the villain Sid and a long list of bad decisions made by members of the household.

Did Mike survive? What Tveit said

Aaron Tveit confirmed that he is in the first episode in some capacity, but declined to say how, when or in what form. He did say the writers found a good way to frame it. He also joked about the alternative. If the show had ended there, the series would have begun with Mike graduating from the FBI academy and ended with his death, and he laughed that he had once pitched the writers a final scene in which another character simply picks up a phone and says, "Oh, damn." He was glad the show kept going.

The answer to the question of fate was therefore a careful yes-and-no: Mike is part of the story, in a form the actors would not describe. Fans were left with a promise that the first episode would not dodge the cliffhanger.

Atonement, penance and sin eating

Sunjata named the season's buzzwords: atonement, penance and a term the show called sin eating. The last, he said, was ambiguous enough that only viewers who watched would understand it. The common thread was repair. Season 2 had sent every housemate on a personal mission, and a lot of them had made choices that damaged the group. The early part of season 3 would require making up for that if the house was to keep its integrity.

Graceland's Aaron Tveit described the shift from the previous season. In season 2, everyone was focused on a singular goal, which pushed them away from trust and mutual help. In season 3, he hoped Mike and Briggs would see that they were more alike than they appeared, and that they could lean on one another and, as he put it, do some good instead of making terrible choices. He acknowledged the line sounded cheesy. The characters, he said, are both A-players, and he called them double-A for their instincts.

The Paige storyline came up too. Paige, played by Serinda Swan, had given up Mike's location to Sid, a betrayal the rest of the group must reckon with. Sunjata said only that she is in a little trouble, and Tveit added that everyone would be responsible for their actions, her included. The theme of the season, in other words, was accountability.

Revenge, two graves and Shakespeare

The interviewer raised a Chinese proverb that Eastin has cited about revenge: if you seek it, dig two graves. Tveit said that if there is a future for Mike, he will have to face that idea. Season 2, in his reading, was a King Lear ambition trip, and Mike was blinded by it. Sunjata agreed that the characters understood what a single-minded pursuit of retribution can do when the motive is selfish. The group's interest now, he said, is coming back together as a house and affecting some positive change instead of racking up bodies.

The craft of the show: what the actors said about working on Graceland

The conversation also covered how the two work. Sunjata said every actor has an individual approach and that trying to impose one's own method on a group is a mistake. The healthier route is to trust that casting has assembled people with the right temperaments and talent, and to give them space. Tveit added that the cast is prepared, with clear ideas about what they are doing, so the scenes with all six housemates, which sound hard to shoot, tend to go smoothly.

Both praised Eastin and the producers for collaborating. Sunjata said that if an actor floats a bad idea, the answer is a plain no, and that if the idea is good, the writers say they had not thought of it that way. Tveit described it as being part of the artistic process. That access matters for a show about people playing roles, which Sunjata called a Russian doll effect: every time you zoom in, another layer opens up. Staying close to the showrunner, he said, helps keep track of what Daniel knows versus what Briggs is supposed to know in a given scene.

Tveit added a detail about playing the show's first-season secret, in which Mike was investigating Briggs. He mapped what the audience knew and what the other characters did not, so that his looks in close-up carried a wink for the audience while staying invisible to the cast. They also discussed the thirteen-episode format. Tveit said it is an ideal length for a serialized story, and Sunjata agreed that twenty-two episodes would be hard to sustain. Tveit's theory was that shows with that many episodes tend to be one-and-done procedurals for that reason, because the format fits the length.

The personal storylines were not forgotten. Briggs, his partner Charlie and the baby remain a thread that has to be addressed, Sunjata said, and the season would begin with that issue still open. He spoke warmly of working with Vanessa Ferlito, who plays Charlie, calling her a very good actress, and Tveit called her one of the most natural, grounded people he has worked with. Sunjata also said he was glad the show would not spend most of its scenes in Briggs's bedroom or kitchen this year, which suggests a wider canvas for the new episodes.

The final note from both was about the group. The writers were narrowing the focus, they said, and bringing the agents back to the house, which restores the balance of power and chemistry that launched the show. It is a pitch for a return to basics, and it suggests that the third season set out to rebuild what the second broke. As it turned out, it would also be the last: USA Network canceled the series on October 1, 2015, after three seasons.

Read now, the interview is a snapshot of a show at a crossroads. The actors sounded hopeful and a little protective of spoilers, and they spoke about their characters with affection. The idea of hard people finding a way to do some good is a simple one, but it is what gave Graceland its identity.

Sources

• Graceland (TV series), Wikipedia — cast, premise and season 3 details