ABCSpoiler alert: You will not instantly love Viola Davis' character Annalise Keating in tonight's premiere of How to Get Away With Murder.
And that, dear friends, is the biggest reason why you are going to love the damn pants off of this show.
Unlike Meredith Grey and Olivia Pope before her, Annalise will leave you shouting things at your screen like, "Why would she do that?!" "Is she insane?!" "Is she evil?!"
Annalise is a seductive, intelligent, multi-layered, hot mess and it's the best thing about her. "I like messy," the 50-year-old Oscar nominee contends.
And it's a good thing she does.
"I wanted to create someone who was enigmatic and controversial and dark," executive producer Peter Nowalk tells me. "I think people are much darker than we give them credit for on TV. I think when people are put in extreme situations, they are much darker and do shocking things and it doesn't make them bad people."
Nowalk, who has worked with Shonda Rhimes for years on Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, and created How to Get Away With Murder alongside her, credits Viola for making the show click in ways he'd never imagined.
"I don't write from a place of clarity," he explains. "I don't want people to feel clear all the time. Viola has said, ‘People don't function that way,' and I completely agree. I think they're weird and unpredictable. And they might be nice one minute and mean the next. We're emotional animals. So just the fact that Viola Davis is willing to go to that weirdo place, makes me be able to write the world. I can do so many more things than I could have if it were an actress who felt the need to be liked."
Murder surrounds the brilliant professor Annalise Keating (played by Davis) and four first-year law students from her class "How to Get Away With Murder." And let's just say that the episode starts off with them burying a dead body, and gets more twisty and devious from there. You'll spend half the pilot with your jaw slacked, questioning Annalise's motives.
Sure, we've seen this sort of complex, antihero character on many cable series in recent years, but Viola's Annalise is really the first such female character on network TV. And it's about time. She will keep you guessing.
"What's awesome is the network did not ever give me one note in making Annalise clearer," Nowalk reveals, "or making her more specific about her mission here. And that's why getting Viola has been this lucky opportunity, aside from the fact that she's Viola and can do anything in the world, like literally I want her to be president. Every episode we're going to get unexpected and weird moments where people will say, ‘I don't get why she's doing that!' And I am so lucky to have an actress who's willing to go with that."
Check out the best new drama of the season tonight at 9 pm on ABC. And stay tuned for details on E! Online's amazing and hialrious Shondaland drinking game, which we will be playing along with you, and live tweeting session with Scandal's Mellie herself, Bellamy Young! Follow @kristindsantos for all the updates! HAPPY TGIT, everyone.