Who Tried to Kill Angelo’s Daughter? ‘Memory of a Killer’ Explains Series Premiere

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Memory of a Killer series premiere.]

In Memory of a Killer, when we meet Angelo (Patrick Dempsey), it seems that he has his life in order, which is a good thing because he’s both a hitman and a suburban dad, and never shall the two meet. So, of course, in the final moments of the series premiere, that’s exactly what happens.

Angelo, to his daughter Maria (Odeya Rush), sells photocopiers and goes out of town for office supply service sales conventions. Sounds boring, right? But that’s just his cover for when he’s living as the hitman — he makes the switch, including cars, in an abandoned building off the beaten path — getting targets from his best friend, Dutch (Michael Imperioli). But the two don’t tell each other everything. For instance, Dutch has no idea that Angelo has a family (his wife died) or that he killed a crime family captain he saw watching him (he killed his brother).

Then, as Angelo slips back into his suburban life, joining his daughter and her husband, Jeff (Daniel David Stewart), for lunch, he realizes something’s wrong just before he sees the red laser on Maria. He leaps into action and saves her just in time. But who targeted her? Below, co-showrunner and executive producer Aaron Zelman breaks down the series premiere and teases what’s ahead.

At the end of the premiere, someone takes a shot at Maria, and we see Angelo’s facade crack with the way he reacts — noticing something’s wrong before anything happens, then running outside, breaking that bottle. So, with his daughter in danger, is it going to be harder for him not slip into that other side of himself in Hudson Springs?

Aaron Zelman: I think that’s exactly right. I think you nailed it. I think the way we think about it, there’s these two Angelos, it’s kind of a double life, and in between those two lives is a wall in his mind that separates them. And with the memory issues that we’re seeing develop in the first couple of episodes, that wall is starting to crumble a bit. And is he going to be able to keep his daughter and that part of his life in Hudson Springs sort of safe and separate as he has in the past, given this sort of condition he seems to be suffering from?

Jan Thijs/Fox

What can you say about who hired that person who shot at Maria?

Well, I don’t want to say much because that’s a mystery that you kind of have to keep watching to understand all the facets of it. But suffice it to say that it’s more complicated than it may first appear, and there are lots of fun twists and turns and reveals that are part of that storyline.

So you brought up the memory problems, and we’re seeing him in the premiere, starting to notice things that make him question — we see he forgets the code, and then he looks at that music therapy brochure that he had gotten at his brother’s facility, he puts his gun in the fridge. How is he going to be dealing with that specifically, when it comes to accepting what’s going on?

With this sort of condition he has, it’s not always easy for people — and I should say that we try to be very accurate, we have a neurologist as a consultant who we use to make sure that medically we’re being accurate and realistic — so often one of the issues that happens when you experience this is you are in denial. You’re not quite understanding what’s happening. It’s unclear what is happening to you. So we want to explore that aspect of it, too, not only that there is something that he seems to be aware is different, but the process of actually coming to terms with what it is and how far along and how bad it is.

Speaking of denial, because Angelo tells Nicky (Michaela McManus), which she takes as a joke, that he’s a hitman who only kills bad people. Was he being honest in terms of what he believes about what he’s doing?

I didn’t create the show. I have a partner, Glenn [Kessler]. We’re showrunners that we took on, we became part of this project, about sort of the way into production or so. So we didn’t create these characters in this world, but it is a great line. I love that from the pilot.

… I think that’s a big question and one that won’t be easily answered until maybe throughout the whole show, but certainly throughout the whole season, where you’re wondering how much is he telling himself that he’s a good guy and he only kills certain kinds of people and how much is that real? That question specifically of how he feels about certain people he’s killed is going to become a major focus of the season.

Angela brings Nicky back to his place, but we also know that in his other persona, he’s still wearing his wedding ring. So does he like her? Is that just part of the job in maintaining that persona for him? Is he really kind of trying to separate the two parts of him when it comes to a love life or whatever he has in terms of a love life as the hitman?

How much does he feel for this person, or how much can he feel for this person? I think there are some hints that, at least in the pilot, you see him looking through her purse. There’s some hints that maybe he’s trying to play her, and whether or not that’s all that it is or whether or not it changes and evolves into something real is something that we’d like people to keep watching and see for themselves.

When it comes to the fact that Angelo hasn’t told Dutch about his family, how much is that about trust? How much is that like about keeping his life separate? Is there something else going on there? Because that’s like a decision he made a long time ago.

Yeah, it is. It is a decision he made a long time ago. And they have a long history, as it’s alluded to in the pilot. They talk about being childhood friends or knowing each other since childhood. The history of their relationship, a little bit of the dynamics there as they were and as they are now, we are going to explore that more. If you keep watching, you’ll get much more information about that and you’ll understand a little bit more about the complexity of the trust and the issues between them and the trust they have and the trust maybe they don’t necessarily have, which is something that will also play out throughout the season in a way that is reflected in the storytelling and hopefully in a very satisfying way. We believe it is.

Can you address if Dutch doesn’t know about his family or if he does and he’s just not telling Angelo he does?

When he mentioned a few times that Angelo’s lucky to have family, that kind of thing, it makes you wonder, does he know something he doesn’t know? That is something that we want the audience to wonder about. And we think just the way Michael Imperiale plays it, there’s an intriguing … There are lots of ways you can read into it. And we think that’s part of the fun of the journey that you go on as the season unfolds, so you just have to find out.

I love that space where Angelo makes the switch and how he has the two live separately there, and we see it the way he goes about it. What do you enjoy about having that space for him, and what can you say about how much we’re going to keep seeing him go back vs., say, just seeing the cars? Because you don’t have to show the same thing every time.

Yeah, I mean, it’s a little bit of that. One of the things we’re really trying to do with this show is not make it formulaic and predictable, and so that we don’t necessarily hit the same [notes]. And it’s not hugely episodic either. So we’re not necessarily hitting the same things every episode or several of the episodes. We try to give the audience something new with every episode and show new aspects of Angelo’s life. So while we don’t go back there every episode, certainly that space where he gets to become the other Angelo, either the hitman Angelo or the suburban dad Angelo, depending on which one he’s changing into, we think is a very important psychological space for him. One of the things we talked about is the samurai putting on the mask, putting on the costume before you go into battle, and that being a very significant thing for Angelo as a character that his fancy clothes and his fast car help him to actually do his job because it puts him in a different mind space where he is the hitman Angelo, and he doesn’t have to think about the suburban dad Angelo, and he can do his job, therefore, without interference and without pull from those kinds of emotions.

Memory of a Killer, Regular Time Period Premiere, Monday, January 26, 9/8c, Fox