Lucy Chen was “optimistic” about her role as a training officer at the start of season 7 of The Rookie, but her perspective changed after drama with trainee Seth Ridley.
“It goes off the rails really fast,” Melissa O’Neil, who plays Lucy on the ABC series, exclusively told Us Weekly, noting that Seth (Patrick Keleher) has put her in more than one uncomfortable situation since joining the LAPD.
O’Neil said Lucy is “constantly suspicious and questioning what’s going on with him” after he told a few conflicting stories on the job.
“Lucy gives people the benefit of the doubt a lot of the time,” the actress explained. “[So] for her to be encountering this young man, this young rookie who’s got a super sweet face and he says everything, he gives you all the right lip service to want to trust him and give him the benefit of the doubt. For some reason, our eternal optimist in the world of The Rookie just smells something stinky.”
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Fans were introduced to Seth at the start of season 7. He was assigned to Lucy as her new “boot” while she stepped in as a training officer.
While Seth seemed sweet and innocent, Lucy has caught him in several lies, most about his past. Seth claimed his girlfriend overdosed in high school which led to him throwing up on the first day when they encountered a criminal that overdosed in his car.
He later told a police officer that his girlfriend died in a car crash when he froze at another scene. Lucy met with Seth’s high school guidance counselor to get to the bottom of his stories. When confronted, he confessed that the stories were real, but the girls weren’t his actual girlfriends, they were classmates.
As a result, Lucy turned to her ex-boyfriend Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) for guidance on how to navigate Seth’s ups and downs.
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“Lucy [is] feeling that inner pull, that tension the whole time being like, ‘Somebody help me with this,’” O’Neil told Us. “She doesn’t wanna fully go to [her boss] Grey (Richard T. Jones) about it yet because she’s like, ‘Let me figure it out myself slash ex-boyfriend, will you please help me with this? Because I don’t know what to think.’”
O’Neil teased that Lucy and Tim’s will-they, won’t-they romance has been a distraction at times for her complicated role as a TO.
“It’s been really sweet for her to feel enough of the sting subside from their breakup to be able to just be at her workplace, focus on her job, and also have a little bit of, like, random flirtation [and] competitiveness with this guy,” she said.
O’Neil, however, confessed that not even Lucy “buys” her rules for not hooking up again with Tim after sleeping together following the Valentine’s Day gala during the February 11 episode.
For now, Lucy is focused on working with Seth — and seeking out his truths — after he revealed his cancer has returned and she felt bad kicking him out of the training program. Lucy and Seth’s dynamic will be front and center during “The Mickey” episode, which airs on Tuesday, February 18.
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“He gets to go on this undercover journey. There are things that happen in that episode that really elevate the stakes for Lucy in particular with what she has empowered him with and put him in a situation for,” O’Neil said. “The stakes for Lucy get really high. And for him too.”
She teased, “I don’t think it’s off kilter and too much of a spoiler to say that it absolutely reaches a certain kind of climax for those characters.”
O’Neil revealed, “It all does come out. Interestingly on his terms.”
The Rookie airs on ABC Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
