“I hope people are pissed by it! Because that shows they’re invested with the story,” star Alfred Enoch—yes, law student Wes, a.k.a. potentially the most important member of the Keating Five—tells E! News the morning his big episode is scheduled to air. In fact, he’s grateful the fans have been such loyal and vocal viewers over the past three seasons.
“Thank you to those people, for doing that—for getting invested and giving themselves over to the story and watching passionately,” he says.
While creator Pete Nowalk told us after the season three premiere that he’s known for months that one of the main characters would die, he didn’t actually make the final decision until the cast was shooting the seventh episode of the season—and that’s when he told Enoch the big news.
“Pete was committed to telling us as soon as he found out, because it’s not just a big change for the character, it’s a big change for us,” Enoch revealed. “I felt really bad for Pete! It’s a difficult thing to tell someone and it’s a difficult thing to decide.”
The actor finally got the call—well, actually an email summoning him for an in-person meeting—while on set with four of his costars. “It was very touching,” he says of their reaction. “I got the email when I was kicking it on set and I was like, ‘Okay, I have to go talk to Pete,’ and everyone was like, ‘Oh god!’ And I was like, ‘I know, right?'”
After the meeting, he went back down to set and told them the bad news. “It was Jack [Falahee] and [Matt McGorry] and [Karla Souza] and Aja [Naomi King]—they were sitting on a buggy at base camp all kind of chatting and waiting for me. I turned the corner and they were like, ‘So?!'”
They reacted as you’d expect. “People were sad and it was sad. It was difficult. It’s difficult losing someone from the team in that way! It’s not like we’re never going to see each other again. It’s been too long to be like, ‘Okay, see you later, have a nice life everyone!’ But just that realization that we’re not going to have the [group dynamic anymore]…. I guess that’s the thing.”
The most difficult part of keeping the reveal secret has been the lengths he and the crew went to in order to shield his “dead Wes” prosthetics and makeup from the public.
“You’re in the chair for four hours getting it all applied and it looks amazing, but you can’t move half your face and it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to eat. And then when it comes to go and shoot it, I have to wear this silly hat and have umbrellas circling me. At that stage, I’m like, ‘Oh God!'”
At this point, Enoch has made peace with what went down. “To some degree I’m glad because it’s great for the story,” he says. “It’s really sad that I’m not going to be around getting to work with everyone day in and day out as I have been for the last three years, but I think it serves the story.”
And there’s a silver lining to the bad news: he’ll still be around throughout the second half of the season, considering there’s a whole new mystery: Who killed Wes?! “We have to work out what the hell happened and how it went down!”
How to Get Away With Murder will be back when TGIT makes its triumphant return to ABC’s lineup on January 19.
