EP Talks Alec’s Relationships With Marisa and Rose (Exclusive)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Irrational Season 2 Episode 7 “Stan by Me.”]

It’s starting to look like Alec (Jesse L. Martin) and Rose (Karen David) are going to go the distance on The Irrational.

In the NBC drama’s fall finale, he gets a look at some of her previous work, covering up a pop singer’s DUI and having her boyfriend at the time take the fall, and she admits she’s not sure she wouldn’t do it again. But he assures he won’t tell her how to do her job—and he wouldn’t be falling in love with someone he couldn’t trust. She responds in kind.

Below, showrunner Arika Lisanne Mittman teases what’s ahead when the show returns in January.

Alec and Rose seem to be doing really well and are getting past any hurdles together so far, but why did you want to end the first part of the season with them in a good place?

Arika Lisanne Mittman: Truthfully, when we first developed these episodes, we didn’t know where the season was going to be broken. We had no idea what was going to work out to be the last episode of the fall. So there wasn’t a specific intent to end on that. But in general, I feel like our show is a hopeful show and so I don’t really prefer to end on darker notes. I prefer to end on hopeful notes and certainly that applies to this relationship as well.

Sergei Bachlakov / NBC

Why do you think that relationship is working out like it is?

I think there’s some great chemistry between Alec and Rose and between Jesse and Karen. I think they’re both such phenomenal actors and honestly, they get along so well offscreen and onscreen, and so that certainly helps. But also from a character standpoint, I think that Alec had to go through what he had to go through in Season 1 and getting over his divorce because he wasn’t quite ready to let go. And I think she came along at the right time in his life where he was ready to let go and he met this person who I think helped him get past where he was at the end of it. I think she made him realize that there were other possibilities out there besides the one that he had imagined for himself. And seeing somebody intriguing and dynamic like Rose be interested in him, I think, really helped him and was kind of that last hurdle in getting past his divorce.

So what’s next for them? Because of course on TV when things are going well, you think, “Uh-oh, what’s next?!”

[Laughs] Well, I definitely like to put challenges in their path. But I do really like the honest authenticity of their relationship and we’re trying to not TV them and be like, oh, how do we break them up now? That’s not what we’re doing. We are really representing the adult dynamic among Alec, Marisa (Maahra Hill), and Rose. You’ll see coming up in the second half of the season, Rose and Marisa team up to work on a case and I think they handle in a very adult way being Alec’s ex and Alec’s current partner. And as they all become a part of each other’s lives in different ways, it’s really more of an exploration of what does it mean to be in an adult grown-up relationship, if that makes sense.

But it does seem like there’s always going to be that question of if Alec and Marisa will get back together probably for the duration of the show. So what are we going to see from Alec and Marisa when it comes to that? 

I mean, look, we’re not really playing it as a competitive love triangle, but I will certainly leave open all possibilities. All things are possible with these characters, but what we didn’t want to do was handle it in that sort of over-the-top, broad, soap opera way of having the characters be competitive with each other. They might actually become friends and so which one of them will ultimately end up with Alec, you’ll have to tune in and see.

So does that mean for Alec and Marisa, it’s really just continuing to see what we have, with them able to work together and being friendly as exes?

Yes. For the time being, that is where they are and we’re definitely going to see more of all of them working together. All of the different combinations—Alec and Marisa working together, Rose and Marisa working together, Alec and Rose working together. And Kylie [Travina Springer] working with all of them as well. But in terms of the romance, that’s an open question you’ll have to keep watching.

Marisa and her new boss are finding common ground and starting over. What does that look like going forward?

Yeah, going forward, Rayna is definitely a part of the world now. They got off kind of on the wrong foot, but I think they have a lot to learn from each other. We’re playing into a little bit of the generation gap—we’ve definitely created Rayna as a millennial boss and she’s got some different ideas than maybe what Marisa has been used to with her previous bosses. And so Marisa is having to navigate a little bit of change at the FBI, but ultimately I think change is good and they will get along and there will be a dynamic with Reyna and Kylie as well as Kylie kind of gets her footing working with the FBI.

Oh, I’m looking forward to that because I love the Kylie and Marisa scenes we’re getting with Kylie at the FBI.

Yeah, I mean, one of the big plans that we had this year and why we put Kylie in the FBI was really to give more stories to Travina, who’s wonderful and we just felt like last season she was kind of trapped in the apartment. I had people ask me, “Kylie’s a ghost, right? She doesn’t really exist.” And I’m like, “Oh gosh, Kylie exists! She’s not a ghost!” But I realized from hearing that, I was like, gosh, we definitely have her trapped in the apartment too much, only able to talk to Alec and kind of only able to talk to him at night after the end of the day of doing casework. We really wanted to get Kylie more involved in the cases and therefore more involved in the show, and having her work with Marisa at the FBI was a great way to do that.

Rizwan (Arash DeMaxi), Phoebe (Molly Kunz), and Simon (Max Lloyd-Jones) are figuring things out when it comes to working together. So are all three sticking around for the rest of the season? What are some complications coming up there as they’re still figuring things out?

Yes, all three are sticking around for the rest of the season and they’ll be figuring out what their dynamics are and the dynamic of that trio will definitely adjust over the course of the season. I think Alec, Rose, and Marisa have such a mature handling of the situation that they’re kind of role models in a way for how to handle a situation and the kids are going to have to figure out how to get there a little bit more, how to figure out how to be a team of three because that can be difficult and we’ll see how those dynamics play out over the course of the season.

Is there any romance coming up with any of those three?

There might be.

Sergei Bachlakov / NBC

With each other? Because Rizwan and Phoebe seem like maybe there could be something?

I’ll let you keep watching and figure that out, but I can confirm that there will be some romance going on within that group.

Alec decided not to get the scar surgery, at least not now, and talked about being comfortable with his decisions. So talk about having him make that decision for himself at this point and how that’s part of his journey for the season.

Well, the journey about what to do about his scars is something that will play out season long and he will get to different places in it a little bit. It looks like he sort of close the book on it in Episode 7, but it will come back as an ongoing question around Episode 10, I think. The question will be revisited again and it’s something that he will be thinking about throughout the season and he will make a definitive decision at the end of the season.

What else is coming up when the show returns?

We have lots of exciting new cases. We have a case involving a missing athlete and that case will, as I mentioned, put Rose and Marisa working together, which is exciting. We will have a unique kind of museum heist coming up. We’ll have an episode that deals with magic. Both Rose and Simon will be involved throughout in the rest of the season.

Are there any other major new characters coming?

Well, we will get to meet Alec’s dad [Ron Canada] in this back half of the season. We will get to see where we will get to see the town where Alec grew up. So I think that’s a really exciting episode to look forward to all that.

What are the relationships like between Alec and Kylie and their father?

You’ll definitely get an idea of that watching the episode, but Alec definitely had a different relationship with his dad than Kylie did, and we’ll get to learn all about that in the upcoming episode. Actually, Alec and Marissa will go to Alec’s hometown for purposes of a case, and of course, that will cause Alec to have to deal with some of his relationship with his father and the dynamics there. So you’ll have both the case going on and a very personal story for Alec.

The Irrational, Returns, Tuesday, January 7, 2025, 10/9c, NBC