Anthony Ramos is having quite a summer. After his initial breakout role as John Laurens/Philip Hamilton in the original Broadway production of Hamilton, he’s become central to several very different projects, including a starring role in Jon M. Chu‘s film adaptation of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical In the Heights. He’s also now playing Eladio, a sensitive and struggling home care worker receiving care of his own with his therapist Brooke (Uzo Aduba) in the new season of In Treatment. The role, he says, proved challenging in comparison to his other projects because it meant “allowing the words to do the work. There ain’t no dancing, ain’t no music, ain’t no stunts, you ain’t jumping off of no cliffs, nothing. You’re not doing any of that. Driving fast cars, you’re not shooting guns. All you’re doing is sitting in front of this computer screen, and just talking.”
In a roundtable interview with Collider and two other outlets, Ramos broke down the logistics of filming In Treatment under COVID conditions, what drew him to the role, how it reflected his own experiences with therapy, which episode challenged him the most, and what it took to connect to Eladio. He also talks a bit about his upcoming roles in the next Transformers movie and the Amblin-produced sci-fi film Distant — which were very different experiences.
Question: To start things off, I was curious what attracted you to this role, or the series overall.
ANTHONY RAMOS: I’d never seen a show about mental health like this. I just never watched, and I didn’t know. That was before I found out that this show had three seasons. When they brought the role to my attention, I was like, “Oh, this is crazy! This looks like he… There’s a therapist and they’re having these therapy sessions, and…” But I didn’t know that they had three seasons of this like 10 years ago or whatever. But I was just excited initially at the thought of playing a character that is in treatment.
He’s going to these sessions and he’s having these thorough therapy sessions, and I knew it was also going to be a challenge because it was like, it’s just them two. It’s just them two for 30 minutes and they’re just shooting back and forth, going back and forth. I mean, monologues of thorough information about this guy’s life and layers and layers and layers that he’s unpacking in this short amount of time. And so I actually was just excited about the work that I’d be able to do on this character and digging in on a role like this, you know? I got excited. I was like, all right, let me get on my thespian shit.
Sure. Talk to us a little bit about the logistics of filming your role, because the character of course is doing these remote sessions with the therapist. How much of it were you shooting essentially remotely with Uzo?
RAMOS: Yeah. I mean, we were on the same stage when we were shooting it, so I could hear her speaking at very faint volume and then her voice was coming through the computer screen. You know, it’d be funny, sometimes I could hear her, but the logistics, I mean, it was weird. I mean, I wanted to be in the room with her every time, and in the last two episodes, we were in the room together and it’s just like that. There’s nothing like being in a room with someone and really catching that vibe and shooting back and forth, but in real time and feeling each other’s energy.
But I’ve also been in therapy for two years now, and I’ve been doing it like this. Most of it has been like this, on my phone, actually. I’ll be anywhere. Wherever I’m at on Monday and Tuesday, if I can get in, I do it. Doing it remotely on the show was like, “Oh, yo, this is crazy because this is how I do it in real life.” And my character is the only one that’s doing it like that, which was also kind of wild. I was like, “Man, out of all the characters, this is my character, and I’m in the thick of it in my own life. And then now I’m having to do this on this show.”
It’s interesting — like there’s this barrier, right? This wall that you have to contend with when you’re doing anything remotely, right? The dogs barking in the back, the cars beeping in the street, somebody knocking at the door, you’re like… Then you just trying to lock in as opposed to you being in the room with someone and I could shut the phone off and whatever. So for me, actually, I was looking forward to also that challenge of being able to do that on the show. And I was grateful that I was already doing that in real life. So I already had this comfort level with this kind of communication in that way in therapy, and being able to be vulnerable this way, as opposed to needing to be in the room to do that.
So talk a bit about building that dynamic between Brooke and Eladio, because they’re not in the same room.
RAMOS: Yeah. I mean, it’s as easy as… You know, you can close your computer screen at any moment, right? Again, it’s those walls, right? And it speaks to how good of a therapist she is, and how well she communicates with Eladio and the fact that he just stays on the call. There’s only one session that he ends early, but… You know, because it’s very awkward for him. What he starts to speak about is so awkward for him that he can’t even bear it anymore. You know? But I think there’s still this element to him that is his comfort, that he feels with her that he doesn’t feel with anyone else. This sense of, like… Well, he asks her. He asks Brooke, he says, “I just want to ask, are you going to take care of me?” And then she answers, she says something back, and he says, “No, no, really, are you going to take care of me?” Because he hasn’t felt taken care of in life, period.
And he’s like, “Yo, this already feels stupid,” but she is so good at her job that I think she also builds this love for him that I feel he feels, to the point where he starts to look forward to these moments where he can just talk to her this way. He’ll take it however he can, right? So that dynamic went gradual.
In the first two episodes, you’d see — I mean, he goes off in the second episode. He has this whole monologue where he’s like, “Yo, look, man, you asking me all this crazy shit. You asking me about my job or where I’m living, and this and… Yo, do me a favor. You want to talk about my ex, you want to talk about my mother, whatever. Don’t talk about my job, because this is the only thing I’m good at. And this is the only…” Right? Like, he’s already combative, but again, I think we start to see how comfortable he becomes with her. And we start to see that dynamic grow over time. That speaks to how good at her job she is. In our show, yeah, she’s the best. She’s one of the best.
You mentioned that you have your own experience with remote therapy, but just in terms of the character and what he’s going through, were you able to draw on any other real life parallels? I guess even just what we went through this past year, or just other experiences that you knew of to bring into this performance?
RAMOS: For sure. I mean, abandonment. My father wasn’t in my life for most of my life, so that’s something that I’m still dealing with. I’m almost 30 years old and the little kid in me, I have to continue to have conversations with him and let him know that everything’s all right. Because that ain’t your fault, right? I think all through our circumstances with what we’re going through, yeah. It’s traumatic for anyone, and I think we’ve all gone through this together. This is the first time in my life where I can say definitively, like, “Yo, it don’t matter who I meet in this entire world. I got something in common with them. We all went through this, and are still going through it,” right?
I pulled from a lot of where I’ve been in situations that I thought were good for me only because I was comfortable and not necessarily because it was good for me. And that I didn’t want to talk, I didn’t want to talk about how this situation, how this relationship could be bad for me, because this is what I know right now. And I’m actually like, “I can function, and this was better than what I had before.” So it’s like, yo, I don’t even want to think about what I had before. I don’t want to dive into why this thing that I’m so complacent with and comfortable with could potentially be bad for me, because I’ve created a level of comfort.
And I mean, it’s like anybody, right? Anybody who’s living in a certain situation, that is living in this box that they’d been so comfortable and happy. In my personal life, I’ve learned that I have to get uncomfortable. I have to put myself in uncomfortable positions in order for me to open up my world. And in order for me to find new things in my life and in order for me to succeed at whatever I want to do, I have to get uncomfortable. The only way I’m going to learn how to swim is if I go to the deep end, I can’t swim in the shallow end.
And I think that’s the thing with Eladio, right? I don’t want to talk about how this family is treating me like I’m the help. I don’t want to do that. I’m not trying to dig into that. I know I don’t get paid well here. That’s… Whatever. I’ve never had a family before. These people treat me like family, or at least what I think a family is, because I didn’t really even have that. So I ain’t trying to dig into that, you know? So I think those parallels for me were very apparent. Those are things that I was able to dig into my own life and pull from.
I imagine, as an actor, you’re oftentimes in a position where you’re trying to kind of separate yourself, or you’re trying to figure out how to balance being who you are versus playing a role. Was that more or less difficult with a project like this?
RAMOS: I think the balance comes from the writing, right? Like, at the end of the day, for me, I want as much of me as I can have in a character, because then I think that’s the way I’m going to be able to play this character as truthfully and honestly as possible. Just because he got a British accent doesn’t mean that he… You know what I’m saying? He don’t feel the same thing that everybody… I don’t have to change my posture or whatever. Like, if he’s a king or what he… Right? There’s certain things, right?
There’s certain things that if this person is from a different kind of family or there’s a certain kind of etiquette, the way they eat, you figure that out, right? Upper-class, low and middle, whatever it is, lower-middle-class, whatever. You figure that out. But then at the end of the day, when you get all of the logistics out the way, those are all things that are on the outside, right? The vernacular and everything, some of those things we have to work on. But then once you get that out the way, then it’s like, “All right, cool. What’s actually happening at the core of this character. And how do I bring myself? How do I bring the…”
You know, whatever it is, right? The humor that I would bring to a certain moment in real life, how do I bring that to this moment? Even though all the dialogue is in Spanish, right? Or whatever it is. Or how do I connect to this? Maybe I didn’t go through this thing specifically, but I went through something like that, and those things for me, or what helped me be able to… All right, this is the character work, this is where the character’s from, this is what’s happening, this is who this person is, just from the checklist.
But then now what’s beyond the checklist? You know, how does this person feel when they’re alone? Like, why does this person get up in the morning? Like, what are the things in this person’s life, that makes it hard for them to get up in the morning? How do I relate to that in my own life? Where can I pull from that? Is there somewhere in my life that I can pull from for that? Or is there some story that I heard from someone else that made me feel something when they told me that, that I kind of try to put myself in their shoes? That’s the work. And that’s what I love most about it, is finding those nuances, you know what I’m saying?
So how would Eladio describe himself, and how does that affect what he’s looking to get out of these therapy sessions?
RAMOS: I think he would describe himself as… I don’t know if he’d be able to describe himself at all, to be honest with you. I don’t know if he’s the kind of guy that could… I think he’s a dude that speaks lyrically and he’s very articulate, but I think it takes a lot for him to get to the place where he can describe himself. But he’s almost like that person that would do it by accident. You know, it’s not like “Here’s who I am and take me or leave me” kind of thing. As you can see, as the sessions go on and on, he starts to talk about the writers he loves, like Bolaño and Octavio Paz. You get to learn more about him as he peels back the layers with this person that he now trusts.
But I don’t think he’s the kind of person that necessarily is like, “This is who I am.” I would say Eladio, he’s a loving, compassionate person that has a lot of purity in his heart, but just has a lot of pain that prevents him from being able to see that. The gifts of his speech, and the way he can articulate himself, and the way he’s well-read, and the way he feels deeply about people, he talks about this. He talks about how he feels.
He says the line, something to the effect of, “I just feel things more than other people.” She’s like, “How do you know that?” He’s like, “I don’t know, I just do.” And he talks about like how there was a guy who looked like he was in wet clothes at the bus stop, and he didn’t do anything to help him. And now he feels like he should die. You know, like, “I should’ve helped that guy.” It’s that much for him.
And because it’s that much for him, he thinks there’s something wrong with him. He doesn’t understand that these… Or, rather, he doesn’t know how to harness these deep emotions and to use them for good and to understand that they’re not curses, but they’re gifts, they’re superpowers. So I think he’s a guy that doesn’t really understand how special he is. And, and who sees these beautiful things about his personality as curses rather than gifts. And as a result, he doesn’t really know how to live outside of what is immediately comfortable. It’s almost like he’s just like, “Okay, this is the warm nook. Okay. I’m just going to stay here. This is good, right?” If it rains, he’ll have a little bit of shelter. If it gets cold, like, “Do I have a good enough jacket?” He’s like that kind of guy.
Given your background in musical theater and after filming something like In the Heights in 2019, and then going to something very intimate like this, where you’re filming by yourself in a lot of scenes — as that hard to adjust to, to go from something so big to then something like this, that’s so small and so intimate?
RAMOS: I guess the hardest part for me was just doing a piece where literally you’re just allowing the words to do the work. There ain’t no dancing, ain’t no music, ain’t no stunts, you ain’t jumping off of no cliffs, nothing. You’re not doing any of that. Driving fast cars, you’re not shooting guns. All you’re doing is sitting in front of this computer screen, and just talking. You’re just talking the whole time. And you’re just exchanging ideas, exchanging emotions and feelings and things. For me, honestly, it was an amazing experience in that way, because it was just nice to focus on the words.
I write songs, you know. I’m a musician, I write songs. That’s what I do. I love words. And to play, a character who… When I write songs, I’m sitting on the chair for hours. I’m sitting like this for hours, trying to find the lyric to that one line. I’m like, “Nah, maybe we should say, ‘I never seen your type’ as opposed to, ‘I never knew your type.’ It’s changing this, changing that. And you’re spending hours on that. And it was just dope to sit there and just be locked in, be locked in and allow the words to really peel back the layers of this guy. You know? So for me, it was a great challenge. And plus I had just come back from doing a movie where I was wearing the 30 pound space suit, so let me tell you, man, it’s a lot better sitting in a nice, comfortable chair, just talking.
If a fellow actor comes up to you and asks for advice on how to do this sort of acting, essentially opposite a computer screen, what are your tips for them? What do you tell them to try out?
RAMOS: I mean, just try not to let the world around you distract you from being in the moment, even though obviously we’re in front of a computer screen, but we’re still blessed to connect. We still have an opportunity to be together. We’re not in the same space, but we’re in the same space virtually. I’m speaking to you and you can hear what I’m saying almost in real time. That right there, it just…
I would just say do your best to stay in the moment, and don’t focus on what’s happening around you because that can get real easy. Don’t look at your phone while you’re talking on the thing. Don’t check your email. You know what I’m saying? Just try to be with whoever it is that you’re speaking to, as if you were with them in person, and we can find that we can still, if not get the same amount of connection, we can get almost as much if we just do our best to, like, lock in. Even this way.
Which episode had the most challenging dialogue for you?
RAMOS: Episode 2, for sure. I mean, it just felt like one long monologue. It felt like the longest monologue. Episode 3 was challenging for me, but that was for other reasons. That was because I was right in my second album that whole time I was filming In treatment. So that week was very, very heavy in the studio. And it was a lot of late nights in the studio. And then I had to film. So that just has to do with, like, lack of preparation. Episode 2, that was like, “Yo.” I’m like, “Damn, this is beat…” I mean, there was so much he was revealing in Episode 2. I mean, he reveals a lot in all of them, but that one in particular.
And it was also getting to the place where I, like, I go off on her like that, you know? To the place where I had that long, long speech at the end where I’m like, “Yo,” and he just starts really unpacking. Not only is he being articulate about what he’s saying, but we can start to understand the rage of what he’s been through in his life. Or we can start to understand the anger that he has inside that he doesn’t really like to let out. You can see that about him, that he has that about him. You know, like when he’s like, “Jeremy, we’ll spend hours at Target and just practicing on how to press the elevator button, and people be like, can you just press it for him? And then Jeremy would go off on them. And then I get to be on my tough guy shit, you know?” He’s like, “That shit’s in me, but I don’t necessarily want to bring it out, but I got my excuse now.”
It was crazy to start it off the way I did, where we’re coming off of that first episode. And then he’s starting off light. He’s like, “Yo, look, man, how you doing?” They shooting it. They shooting it back and forth. And then all of a sudden, you just like… Something snaps in him. He’s like, “Yo, look, you hit a nerve, and I’m letting you know you hit a nerve.” This not going to be a easy shell to crack, you know? I think there were so many layers in Episode 2 that, that were really like, “Man, this one’s going to be hard.” It was only the second episode. I’m like, “Oh man.”
In general, you’re doing a wide range of projects: There’s this, you’ve got In the Heights coming out, you’re in the next Transformers movie — what can you say about the kind of path that leads you to do all these very different things?
RAMOS: I think it’s the power to say no. That’s the same, right? It’s easy for people to be like, “Oh, he’s the guy that sings and dances,” or “He’s the guy that does this, that does the… He does action movies,” or “He’s the guy that does…” Whatever. “He makes music.” I think I have to challenge myself, right? In Treatment was very different from In the Heights, which will be very different from Transformers, which will be very different from Distant, the sci-fi movie that I did with Amblin that’s coming out next year, where I’m wearing a 30-pound space suit walking around the planet. I’m the only survivor on this planet. You know what I’m saying? And I’m looking for somebody.
I think for me, that is the thing that I asked myself, or I have a conversation with myself before I say yes to anything, and I take a long time to decide to do things, especially in my work, because it’s been so hard for me, especially being Puerto Rican and from the hood. I already had all the things going against me, right? So it’s like, now I say to myself, “How can I continue to not only prove to the world, but prove to myself, ‘Hey, you can do that. You can also do that. And you can do that. And you can do that.'” And continue to challenge myself, and just continue to challenge myself. So I think that’s really the biggest goal for me right now.
And now to be able to do a movie like this, and to lead a franchise, that’s a blessing. It’s funny, I kept saying to my agents, I said, “Yo, I want to be the first Latino superhero.” I kept saying this to them. I kept telling them, I kept telling them, like, “Yo, I want to be the first Puerto Rican superhero.” And for years I’ve been saying it. And it’s just a blessing that now I get to be in a film where I’ll be able to do that.
New episodes of In Treatment premiere Sundays and Mondays on HBO.
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