After 12 seasons playing Dr. Jackson Avery on “Grey’s Anatomy,” Jesse Williams is ready to play a lead in a totally different realm: the international TV space.
In new Prime Video Italy original “Hotel Costiera,” Williams — who left “Grey’s” in 2021 but had guest roles on almost every season since then — plays an Italian-American former Marine named Daniel De Luca, who is a problem-solver in one of the most exclusive hotels in the world in Positano on Italy’s iconic Amalfi Coast.
He is a guest of the hotel owner because DD, as everyone knows him, is the only person who caught a glimpse of the man who may have kidnapped the owner’s daughter. Therefore, he’s the only person who may be able to hunt the kidnapper down. Aside from that storyline, DD basically solves a case in each episode.
Alongside Williams, “Hotel Costiera” — which drops on Wednesday in the U.S., U.K., Italy and several other territories — features a rich ensemble cast comprising Maria Chiara Giannetta, Jordan Alexandra, Antonio Gerardi, Sam Haygarth, Tommaso Ragno, Amanda Campana, Pierpaolo Spollon, Alejandra Onieva and Jean-Hugues Anglade.
The six-episode show is co-produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Luca Bernabei for Lux Vide, the Fremantle-owned Italian company behind global shows such as “Medici” and financial thriller “Devils.”
Below, Williams speaks to Variety about how he became deeply involved in “Hotel Costiera,” on which he also serves as a hands-on executive producer.
What drew you to this project?
It came to me as an early idea, kind of fleshed out in Italian and then translated into English. It was this core concept created by [producer] Luca Bernabei, with Adam Bernstein making it. So I read the material and met with Adam. I just really loved the [show’s] world. I think I really gravitated towards this guy who had fully committed himself to something in the military and finds himself having to start over. He’s also a character who’s from two worlds. I think there was a relatability factor there, as somebody who’s American but biracial in a polarized country, and authentically of two worlds.
Tell me more.
All those factors originally attracted me to just kind of want to play with it. And I had been, at the time, wanting to think more about global creativity: thinking outside the borders of the U.S. I always found that interesting. I went to film school, and that’s the lens through which I see the world. You watch Fellini and you’re learning about other places, like also Korea and Japan, through their cinema. Americans aren’t always known for their ability to open up and process and absorb other cultures.
What drew you to the show’s global aspect?
After I’d left the show [“Grey’s Anatomy”] I was on for so long, [I was] just trying to do a lot of things I had never done. I went straight to Broadway and doing some indie film, just kind of doing everything I hadn’t done. And in this way, I was like, what if I get out of the country and go make something somewhere else.
I got a big global footprint because of “Grey’s.” It’s a monster show. So I’ve got some juice in other places. I’d always loved to travel and love to be reminded that there is a whole big world out there. And I think that American audiences are coming to that realization again. I think that cycling back around, we see an appetite to watch shows with a little bit of subtitles, different languages, different cultures. We’ve seen things really pop like “Money Heist” and “Squid Game.” And I think that’s encouraging. Anything that kind of brings us together, I think is encouraging.
“Hotel Costiera” is interesting because you play a guy who is rooted in two countries. Did you contribute to developing that aspect?
Yes, I was certainly involved in character development. One of the things I wanted to explore with this character is that he’s half Black Italian and half American. That’s a different experience. What are little ways that we can nod to that? That we can acknowledge and include that, without it becoming a lesson? And we have little pieces [of that backstory] kind of peppered in. We had really cool help from consulting producer Trey Ellis, a writer who’s a Black American who lived in Italy forever.
Tell me more about Daniel. He has this Neapolitan street kid aspect, known in local slang as “scugnizzo.”
Daniel is somebody who grew up as a street kid in Naples with a character in the show named Bignè, who was one of his old running buddies. And that’s where a lots of his street savvy comes from; his comfort with folks who might be deemed undesirable. That’s his edge. He doesn’t come from high society Naples or Rome, or even Amalfi. I think that has proven to be an important detail. Because now he finds himself working in this hotel with all these wealthy privileged people. So he does all that with a bit of a smirk. He was raised kind of running around the streets, not with a nuclear family. Not with a solid family unit. That kind of fracture probably also sets him up for diving into the military, creating a family. So he keeps finding himself in support of systems [like the hotel] that will kind of hold him, or at least give him mission, give him purpose.
What was it like acting in Italian? Your accent is pretty good. Did you work with a voice coach?
That was tough for me. Some people take to languages very easily. I admit that I don’t. So I just studied. I had a really great set of coaches. I did a little bit of work before I left the U.S. to start prep and had somebody on set at all times. It was a combination of, I’m being honest, learning syntax and learning some basic rules around the language. So it was a labor of love. It was really fun to do when I nailed it. And I had a lot of teachers, because our entire production crew is Italian.
You are the only American actor on the show. What was it like working with an international cast?
The casting process was really fun. I was very involved in all the casting of every single member. So you’re watching these great tapes from people all over the world, and several of them auditioned for different roles than they ended up playing. Luckily, we got the best in every category, and comedically it made for a really cool kind of melange of styles. I really love British comedy, from “Monty Python” to Ricky Gervais to everything in between. And Sam Haygarth and Jordan Alexandra are both really funny and biting and creative in their comedic style. That jammed up with Antonio Gerardi [who plays Bignè], who has a very different kind of masculine wit. It was a really cool harmony of characters, and I was consistently very pleasantly surprised on set at how they brought things to life.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.