'In Plain Sight' actor Christian de la Fuente

Maybe it's because it's fun to entertain the idea of getting a fresh start, but In Plain Sight makes the Witness Protection Program seem really exciting. The show follows U.S. Marshal Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack) as she grapples with her witnesses—as well as her personal life: she has an alcoholic mother (Lesley Ann Warren), a little sister (Nicole Hiltz) struggling to set right a somewhat-derailed life, and a boyfriend (Christian de la Fuente) who is far more serious about their relationship than she appears to be. The show is in the middle of its second season, and I got to talk with Christian de la Fuente about what the remaining episodes hold in store and about how the cast gets along. Enjoy!

Hey! It was great to finally see you on the most recent episode for what feels like the first time all season.
Oh—no, no, no, I’ve been in other episodes this season.

Yeah, but you’ve mostly hung out in the background. I’d love to know if you’re going to be coming in again in more of a big way.
Well, the show is about Mary, not about Raph, and the show is always about protecting a witness, so the most important story is going to be about protecting a witness and then how she deals with her personal life. And we are part of her personal life—I say “we” because it’s her mother, her sister, and me. So, always, the main story is gonna be the witness and how she protects the witness, and then we’re gonna be the other part of her life. So in that sense, sometimes her sister’s going to be more important because she’s going to court and going to trial for what happened last season with the drugs. Or her mom, because she’s getting rehab as an alcoholic. Or there’s the show where I decide to propose again and see if we finally are going to get married or not. But it’s always a show about Mary. If and when we have bigger episodes, the show’s still about her.

Right. Speaking of the future episode where Raph proposes again—is that something you’re keeping under wraps?
Y’know, we can’t talk too much about that or else there’s no surprise, but the only thing I can say is that, yes, Raph is going to try again and, you know, things are going to change a bit and then we’re going to have to see whether they’re really going to change or whether it was momentary.

Does Raph have any more screen time with Brandi this season?
No—no, it’s going to be more time with Mary.

What are some other things coming up that you’d like to share?
Well, Mary’s going to still be involved with trying to help her sister about what happened in the past, and then in the last three episodes there’s something big that happens that’ll make all the characters get together, and it’s something that’s going to affect them all in a big way. The season finale is really well-written and well-developed, and all the other episodes are building up to that finale.

I know that throughout the series it’s been interesting to see what’s been going on between Marshall and Mary—at least on his end.
Well, yeah, that happens. Chemistry is always in different places; like, last season there was chemistry between Raph and Brandi, but nothing happened. If you play a song in one note it becomes boring. A TV show can’t be all the same thing, you know, you can’t have a relationship always be the same way. So of course there’s something between her and Marshall, and then she goes back to Raph—nothing has ever happened between [Mary and Marshall]. But maybe it will happen, maybe not, and those are all the maybes that keep people watching shows.

At the end of last season it was shown that Raph took the drugs with him…
Oh, the drugs are gone. The trial against Brandi is still happening, they still have to charge her for what she did and see if she was really guilty or not, and that is going to still be part of the storyline of the season, but the drugs are gone. There are no more drugs. Nobody can find them, and they’re gone.

Do you and the other actors have a lot of input in terms of what the dialogue sounds like?
No. No, there’s no… you can have ideas of storylines; you can propose “Why don’t we do this?” for more big-picture stuff, but the dialogue is written by the writers the way it’s done, and then you just learn your lines and do them.

What sorts of things do you guys do together as a cast when you’re not filming?
Well, when we’re shooting and we’re on location, the only thing we do when we’re not working is try to sleep.

[laughs]
When you have fourteen-hour shoots and fifteen or sixteen days of shooting nonstop, you just want to go back to your hotel and rest. Then when we have days off we like to go out and have dinner all together and kind of spend the day together. And now—we just came back to LA a couple weeks ago, and now we’re probably going to get together next week or in a couple weeks.

What’s it like shooting in Albuquerque? How’s the atmosphere there?
It’s great. Albuquerque is a great place, and people are very friendly and very nice with everybody, and they’re treating us very, very well.

Do you—for example, I know after the first season wrapped Mary McCormack came here to NYC and did the play Boeing-Boeing. Do you guys come and see—?
Yeah, I did come to watch Mary. I was there for other reasons, and while I was there, of course, I hadn’t seen Mary in a while so I got tickets for the show and I went to see her. And it was great to see her again, especially to see her in a different way, because what she did in Boeing-Boeing was great and it was completely different from the character she plays in In Plain Sight.

In Plain Sight airs Sundays at 10pm Eastern Time.