‘HTGAWM’ stars Jack Falahee and Conrad Ricamora reminisce about Coliver relationship

Over the years, Shondaland has introduced plenty of memorably love stories — from Meredith and Derek on Grey’s Anatomy to Daphne and Simon on Bridgerton.

But few have resonated with fans and made a bigger impact on culture at large than the twisty, complex relationship between aspiring lawyer, Connor (Jack Falahee), and hook-up-turned-serious partner, Oliver (Conrad Ricamora), on How to Get Away With Murder.

Over the six seasons of the show, the two endured covering up numerous murders and other crimes together, Oliver’s HIV-positive diagnosis, planning a wedding (during which yet another murder occurred), and ultimately, Connor’s arrest and sentencing to jail.

But with Connor’s biting sense of humor and Oliver’s tenderness, they quickly became a couple audiences loved to root for. (Indeed, Oliver was meant to appear in only a few scenes until creator Pete Nowalk was so impressed with Ricamora and Falahee’s chemistry that he decided to expand the role). They also became a queer relationship unlike any other we’d seen on network television — one that was far from picture-perfect, pushed sexual boundaries, and brought attention to the circumstances of gay men living with HIV.

We got Ricamora and Falahee together to reminisce about their time playing Oliver and Connor, including what it was like jumping into a sex scene on their first day together, their memories of Connor’s bread loaf twist-tie proposal, and how fun it was having their characters’ wedding be the site of season 5’s “murder night.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Your first scene together was an intense hookup. What was that like having to just jump into the deep end?

CONRAD RICAMORA: I can still remember going to Philly to shoot that and just being like, “Here we go.”

JACK FALAHEE: It was the day we met essentially. I feel like it benefited both of us that Conrad and I both came from the world of theater and were able to approach it in that way, just trusting each other. We had mutual friends. So, there was some connective tissue there. But yeah, it was definitely jumping into the deep end, so to speak.

RICAMORA: Shooting something is one thing and then having it released is another thing. Having it released out into the world was a scarier thing than actually shooting it. Because when you’re shooting it, you’re surrounded by a certain amount of people and you can see all of those people, you can talk to all of those people, you can ask for certain things, but when it’s released out into the world, it’s no longer in your hands at all what people are gonna say or do with it. That’s been a learning experience.

Conrad, this was supposed to be a one-off or maybe a guest appearance with one or two more appearances. You go on to eventually become a series regular. Were you surprised at that turn of events? And Jack, was that something you were ever pushing for with the writers?

RICAMORA: No, I wasn’t surprised because I know I’m good at what I do. I know I’m a good actor. I know that I’m good at telling stories and playing characters. So, I was happy, but I wasn’t super like surprised.

FALAHEE: Facts. Conrad knocked it out of the park. The chemistry was palpable for both of us and Pete Nowalk, the creator of the show, I remember him coming to me and saying, “Well, he’s the guy, like, he has to come back, right?” And I was like, “Yeah, absolutely.”

The moment that really sealed this relationship was when Connor goes to Oliver’s place after they dispose of Sam’s (Tom Verica) body. It’s such an intense scene. I’m not sure if you filmed it all at once or broken into pieces as we saw it. But did it feel that intense on set? Was it also a sealing-the-bond moment for the two of you?

FALAHEE: It was very intense. I remember after doing that scene, Liza Weil, who plays Bonnie, came up to me and she’s like, “Now that they can see that you can be utterly destroyed and cry on screen, you’re just gonna do that the rest of the show.” And she was right. Connor just went more and more off the rails.

But I feel like that was the immediate buy-in of trust that (Conrad and I) had together as actors that I felt safe going that far and being that vulnerable with him. By the nature of the show and how it was written with these flash forwards and what we called “night X” each season, we didn’t always know what was going to be added to certain scenes. So it was a leap of faith for us as actors — all we had was relying on each other and trusting each other in each beat by beat moment.

Conrad, the show has been heralded for its representation of an HIV positive man. What do you remember when the writers first came to you with that storyline and how important was that representation to you throughout the six seasons of the show?

RICAMORA: I’m a little bit older than Jack. I remember growing up in the ’90s when the AIDS epidemic was starting to come under control a little bit more than it was in the ’80s. But by the time How to Get Away With Murder came on, it was becoming less and less a part of people’s consciousness. There used to be so many storylines about it, and then, it just lessened and lessened. So, I was happy that it was coming back into the consciousness of media.

As an actor, it’s always so hard to go to those places where your job is to imagine “what if?” and of course, something like this is so devastating. Even with all of the different drugs that have come into existence, it’s still such a devastating thing to go through. That was something that definitely made me a better actor to have to go to those places. I definitely credit Pete with writing that storyline.

FALAHEE: I remember after the HIV and then the PrEP episodes started to air, Pete and (producer) Betsy (Beers) and Shonda (Rhimes) came to us, and they said that there was an HIV advocacy group that had reached out to them and said that after the episodes aired, they saw a noticeable tick in PrEP prescriptions in certain metro areas that they attributed to the show airing.

RICAMORA: I just got back from vacation and my husband and I got an Airbnb in Venice, Italy. And the guy who was managing the Airbnb checked us in, and then, afterwards he was like, “I just wanted to thank you and Jack and the show because when you guys had your relationship on this show, it allowed me to talk with my friends and my family.” He’s a gay married man with two kids living in Italy. He said that everything that our relationship portrayed allowed his conversations to be much easier or to be had in the first place. Of course, I started crying when he was telling me this. It’s something that you don’t expect. I’ve come across this gratitude throughout living after How to Get Away With Murder.

FALAHEE: It was really powerful to be a part of a relationship and a show where we could have direct communication with fans. There’s people that stop me on the street and say, “Your relationship gave me the words to come out to my parents or talk to my boyfriend about PrEP” or fill in the blank. It was such a wild show, but there were so many very grounded things that actually made an impact in people’s lives.

I want to dig into one of my favorite scenes on the show, which is the proposal with the bread loaf twist tie. What do you remember about filming that?

RICAMORA: I remember it being really sweet. Wasn’t there like a tent that we had made? God, there’s so much that I don’t remember specifically. But I have vague memories of a tent and the twisty tie thing.

FALAHEE: Conrad knows this, but I have a really, really, really bad memory.

Well, when you got the script, was your first reaction that these are two people who shouldn’t be getting married at this point in their lives?

RICAMORA: Yeah, the whole time. I always love the idea of stories about two people who want to be together, but can’t seem to make it work for some reason. That’s something that’s so beautiful about life is that you really only learn more about yourself in relation to other people. Knocking against other people in the world is a part of something that we all go through. But with so many murders and bodies piling up, I was always thinking we should probably deal with that first. But that was part of the fantasy of the show.

FALAHEE: I do understand trauma bonding with someone to the point where you’re like, “Well, how else am I gonna get through this?” That felt very real to me. Grounding it in that reality was really helpful.

Connor gives this romantic speech and then Oliver comes clean about secrets he’s been keeping. Conrad, were you annoyed that Oliver couldn’t just have his own romantic moment there?

RICAMORA: No, it made me happy every time that we came clean about something. I was always like, “Thank God.” Because I know that the build-up of secrets erodes some of the believability of relationships. In real life and in fictional stories, there has got to be the coming-clean moment. Otherwise, the secrets can bury the relationship or the believability of the relationship.

FALAHEE: Playing Connor is what made me start therapy and work on my own communication in relationships. So, I was always happy when we had very honest and real (conversations). Relationships are messy, and people lie to each other and hurt each other. That’s what Pete did best with this relationship. He didn’t make it a picture-perfect queer relationship. He was like, “No, it’s a real grounded relationship and sometimes it’s messy,” which made it that much more powerful to audiences and us playing it.

On a similar note, your wedding ended up being the night X for another murder. Were you guys excited about that? Or were you like, “I kind of just wanted them to have a nice wedding”?

RICAMORA: I don’t know that anything purely nice ever happened on this show. Everything was always tainted as part of the noir aspect of the show. There wasn’t really anything 100 percent pure, even Oliver who started out as the pure, innocent one was, by the end, pretty tainted.

FALAHEE: I was really happy that we got to hear Conrad sing, although that was my nightmare as a actor. My personal nightmare is like standing in front of someone and having them sing to me.

RICAMORA: We’ve all been on dates where people break out a guitar and you’re like, “This isn’t going to work. No.”

FALAHEE: I mean, I’ve done it, so I’m guilty too. But I was happy that the masses got to hear Conrad sing.

Conrad, did you choose your song?

RICAMORA: I did. Well, it was one of the songs that I suggested. Then, Pete was like, “Oh, Shonda knows John Legend. She’s going to talk to him.” I was like, “Of course she does.”

Oliver and Connor get one of the happier endings way down the line. Do you think Oliver kind of hung in there with Connor through his whole time in jail or that they reconnected later in life?

FALAHEE: Pete clarified this, and I think he’s right. With everything that they’ve been through that after I’m out of prison, we would get back together. I do believe though that Connor would have, in a self-punishing way, cut communication while he was serving his sentence. That rings true to me. And then maybe they reconnected when he was released.

RICAMORA: There was probably a significant amount of time even after he got out. Because of the whole giving the ring back. There can only be so much trauma that you can take in a relationship before you need a significant amount of time to start over and reset.

FALAHEE: Conrad, was the scene where I’m leaving the courthouse and going to prison, was that the last scene that we shot together? I remember they called a wrap, and I just left.

RICAMORA: That was the last scene we ever shot on the show, yeah.

FALAHEE: I walked off set, I don’t even think I hugged you. I just walked off set, walked past my ex-girlfriend, who was in town, just walked out of the studio and kneeled down in the street and started sobbing. And then I probably hugged you later, I think.

RICAMORA: That tracks. It was such a such a huge moment. I don’t know about for you, Jack, but it changed my life in good ways and in bad ways. Becoming famous is traumatic. It changes your entire life, and then, also becoming attached to these characters and the other actors that are involved. And then, it all just being over after six years is bizarre. It’s wild. Your body doesn’t really know what to do. It makes sense that you walked out and just sat on the ground.’

FALAHEE: I remember you leaving the group chat. We had this group chat between the cast for six years, and you needing that break. And it took me a little bit longer to realize like, “Oh, I need to grieve the death of Connor in my life.”

RICAMORA: I had to leave because I needed to re-find who I was without the show. And I knew that if I stayed on the group chat, that would prolong me re-finding my identity without this show. Because the show rocked my being and my identity in such a huge way. And now I got it back.

What do you hope the Coliver legacy is in terms of the bigger picture of Shondaland and this anniversary?

RICAMORA: Growing up as a little Asian kid in Niceville, Florida, which is right under Alabama and having this type of representation, after growing up and seeing the way that specifically Asian American men have been portrayed in media — as being emasculated and having no sex life and being the butt of every joke, having other Asian American men come up to me and say that this helped them have confidence in themselves. Not only that, but what it’s done for me in terms of healing that part of myself is something that I will hold dear.

FALAHEE: In the words of Annalise Keating on the show, love is love. That is the legacy — not just our relationship, but Annalise’s queerness, and there are many queer characters that were written into the show. It’s so bizarre to have been on the show during Trump’s first presidency and now, into a second one. It has illuminated how important visibility and representation is when real life seems completely out of control and society is fraying at the seams. The most powerful experience as an actor on the show is seeing how some kid in Russia or Alabama or remote Italy, that this show is a life raft for them and a lifeline. To be a small part of that storytelling is really important to me.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.