CHICAGO — “Criminal Minds” may have wrapped its 15 season run on CBS in 2020, but the procedural is back — with new episodes, a new home on Paramount+ and a new name: “Criminal Minds: Evolution.” Star Joe Mantegna, who plays FBI Special Agent David Rossi, described the process of reacclimating with the role as akin to “seeing an old friend you haven’t seen for two-and-a-half years. I thought we’d never see him again — it’s like he was off to the jungle, never to come back, and then he parts the trees and it’s like, oh wow, there’s that guy again.”
Outside of Fat Tony, a character he’s played on “The Simpsons” for three decades, David Rossi is his longest-running gig. Before that, Mantegna had mostly done theater and film work. But he got a helpful piece of advice when he started doing TV: “Try to find things within the character that are apropos to you, because you will possibly be playing this role for years, so you might as well tap into the aspects of Joe Mantegna that are within this character ... so it’s nice to have David Rossi as part of my life again because he already was, in many ways.”
A Chicago native, Mantegna’s career began on the Chicago stage. When asked about a worst moment, it was a 1984 performance at the Goodman Theatre of “Glengarry Glen Ross” that was seared in his memory.
