William H. "Willie" Thompson

Willie Thompson is Eli's son and Nucky's nephew, a college student at Temple trying to build a life untouched by the family business. Earnest and a little awkward, he wants to be seen as his own man—studying hard, keeping his head down—even as the Thompson name keeps finding him.

The show uses him as a test case: can anyone born into this family actually walk away? Ben Rosenfield plays that tension with a nervy, watchful stillness, a young man visibly calculating the cost of every choice, which makes his slow pull toward the family's world feel inevitable rather than written.