‘Watson’: Randall Park Introduces His Moriarty, ‘Master Manipulator’ and Watson’s ‘Ultimate Test’

Moriarty (Randall Park) is keeping his eye on Watson (Morris Chestnut) in more ways than one. He’s also making sure that his reluctant asset, Shinwell (Ritchie Coster) is doing his bidding as the first season of Watson continues.

The CBS drama is a modern take on the iconic Arthur Conan Doyle characters. The series picks up six months after Sherlock Holmes (Matt Berry voicing the sleuth in an episode to come) and the villain Moriarty’s fight at Reichenbach Falls; when they plunged into the water, Watson followed and was the only one to emerge, with a traumatic brain injury. The end of the series premiere revealed Moriarty survived, too, and had Watson’s right-hand man Shinwell reluctantly working for him and delivering samples. Watson remains in the dark.

Chestnut loved that reveal. “When I was reading the pilot script for the first time, I had no idea that that was coming. That reveal at the end just ramped up stakes,” he tells TV Insider as part of our latest digital cover story. “That’s what I love about the show. Although it has a procedural element to it, where we solve a medical case every single episode, it also has a very strong serialized element to the show, where in each episode, the audience is finding out more information. There’s more to be revealed about the characters. There’s more to be revealed about the stories that leads up to this climactic peak in the finale.”

He’s looking forward to the audience seeing “the degree in which he’s betrayed,” he adds. “How does he handle it? Is that the only person that’s betraying him on the show?”

For now, we know Shinwell is definitely betraying him. In Park’s mind, his character has chosen him because he “knows Shinwell. They have a history, so he knows that Shinwell is capable of being used in this way because of his background. This Moriarty is very much a master manipulator and he knows the psychological profile of everyone on the chess board. So he sees Shinwell as an opportunity. And because of Shinwell’s relationship with Watson, it very much makes sense for Moriarty to kind of control that chess piece.”

Eduardo Araquel/CBS

Park is the right person for the role with this show’s take on Moriarty, executive producer Craig Sweeny explains: “He’s more or less the friendliest man in the world. So I like to ask the question, what kind of sinister thing might lie beneath that, that sort of veneer of pleasantness? How do you make Randall Park evil?”

That’s also how he pitched it to Park, who knows he’s “known for playing kindhearted, silly characters in comedy.” As Sweeney told him, Park shares, “‘We want it to be surprising. We want him to feel like an everyman, which makes them even more dangerous and unpredictable in the way in which we envision Moriarty.'”

With Sherlock out of the equation, it gives Watson the opportunity “to match wits with the only person that’s really gotten the best of” the sleuth, says Chestnut. His character also “to a large degree, wants to avenge the death of his best friend.”

Sweeny calls it “the ultimate test for Watson. What better way for Watson to face the challenge of no longer having his partner than to be forced to go up against the man who essentially defeated his partner? It works on a writing level as a daunting challenge for an incredibly brilliant mind like Watson’s. It works on a conceptual level because how better to define Watson as the leading man worthy of his own show than to go up against Moriarty?”

From Moriarty’s point of view, the villain “knows of Watson’s brilliance. He’s very familiar with what Watson can do, what he’s capable of, and also of Watson’s heart and where his heart lies,” Park says. “He knows that Watson is deeply mourning the loss of his partner and all of that I think plays into Moriarty’s calculus. It’s an opportunity for power and chaos.”

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So far, we’ve only seen that one scene of Moriarty at the end of the premiere, but he will be back, especially in the second half of the season. “His low-key presence is what enables him to kind of be everywhere and to blend in and to be an even greater threat to Watson and his team in the sense that he is always seeing and always knowing what’s going on in Watson’s life,” notes Park. “And because he does come off as just a Pittsburgh dad, they never know when he’s plotting because he just seems like this regular guy hanging out in the background. So he’s a very surprising character on top of being very diabolical.”

Speaking of plotting, the second episode revealed that Moriarty has at least one person watching Watson and Shinwell: Kacey Rohl‘s character, posing as a pharmaceutical rep. She reveals herself to Shinwell as “here on his behalf” and makes him say Moriarty’s name. She passes along Shinwell’s next task: replace the pills of the prescription Watson’s writing for himself under Shinwell’s name with identical, unknown ones. As she gets on the elevator and leaves, she stares down Shinwell.

“I looked at the director and said, ‘You want me to do the scary eyes?’ And he said yes. And so that’s what we did,” Rohl recalls of that scene.

“She was so much fun to play,” she raves of her character. “I had an amazing time with the whole cast. I got to work with Ritchie Coster a lot and he’s an angel on this earth. Loved being able to do an English accent. That’s super fun for me. Everyone who’s on the show is an angel, so I think people are going to really love it. I’m really excited for the gang over there.”

Given who Moriarty is, it should be no surprise that he “always has something” on anyone working for him. “There are numerous relationships in store this season that Moriarty will take advantage of, but he’ll always have something over somebody that will allow him to use that person,” says Park. “He’s very diabolical in that way, and that allows for him to be everywhere and ubiquitous because it’s not just him that’s doing his bidding, it’s all of these other people in this world that he’s able to use and to use to his advantage.”

What do you think of Randall Park as Moriarty and how he’s operating so far? Let us know in the comments section below.

Watson, Sundays, 9/8c, CBS