Sendhil Ramamurthy makes his debut as a series regular in tonight’s all-new Beauty and the Beast, “Any Means Possible,” but before you fret that Ramamurthy’s Assistant District Attorney Gabe Lowen will get in the way of the Catherine (Kristin Kreuk)-Vincent pairing of our dreams, Ramamurthy assures us that their connection will be of the non-romantic – and actually kind of negative – variety.
“Gabe flirts with Catherine, but he flirts with everyone. It’s one of the things he uses to get information out of people,” Ramamurthy tells Hollywood.com ahead of his first episode. “Gabe isn’t going to be a romantic interest right now. It’s very much an adversarial relationship.”
The reason there’s such negative tension between Cat and Gabe is because Gabe is spearheading the task force to hunt down the vigilante – aka, Vincent (Jay Ryan). “He wants to put the guy behind bars,” Ramamurthy reveals. “But there is so much more to Gabe and what’s driving him than just ambition. Ambition is 2 percent of it. The other 98 percent that’s revealed throughout this is really the driving force. It changes the dynamic of the show. There is reason why he goes about doing what he’s doing and ultimately it’s a really satisfying reveal. It’s going to come out of left field.”
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When we pressured Ramamurthy to tell us more about Gabe’s true reasons for wanting to hunt down Vincent, he relented and let us know that we’ll get part of the story by the end of tonight’s episode. “Gabe reveals why he’s doing what he’s doing by the end of the episode to the other characters,” Ramamurthy says. “The information that he wants the characters to have he reveals by the end of the episode, but his real motivations you find out very quickly over the subsequent episodes.”
And as for his relationship with the other characters we’ve come to know and love over the freshman season of the CW drama, don’t expect Gabe to be making many friends. “He basically says, ‘I think you guys are doing a bad job,'” Ramamurthy says. “He’s very in your face about it, and obviously, when somebody comes in and tells a bunch of people that he thinks they’re doing a crappy job, that’s not going to make them like him very much.”
It’s probably a good thing Gabe doesn’t care about making friends, then. “Being liked by the other people in the police department is not at the top of his list,” Ramamurthy says. “He goes after this with tremendous passion and certainly for Cat and Tess and Joe, it rubs them the wrong way. He ruffles a lot of feathers when he gets there.”
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But his tense relationship with Catherine has another reason behind it, and it has a little something to do with the… ahem, revealing way that they meet. “What can I say? I went to the gym a lot for that scene,” Ramamurthy teases. “The introduction to the character for the audience and Gabe’s introduction with Catherine is fairly unorthodox. I’m in a towel. I think that’s all I’m allowed to say. It’s definitely the most interesting way that I’ve ever been introduced into a show, that’s for sure!”
But as we find out later down the line, that unique meeting may not actually be the first time Catherine and Gabe encounter each other. “As information comes out, you will actually find out that Gabe has a connection to Catherine’s past,” Ramamurthy reveals. “The reveal of that is huge.”
Could that connection have anything to do with Catherine’s mother? “You start to think, does Gabe have a connection to Muirfield?” Ramamurthy teases. “As the episodes go on, the audience finds out what motivates Gabe and what his background is. You will find out why he is how he is today.”
Ramamurthy makes his debut as a series regular March 14 at 9 PM ET/PT on The CW.
Follow Sydney on Twitter: @SydneyBucksbaum
[Photo Credit: The CW]
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