With a brand new UnSub wreaking havoc, the team of profilers is back on the case in Criminal Minds: Evolution. Two years after the series ended with Season 15, the show picks up with the same beloved crew at the Behavioral Analysis Unit that drew viewers in and kept them coming back week after week, including Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi (Joe Mantegna). Rossi and the BAU must now contend with the impacts of the global pandemic and new restrictions placed on the team due to funding, time, and grief.

Ahead of Criminal Minds: Evolution's Thanksgiving day two-episode premiere on Paramount+, Joe Mantegna spoke with CBR about stepping back into the role of SSA David Rossi after the two-year hiatus. He broke down finding Rossi in a tough space at the beginning, getting to unleash swear words, and reconnecting with his Criminal Minds family.

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CBR: So Rossi has a lot on his mind at the beginning of Evolution. Where do we meet him emotionally at the beginning of this season?

Joe Mantegna: Yeah, he's in a tough place. I mean, but why not? People can be in a tough place. I've said this before, I live by the motto: everybody has a story, and nobody gets a free ride. This is Rossi's story, and he's not getting a free ride right now, but it's okay. So it is that, and I appreciate that because I think that we have to show that the world has gone through a tough time these last couple of years, you know what I mean? I think this is somewhat a reflection of that, as it should be if we're gonna be realistic about what we do. I think that's one of the strong suits of our show, right from the beginning, is that we don't cut any corners. We kind of tell it like it is.

Absolutely. One of the changes is that Rossi, in particular, gets to add a little more color to his vocabulary. So how does that language shift of adding in more swears change the way you approach line delivery or relating to him?

Well, for me, it doesn't change anything because it was always in the back of my head anyway. [laughs] I mean, I've said before, too, that... I have family in Europe and Italy, so I've gone to Italy many times over the years. I've always been amazed by the fact that it's like, "Wow, how come they're able to do this kind of stuff on television, and we can't?" [laughs] in a sense of being kind of realistic about the way people really look and talk and act? Sometimes we seem to kind of sanitize things to an nth degree sometimes... People are doing these things in life. Why are we pretending that they don't do it when they're portraying life in a medium? I think this is just a further example of why the show is an evolution, in a way. We're able to tell the stories even a little more honestly and truthfully and realistically that way.

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Rossi in front of a board in Criminal Minds Evolution.

Maybe have a little more fun doing it.

Yeah, we're having a good time doing it, exactly. The show is, in some aspects, it's darker; in some of the aspects, it's lighter. It's all of that. We've opened up the borders a little bit.

Speaking of having fun, what was it like to get the gang back together again?

You know, it's great. It was great that the gang never really kind of got totally disbanded in the sense that we all maintain a fairly good relationship and a sense of... There was text threads that were always still going on, and we will occasionally try to get together when we could because we couldn't help it. People working, spending that many days and hours and months and years together, you couldn't help form a certain kind of bond, which we did. This is just an incredible group right down the line. So to be able for all of us to get back together gave us a real... was a real joy for all of us. I think you universally, uniformly, every person will tell you that this has just been a real blessing for all of us to get another run around the track here.

Criminal Minds returns to TV with Criminal Minds: Evolutions, premiering Nov. 24 on Paramount+.