Harlan Coben‘s I Will Find You featured a multitude of twists — but the most surprising had to do with Milo Ventimiglia.
After spending the entire season building up to the reveal of who had kidnapped David’s (Sam Worthington) son, it was revealed to be none other than Hayden (Ventimiglia). Executive producers Robert Hull and Coben weighed in on the intentionality.
“When you hear somebody like Milo, you usually think what about somebody like him. You don’t think he’s actually going to do it and be third on the call sheet,” Hull exclusively told Us Weekly.
The writing team was grateful for Ventimiglia. “Luckily for Milo, he doesn’t care. He just wants to play a great role,” Hull noted. “And we absolutely wanted to bring all the baggage of This Is Us. Not only that but Milo as a person is such a sweet, gentle, incredible soul.”
He continued: “That’s why people fall in love with him. And to use that to our advantage of what we’re going to do here was absolutely a gift and absolutely intentional.”
Coben also confirmed that it was “so intentional.”
“Milo is one of the loveliest human beings besides a lovely actor and you immediately think of him and This Is Us and Gilmore Girls and Heroes,” the author added. “He’s such a likable presence that we were able to sort of exploit that. Let’s just say that.”
I Will Find You, which is streaming now, follows David Burroughs (Worthington), who is wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his son then receives information that his son may still be alive.
“The biggest challenge for us was also our biggest asset,” Hull recalled about the experience. “Which is that very early on Harlan and I wanted to really shoot in the real world. We didn’t build a lot of sets.”
He added: “We were out on real streets, relocations, real stunts, real wirework, because even with vis effects, there’s nothing that can replace putting an incredible actor in a real location and just letting them bring it to life. Once you do that, your job’s kind of done.”
I Will Find You is streaming on Netflix now.
