Cross Star Wes Chatham Talks Adaptations, Violence, & The Expanse’s Possible Return [Exclusive]

Over the course of more than 30 James Patterson novels, homicide detective Alex Cross has outwitted and outsmarted his fair share of conniving masterminds and antagonists. Season one of Prime Video’s TV series adaptation, Cross, followed suit by introducing Ed Ramsey, a serial killer notorious for forcing his victims to re-enact the crimes of former murderers. Cross’ sophomore year, however, took a different path by veering away from the books. Enter Rebecca and Donnie, two vigilantes out for vengeance against corrupt billionaires. Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Cross.

The Expanse’s Wes Chatham portrays Donnie, one half of the lethal pair playing judge, jury and executioner. Initially depicted as the strong, silent brutal type, he quickly established himself as more than just the muscle. His past trauma and loyalty to the cause didn’t save him though. In this week’s episode Winnow, Rebecca’s aunt, Clare, fatally shot Donnie to bury evidence that would have disrupted her niece’s mission. Chatham spoke to ComicBook about book adaptations, tossing Molotov cocktails, Donnie’s demise, as well as his critically acclaimed sci-fi series The Expanse and his hope for more episodes.

ComicBook: After Hunger Games and The Expanse, Cross marks your third endeavor directly connected to a book adaptation. In what ways does having that source material and built-in audience enrich the acting experience?

Wes Chatham: First of all, it’s incredibly helpful. Going back to The Expanse, to have the beginning, middle and end laid out for you… And to have an understanding of how you are serving the story through your character and where you are in the arc is really great. The thing about Cross, though, is Cross is based off the novels, but they are not specific to any novel. The stories are all original. My character in the storyline was original, so I am approaching it as I would approach anything and starting it from the script itself and then creating from there.

What’s really cool is being a part of something like that, you have this original character, but it has such a huge built-in fanbase. It’s like doing Star Wars. You are part of the Star Wars world, but you are playing this character that is completely original. You have the fun of being in this world that you have loved your whole life, but you don’t have any pressure. You aren’t playing Darth Vader or anything like that. That’s how I felt with Cross. Aldis Hodge has all the pressure. He’s playing a character everybody knows.

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What’s it been like going from The Expanse’s sci-fi space setting to a more grounded Cross landscape?

There are two ways to answer that question. There’s the personal, the lifestyle of it. We did The Expanse in Toronto. We had two summer seasons, but most of The Expanse was during the winter. Just the fact of getting up when it’s dark, we go to set – we are shooting in a studio – and it’s dark there. It’s dark in space. And then, you finish and it’s dark and then you go home. You do that for six months and you don’t see the sun for six months. 

Also, the jumpsuit I wore was fine, but the space suits were such a pain in the ass. You are wearing these space suits and it’s like a Five Flags wet suit that they build it out of. It’s so hot and you are doing all these stunts. The first thing I notice when I am doing other present-day stuff like Cross, or I did this movie called Hotel Tehran, is “Oh, I get to wear regular outfits. Oh, we are in a regular setting.” I see the sun. You go to different places. You are not just doing this stage over and over. That’s the personal thing.

The creative side is it’s all the same. You are telling a story. How you connect to the character, what are the circumstances, what does the character want and what you are fighting for in a scene… All of that work is the same. Good writers get to tell this story in outer space or setting it in New York or setting it in Georgia or wherever… That’s just dressing. The story work, and the work of understanding your character, is all the same.

Your Cross character, Donnie, makes quite the entrance in the season-two premiere. 

That entrance was a lot more intense, but I guess there was a lot of editing around that. They really went for it. I remember reading the script originally and going, “They aren’t going to let you do this, are they?” “Yeah, we are doing it.” We shot it, but once we started getting closer, they were like, “Ahh… Maybe we will cut some of that out.”

What did you learn about igniting a Molotov cocktail and how effective of a weapon that could be?

It was a lot of fun. What is interesting is when they are telling me what was going to be the Molotov – which is basically having a flammable liquid in a fake bottle and they had this thing coming out and they light it – you get to throw it and it explodes. We wanted to practice throwing it through a window because you want to throw it a certain way. You don’t want it to shatter on the window. You have to test it on the fake glass to make sure it goes through and it blows up on the other side.

So, they had me do testing in a warehouse in Toronto, basically testing the glass. They were using these scrap sets for different things that have shot in Toronto. There are different doorways and they just replace it with glass. And they used a door that was on one of The Expanse spaceships, that was repurposed for Star Trek. Throwing this cocktail, I was like, “That door looks familiar.” Then I go look and it’s, “Holy shit.” There’s this door you go into the hangar bay. It was that door and it still had some of The Expanse stuff on it, but some stuff is different to make it fit the Star Trek spaceship. So, I was throwing this thing through this door that had so much history. 

But the day that we shot that was really fun. When I walk in and they are all standing in the room and I start throwing Molotov cocktails and it’s shattering at their feet and blowing up, they had tanks and pipes underneath blowing gas. So, when you throw it, they crank up the flames and there’s a big explosion. That was a really exhilarating day on set. 

In the beginning, Donnie comes across as the muscle… the brawn in this Bonnie and Clyde-type dynamic. But there’s so many more layers to him. How much did Donnie’s backstory help you better understand his motivations and determination?

Ultimately, his war experience and stuff that he carried with him… He was coming back to try and heal and process the things that he went through. He’s going back to his family farm, which has always been his center and source of comfort for him. When he goes there, he realizes that his whole way of life and the thing that he thought he was going to come back to… I was in the military. You always have a certain dream of what you are going to do when you get out. Home becomes romanticized, this idea and longing to go back home and to be with your family. So, Donnie was going to go back and work on this farm. And when he saw this thing had been taken from him in an unjust and unfair way and saw the impact it had on his family and how it ruined his father… His place of healing ended up being his place of torture. In a moment of impulse, in a moment of rage, he ended up doing something he could never forgive himself for. All of that is now channelled into getting vengeance and justice for the way that he sees it, but getting vengeance for the things they’ve destroyed in him and destroyed in his family and these innocent children that were killed. 

Donnie goes down in a blaze of glory, having a shootout with Cross before being blindsided and killed this week. What did you make of the manner of his death? How did that development serve the narrative?

One of the themes running through this season is that unjust actions by the supremely rich and powerful reverberate and harm many lives. Donnie is a casualty of that world. He was physically and psychologically destroyed by the actions of Matthew Lillard’s character, and by the time we meet him, he’s already lost the life he might have had.

In many ways, Donnie was already dead long before that final shootout. All he really had left was his mission of vengeance. It reminds me of Riggs in Lethal Weapon, when he says the only reason he doesn’t put a bullet in his head is the job. For Donnie, revenge became that job. It was the only thing keeping him moving forward.

Because of that, the way he dies feels tragic, but inevitable. His pursuit of revenge ultimately doomed him to that fate. In my opinion, if his family had still had the farm to come back to, he might have had a place to work, be useful, and rebuild after the war. But that world had already been taken from him, and once that happened there was really nowhere left for Donnie to go.

Cross’ second season has been darker than its freshman year. Do you feel that Donnie is raising that question about law and justice, and how those lines can blur? 

Oh yeah. Absolutely. It’s interesting how timely this show is right now. Even when we were making it and the news cycle… We finished shooting and the news cycle that was coming out and the things that were happening… It’s like, “My God. This show is going to come out right at the time and has its finger on the button.” The core questions, and core story idea, of what this show is exploring throughout this season is exactly what you just said. That’s the center of the whole show.

Shifting to a prior role, The Expanse hasn’t aired since 2022. What do you recall about that very first day on set?

I remember the very first day, the very first thing I saw shooting of The Expanse, is I meet Dominique Tipper. Her and I had this long talk as we are walking to set. We are getting ready to shoot the elevator scene, where you see us for the very first time. We were walking to set to shoot that. While we are walking, they were finishing a scene and that was the scene where Steven Strait is crowbarring the door and going in. I remember walking into the studio. It was all dark and walking up to where he was crowbarring the door, you could see the spaceship and all the different spaceship sets throughout there. It was so elaborate and so big, that you could see all the radars and things that were operating. And all the readouts and lights and the way it was all lit. It was unbelievable. You are walking into another world, walking into a different, distant universe. It was amazing. It was like walking into a dream.

Amos has been tooted as one of the best characters in science fiction. What do you attribute those accolades to?

I think the writing. What Ty [Franck] and Daniel [Abraham] did, and what the writers of The Expanse did, there is a juxtaposition of extreme vulnerability, but also extreme confidence, happening at the same time. I think there is something really interesting about that, the alchemy of that. He is literally like a roach. Amos will probably survive a nuclear blast. But he’s also extremely vulnerable.

Also, the earnestness of someone wanting to be a better person and knowing how evil they can be, but working towards that because of a promise that he made and he never forgot that promise. Amos’ loyalty is to very few, but if he’s loyal to that person, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for them. All of that combined and his deep connection to children… There’s something fascinating about someone capable of so much violence. In some ways, if he is not guided in the right way, he could do evil things and not even know the difference. But then there’s such beauty and innocence in the other side of things. The alchemy of all that creates a really interesting character. 

Even though The Expanse TV series is no more, it’s lived on in comic books. What made that medium the right place for telling more stories?

Have you seen the comics I have written? They have come out. It’s A Little Death. Me and Andy Diggle, who is a phenomenal comic book writer, and wrote The Dragon Tooth comics, as well… This has been one of my favorite experiences. Alcon gave me the opportunity to be a part of this comic book series. I really enjoyed it. It introduced me to comic books because I didn’t grow up reading comics. Where I grew up, out in the country, which is close to where I live now… I probably would have been a huge fan if they would have been accessible to me. I remember I was obsessed with the Richard Donner Superman. I remember as a kid, when that came out, being transfixed by it. I watched it over and over. If somebody had handed me comics, I would have been obsessed by them. That wasn’t the case.

If anybody is a writer, it’s such a great exercise because you have to be so economical. You have to know what the story is, what you want to say, have a core understanding of it and hopefully have a good artist to help portray a lot of the things that are there. That’s been a really wonderful process and I’m thankful how wonderful the comics have done. It is something I would like to do again. 

Are there plans for another chapter? Have you been working on any?

The fourth issue just came out. We have not talked about that yet. I am more excited about the possibility of finishing the books through shows, for two more seasons. I am not saying that is going to happen. There is something interesting happening with The Expanse right now. I just did a movie in the country of Georgia, like six miles from Russia. The amount of people that come up to me on the streets, that are Expanse fans… The people that come up to me now at the airport, it’s twice as much as when the show was airing. When people come up, I will ask them when they started watching. We did that show a long time ago. They say, “No, no. We just watched it. It came up in our algorithm.” It’s just growing. It’s getting bigger and bigger. What I hear from people is that it’s still continuing to grow, which I think is exciting. 

I know there are two more books. To be a part of this show that was created out of these beloved books, can you imagine if we came back and we had that time jump that the books had? And then we were able to finish the story. Let’s say we stuck the landing and even in some miracle, we elevated what we had done so far. What other show has done that? As an actor, to play a 30-year time gap and then to come back and close the door on this character, close the arc, is something I find fascinating. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but I know there’s a will for it to happen. I know there are conversations about it happening. 

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