Actor Jack Falahee Joins the Innocence Project as an Ambassador

When actor Jack Falahee took on the role of first-year law student Connor Walsh in the ABC’s hit series, How to Get Away With Murder, he was as new to the workings of the criminal legal system as his character. But in his search for the emotional truth behind the show’s story, he developed something profound within himself: A desire to reform the system.

“At first, I was playing scenes about trials and injustice without much grounding in the reality behind them. Being part of a project that took these issues seriously, surrounded by people who were already organizing and engaged, pushed me to actually educate myself instead of just performing the words on the page. The shift from performing a story to actually understanding it is what eventually brought me to the Innocence Project,” he said.

In June 2024, Mr. Falahee reached out to the Innocence Project over Instagram after learning about Robert Roberson, who has been fighting for justice from Texas’ death row for more than 20 years. Since then, the actor has lent his voice to several campaigns and, this month, officially became an Innocence Ambassador, joining proud innocence advocates including Tony Goldwyn, Whoopi Goldberg, and Chris Martin, and more.

While How to Get Away With Murder aired its final season in 2020, Mr. Falahee — who most recently starred in a Tony-winning production of Death of a Salesman on Broadway — said he isn’t done telling stories that shed light on the criminal legal system and the need for change.

“The work doesn’t end when the credits roll. Wrongful conviction isn’t a plotline that wraps up in forty-two minutes. It’s ongoing, it’s real, and it’s going to take all of us staying in it for the long haul to actually change it,” he explained. “Before joining the Innocence Project, I assumed wrongful conviction was rare — a handful of tragic outlier cases rather than a systemic issue.”

Mr. Falahee said he was shocked by the volume of wrongful conviction cases. It’s estimated that 6% of incarcerated people are wrongly convicted, meaning there are potentially tens of thousands of innocent people behind bars.

As an actor, Mr. Falahee’s training and instinct is to do the digging and the work that will help audiences connect with often fictional stories and characters. But, he said, the facts of wrongful conviction cases are often so stunning, they speak for themselves.

“What I’ve come to understand through the Innocence Project is that real stories don’t need embellishment to be powerful; they need to be heard … Wrongful conviction can become an abstraction, a statistic or headline, until you hear it from the person who lived it: the years lost, the dehumanization, the loss of relationships, the fight just to be believed,” he said.

Since getting involved in the innocence movement, Mr. Falahee said what has made him optimistic is seeing change happen — however incremental — and he hopes others will join him in fighting for justice.

“This system has actually changed before because people refused to stop pushing. That tells me the system isn’t fixed in place, it’s responsive to pressure, persistence and evidence,” he said. “Working alongside the people at the Innocence Project, who show up every day with a kind of dedication and tirelessness I find humbling, has made clear how much more there is to learn, and how much work is still ahead. My education is just beginning, and yours can too.”