‘Criminal Minds’ vet Joe Mantegna responds to his DILF status

Joe Mantegna has added a new word to his lexicon: DILF.

The Hollywood veteran, 76, has been hailed a DILF by Criminal Minds fans — a title he only recently learned about while reading thirst tweets alongside his costars for a Paramount+ video segment. “I don’t even know what a DILF is,” Mantegna quipped in the segment.

In recent conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Mantegna confirmed that he has, in fact, since learned the meaning of the acronym. “It was all new to me,” Mantegna shares. “I don’t go on the internet. I know I have a presence [on social media], but my daughter runs it for me.”

“I thought it was pretty funny, especially when I looked at the stuff all the other cast members were [reading],” he says of the tweets. “But yeah, when they hit me with DILF, I started to think of Disney characters or something. I’m not so naive. Later on when somebody said, ‘You know what a MILF Is?’ And I thought, ‘Ohhh, okay.’ Well, alright. I’ll take that as a compliment, I suppose.”

An earnest Mantegna adds, “Look, without the fans, we are nothing. We’re just acting in a vacuum. So God bless them, and I hope we’re bringing them hours and hours of entertainment and amusement.”

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Mantegna reprises his role as special agent David Rossi in the Criminal Minds revival Evolution, currently in its second season — and 17th overall — on Paramount+. Reeling from his near-death experience in the hands of Elias Voit (franchise newcomer Zach Gilford) in the debut season, Rossi finds himself haunted (and taunted) by visions of the incarcerated villain, who becomes an asset to the BAU this season as they unravel the Gold Star case. 

The newest episode, “Message in a Bottle” (out now), sees Rossi — who has largely been keeping his distance from his nemesis — confront Voit to quell the intrusive visions and reach a point of closure after last season’s events. It’s during their one-on-one that Rossi comes to a major realization about Gold Star — one too juicy to spoil here, but it involves the deceased Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) — that inches the team closer to cracking the case.

“It’s a testament to the good writing,” Mantegna says of building that dynamic with Gilford. “You open up this thread, this relationship, and you start in a pretty explosive kind of a way. Whenever you see that as an actor in that first script, you get excited about where this is going to go, where they’re going to take this. I’m not one of those [actors] that want to know at the beginning of the season, ‘Hey, tell me what the layout is for the season.’ As I get each week’s script, I would find out just like everybody else. So I find that very exciting and it makes my job fun.”

No surprise here, but the series was recently renewed for another season. Mantegna insists he has zero intel about it. “I really don’t,” he says. “It’s in the hands of the writers and Erica Messer, our showrunner. I have every faith in them keeping the quality as it has been.”

Wheels up! New episodes of Criminal Minds: Evolution drop Thursdays on Paramount+.