Zach Gilford Almost Played Reid on ‘Criminal Minds’: Here’s How He Really Feels About Losing the Role

Zach Gilford has quietly built one of the more fascinating character-actor careers of his generation, moving from earnest small-town quarterback in ‘Friday Night Lights’ to unsettling cult leader in ‘Midnight Mass’ without ever quite becoming a household name. That range has made him a natural fit for the kind of morally complicated roles that stick with audiences long after the credits roll.

His current gig might be the best proof of that range yet. Since 2022, Gilford has played Elias Voit, the central antagonist of ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution,’ a role that’s turned him into one of the franchise’s most talked-about additions in years. What most fans don’t realize is that his history with the show actually stretches back much further than his official debut.

Gilford revealed that he originally auditioned for the franchise’s very first pilot back in 2005, reading for what he believes was the role of Dr. Spencer Reid, the part that ultimately went to Matthew Gray Gubler and helped define the character for fifteen seasons. He didn’t even land a callback at the time, a rejection that stung given how sure he was he’d booked steady work for years to come.

Looking back now, Gilford has made peace with how things actually played out, and then some. He explained it would’ve been more boring if he’d landed that original role, telling Entertainment Weekly that playing evidence-focused Reid for years wouldn’t have offered the same creative range he’s gotten to explore as Voit.

That reflection captures just how differently Gilford’s career unfolded compared to the path he originally imagined for himself. Rather than spending over a decade playing a beloved but relatively straightforward genius profiler, he instead built a résumé full of morally ambiguous, unsettling characters across projects like ‘Midnight Mass’ and ‘The Midnight Club,’ work that arguably prepared him far better for the complexity of playing a franchise villain.

Voit himself has become one of the more unusual antagonists in the ‘Criminal Minds’ universe, an operations analyst who secretly runs a network of serial killers while maintaining an ordinary family life completely unaware of his double identity. Gilford has described his approach to the character as intentionally likable on screen, despite Voit’s genuinely dark nature, a choice that’s made the character far more unsettling than a straightforward villain might have been.

Gilford has also been candid about the bittersweet nature of finally joining a franchise that almost launched his career two decades earlier. He’s admitted to feeling conflicted watching the original series over the years, knowing how close he’d come to originating one of its most iconic roles before ultimately missing out entirely.

His return to the franchise sixteen years later has come with its own full-circle moments, including working alongside longtime cast member Joe Mantegna, an actor Gilford has said he grew up admiring. That relationship, paired with his unexpected history auditioning for the original pilot, has made his time on ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ feel like something closer to fate than coincidence.

With the show continuing to expand its mythology around Voit’s complicated psychology, Gilford’s presence has proven to be one of the reboot’s most consistently praised elements. Missing out on Reid all those years ago may have stung at the time, but it’s hard to argue the wrong actor ended up in the wrong role.

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