Jesse Williams Compares ‘Hotel Costiera’ Character to ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Role (Exclusive)

Jesse Williams is hanging up his scrubs to take on an entirely new character in Hotel Costiera.

When asked how his Hotel Costiera character, former U.S. Marine Daniel De Luca, compares to Jackson Avery, the doctor he played on Grey’s Anatomy, the actor, 44, tells PEOPLE that the neurosurgeon has “certainly been to much more therapy.”

“He seems much more emotionally calm and present and self-aware,” Williams says of Jackson, who he began playing in 2009, before describing his character on the Prime Video series.

“Daniel De Luca is figuring it out,” he explains. “He’s kind of crawling before he can walk, I think. Just being in the military for that long and not functioning as an adult in the world without that system around him or those missions to give him purpose in life has found him rudderless in a way that is the opposite of being an accomplished surgeon on a task and owning a hospital.”

In Hotel Costiera, Daniel “returns to Italy, the land of his childhood, as a fixer in one of the world’s most luxurious hotels, located on the spectacular coastline of Positano,” according to an official synopsis. Daniel is tasked with finding Alice, one of the owner’s daughters who went missing, and “must do everything he can to bring her home, but facing those who kidnapped the girl will be more challenging than any problem Daniel has ever faced.”

Williams further describes the character as a “flawed” man who is navigating “the duality of identity — both Italian and American, Black and White, military, but also Scugnizzo, which like a street rat kid who would break the law and thieve as a young person, but then kind of a law and order military guy.”

He adds Daniel is “just trying to figure himself out and being an expert in certain fields, but totally kind of clumsy in other fields.”

“Maybe that’s his emotional access for himself and how to have sustainable relationships. And I can relate to part of that, I think that’s worth exploring,” he shares. “I think that’s worth putting on screen for other men. Well, men and women alike, however you identify, I think that he’s a human being in search of his home.”

Williams — who has also recently starred in the comedy series Only Murders in the Building, the psychological thriller What We Hide Now and the Broadway revival production of Take Me Out — admits that he intentionally takes roles that differ from each other because “that’s the fun of what I do, is in everything, every day is an opportunity to grow.”

“Not to sound cliche about it, but it really is. There’s no point in doing this if I’m not stimulated and I’m not excited,” he adds. “I don’t have something hard and kind of weird to have to figure out because we grow from doing hard things and what constitutes a hard thing can be, it’s a matter of perspective, but in this case, I want to be excited and stimulated when I wake up every day and, ‘Oh, I’ve never had to do this. I’ve never had to try to do this. Let’s see how this will work.’ Now that I’ve done it, I know that I don’t want to do that anymore.”

When asked what he would like to do in the future, Williams teases he would “definitely love to play a villainous role.”

“I think something heavy and dark and mean would be, that’s something I haven’t done really,” he says. “I did a little bit of that for a younger audience in Secret Headquarters with Owen Wilson and Michael Pena, but even that guy had a heart. I think something a little meaner would be really fun.”

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Hotel Costiera is streaming now on Prime Video.