Spoilers ahead for the S.W.A.T.: Exiles episode “Hate Crime.”
If you've been watching Jude Callan closely on S.W.A.T.: Exiles, you knew he was carrying something. He’s been secretive about his past undercover work and now we know the truth: before he joined the squad, Jude spent two years undercover inside a white supremacist organization to take down leader Ripley Collins. When the group pulls him back into their world, Jude is forced to face his past and tell his new team the truth.
Past Out100 honoree Ronen Rubinstein found out where the story was headed early in the season. His reaction was about what you'd expect. "I thought to myself, oh my God, this is going to be the Mount Everest of my career," he tells Out.
Not only was Jude undercover with the crew, he had a romantic relationship with Ripley’s daughter Shayla. It’s evidence of just how deeply he has immersed himself in his assignment.
To get inside Jude's head, Rubinstein went looking for someone who had actually done the job. He found Scott Payne, a former federal agent whose recent book, Operation Pale Horse, covers the nearly two years he spent undercover with a white supremacist group. What stayed with Rubinstein was how ordinary it could look. As he recounts Payne's experience, you get to know these people. You watch their kids grow up. You go to their barbecues. At night, they're burning crosses.
"His ultimate question for himself throughout his career was like, 'How do you not lose yourself in that world?'" Rubinstein says. "Because you're spending so much time with them, and you have to believe it to the fullest, or else they will probably figure out that you're undercover and murder you."
Knowing early allowed him to prepare and do his research in order to do it justice. When the script for the huge episode arrived, he knew what he was looking at. "The material was so difficult, the subject matter was so difficult, and this extraordinary script really deserved me giving my absolute everything."
The impact it has on the team is evident in one of the episode’s most heartbreaking scenes. Collins’ son Shane pulls Jude back in when he recruits him for a robbery. When tasked with killing a Black security guard, the undercover officer decides to beat him instead.
Shemar Moore and Ronen Rubinstein on 'S.W.A.T.: Exiles.'Starz
It was a decision made to save the man's life, but it doesn't look that way when the rest of 44 squad sees the footage. That's how they learn about Jude's undercover assignment: not from him, but from a recording that makes his actions look almost indefensible.
Rubinstein says filming that week had none of the usual goofing around between takes. "I kind of carried a very dark cloud over my head whenever I stepped on set," he says. His castmates gave him his space.
The footage was actually playing that day. "It was disturbing, regardless if it's a TV show or not," he says. "I'm also in a room with four Black people, and Jude is beating a Black man almost to death. It was intense and disturbing, to say the least, and I think you almost feel it in the scene."
What carried him through was the people in that room. "They really supported me, even if it was nonverbally," he says. "Their actions spoke so loud, and I just loved them so much for that."
Nowhere is Jude's betrayal more personal than in his relationship with Sammy. Late in the episode, she tells him she doesn't know what to do with what she's learned.
Rubinstein says it derailed everything they kind of had going.
What happened during Sammy's monologue wasn't planned. "Whenever I would look at her during that monologue, something unlocked or unleashed inside of me that just destroyed my heart," he says, crediting Lucy Barrett for "giving me everything, even when the camera wasn't on her."
He doesn't argue with where Sammy lands. "She has every reason to feel the way she feels," he says. "All of them are completely valid for not trusting me and looking at me differently now."
Jude doesn’t lose his spot on 44, but he has a lot of work ahead of him if he plans to reconcile with his new teammates.
S.W.A.T.: Exiles airs Friday nights on STARZ.
