‘FBI’: John Boyd & Shantel VanSanten on Scola & Nina Going Undercover Together
After John Boyd headed over to FBI: Most Wanted to spend some time at home with Scola and Nina, Shantel VanSanten is heading back to the series on which we met her character to see how the couple does working together after their baby was born.
In the April 16 episode of FBI, when a retired FBI agent is tortured and killed while working a security job, Scola and Nina go undercover as a married couple deep in the diamond game as part of the investigation. During this dangerous assignment, Scola is plagued by the possibility that their son Doug could end up parentless.
Below, Boyd and VanSanten preview the case and the other risks on Scola’s mind in this episode.
Scola and Nina are going undercover. We’ve seen them in the field together before, but this is the first time since Doug was born. What can you preview about that undercover assignment, and why do both characters have to go on it?
Shantel VanSanten: You stole my informant. [Laughs] Tell us all about it.
John Boyd: Yeah, a retired FBI agent gets tortured and killed, and when we start working the case—there’s a robbery [and] diamonds [involved]—we come across an informant that just so happens to be working with none other than Nina Chase. Yeah, it’s a great episode. We end up negotiating with the guy and trying to go undercover, which was really fun to do. Did you have fun? [to Shantel, who agrees] I just loved getting to get into what they would be wearing and the apartment. And there’s this whole other subtextual story going on in that episode. We’re performing for the cover.
VanSanten: We’re actors acting and then agents acting.
Boyd: There’s this other conflict of the risk involved; the theme is mitigating the risk in order to have a family. How do two agents decide to do that? We’re obviously on two different pages with it, so it was cool to get to play the subtextual movie inside the movie. It was neat.
Then we have Nina back in the FBI world after going over to Most Wanted. How is that? How it used to be? Is it easy to step back into that world for her, even with how she’s grown?
VanSanten: Yeah, it was definitely a blast going back. Seeing all of the crew and being able to be back where Nina came to life with all the people that were a part of that, and it felt like I never left for a moment. And then after day one and all the excitement of being back, it was stepping back into the same role.
You’re right, Nina has evolved. Being on the Fugitive Task Force has meant more risk for her, but for her, the reward of more risk means that she’s creating a world for Dougie that is better. And where some people may think it’s controversial for Nina to be a mother and then step into a more risky, dangerous role, she knows her capabilities and she also knows the world that she wants to create for her son. It is such an honor to go back to where Nina was first created and to get to do it again and to see them together on a case and also to be undercover. Nina had an episode where she was a paramedic undercover, but this was working a case to solve it undercover and not just a beat. So that part was really fun. It was taking on a totally different character than our normal selves.
The other part of this is that Scola wants them to travel separately to a friend’s wedding, but what makes what he sees as a risk there so different from the ones they face at work?
Boyd: We talked about this, and I actually cold-called a retired FBI agent couple that I’d looked up, and we talked about it and what’s involved. I think what Shantel and I decided at the beginning of the episode for our characters was that there’s a rule in this house that one person always comes home. So if you want to make a better world for our child, that’s fine. We’re both going to do that, but we’re going to make sure we’re doing it in a way that’s calculated and intelligent and not both of us are going into firefights and working at the same exact time. And I think the moment that she says, “Great, my sister’s watching the baby, let’s get on this metal tube together and fly across the country,” it’s the first time he realizes this is actually when we’re most vulnerable. It’s not about air travel, it’s about wait, this is our job is to make sure that we don’t do that to this child.
VanSanten: And we can’t control the factors of the outside world. It feels like maybe when we’re inside our job, we understand and know our capabilities and we feel more in control.
Boyd: It’s just so typically their characters that Nina’s barreling ahead forward. What they’re struggling with and bumping heads about is so typically them, it was fun to do, for sure.
VanSanten: They’re both very opinionated and headstrong and since the very beginning have always kind of bumped heads and found their way through a lot of adversity. And I love that they’re navigating the job and their real life and we get to see them in this new evolution as parents doing that.
FBI, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS
