INTERVIEW: Rafael Casal On Miles and Ashley’s Story in ‘Blindspotting’

The film Blindspotting was a look into the friendship of Miles (Rafael Casal) and Collin (Daveed Diggs) and what happened when Collin tried to stay out of trouble on his last few days of probation. A character who isn’t a focal point of the film though is Ashley (Jasmine Cephas Jones). Miles’ love and the mother of their son Sean, the movie is pretty much Collin and Miles’ story that we’re embarking on and seeing as their friendship plays out.

So when the television show Blindspotting came out, it was exciting to see that the story this time around belonged to Ashley. And talking with co-creator and co-star Rafael Casal about the series, Miles, and giving this story to Ashley in preparation for the season 2 premiere, it’s clear that that was something that Casal and his co-creator Daveed Diggs wanted to give to the character.

In my chat with Casal for the season 2 premiere, I asked about finding the balance between the movie Blindspotting and where we see Miles in Ashley’s story throughout the television show. And he’s happy to be “demoted” to supporting Cephas Jones. “It’s great. I mean, it’s just the right amount that I can handle,” Casal said. “The reality is I do wear a lot of hats on this show. I have a ton of support and I have a lot of other people that also have to wear those hats at different times. But I think one of the things that we value the most about the movie is the character dynamic between Ashley and Miles. And so really Miles’s capacity in this show is about being a great scene partner for Ashley, because so much of her pain as a mother and what she has to sort of work through as the head of this family and as a partner is really about the tragedy that is Miles and not just the tragedy of him going to prison, but like they’ve had this sort of crazy adventure of a relationship for 12 some odd years and they’ve been wild as hell together and they finally got to this kind of good place.”

Casal went on to talk about how the movie led to Ashley and Miles’ relationship and the changes we see in the series from it. “The movie really is kind of like the last wild thing to have happen. And they’d settled and almost felt like they really got out of it, you know?” He said. “And then comes this thing that for the audience, it’s never quite clear like, did Miles do something wrong? What happened? You know? And so he really has to be this symbolic force of the sadness of her life and the challenge of her life, almost purely circumstantially and how she’s gonna deal with it. And so that’s my capacity is to be both the love of her life and the hardest thing going on. And that’s a fun challenge as an actor to play because it is both a real person and also the idea of someone which has been fascinating to try to embody.”

You can see our full interview with Rafael Casal here:

Blindspotting airs on STARZ every Friday and season 2 is just as amazing as its predecessor.

(Featured image: STARZ)