Justin Hartley Talks Returning to TV with ‘Tracker’ and Staying in Touch with His ‘This Is Us’ Family
For actor Justin Hartley, Super Bowl Sunday brings a level of excitement beyond being the biggest night in professional sports. Hartley, who spent the week in Las Vegas before the big game, debated whether his favorite football team, the Chicago Bears, should retain their current quarterback, Justin Fields, or use their No. 1 overall draft pick in April to select Caleb Williams (many sports analysts call him a generational player at that position).
But the biggest reason for the anticipation surrounding Sunday’s game between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs is that the game serves as the prelude to the This Is Us star’s next series, Tracker, which airs immediately after the game on CBS. Executive produced by Harley and former This Is Us producer/director Ken Olin, Tracker is based on the best-selling novel The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver. The book follows the life and adventures of Colter Shaw (played by Hartley), a bounty hunter and lone wolf. Shaw, raised in a survivalist family, helps private citizens and law enforcement search for missing loved ones. He has a team of experts to help him on his expeditions as he travels across the country in an Airstream RV hooked up to the back of his pickup truck. However, lurking behind Shaw’s professional background is a mystery involving the death of his father at the hands of a government entity—or his brother—when Colter was just 15 years old. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Hartley over Zoom over Super Bowl weekend to talk about what motivated him to tell the story of Colter Shaw for his first big post-This Is Us project, how he separated Kevin Pearson (and Hartley, himself) from his new character, and how he copes with stress after wrapping the hit series that changed his career—and yes, a little football.
*** Since This Is Us, he’s been busy making a few movies, a well-received Spotify podcast like Batman in Harley Quinn and The Joker: Sound Mind, and has been involved with a number of charities supporting animal rescue. What made this the right time for the Tracker project?
Well, we were wrapping up This Is Us, going into our final season, and Ken Olin and I had become pretty close over the six years we worked together. We met on the show and then six years later, we were like, This is the last year and maybe we should find something to do together. So we set out on a journey to find something. And I wasn’t looking for a particular genre; he could be, you’d have to ask him. But I wanted something that was fun and entertaining.
I think a lot of times, it all has to do with this political message or theme. Sometimes, we get lost in the shuffle that we’re entertainers. I want people to watch something and be entertained. And then, it becomes easier — and whatever you want to call it, cotton candy and rainbows. But if I can entertain people, if we can entertain people, our crew and everyone on the show who’s working in post-production, pre-production, and writing, then we’ve done our job. And that’s a thrill!
So Ken found the book The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver, brought it to me, and I fell in love with the character. I think, especially coming out of the pandemic, what a wonderful idea of a life where you live in an Airstream, you’re self-sufficient, you go wherever you want, and you help people. You’re not an anti-hero, you’re just a good person, a good man. And I thought about that. And I guess that made me think about how rare that is. I remember sitting there and thinking, he’s just a good person. Colter Shaw isn’t necessarily driven by an agenda. He’s a businessman. He takes money, that’s how he makes his living. He’s not driven by politics. He’s driven by doing the right thing. And, where does that come from? Well, that comes from his childhood, and we’ll explain that in the series.
And so you start to see all the layers of this guy, little by little peeling back why he’s doing what he’s doing. And why does he go about his business the way he does, and why does it mean so much to him? And I wonder why there aren’t more of these. He’s not a superhero; he’s living a very dangerous life. If he gets shot, he bleeds, he dies. I think it’s a flashback series, like the Rockford Files. We don’t have that anymore, and I feel nostalgic for that kind of television. And
How is Colter Shaw different from Kevin and Justin Hartley? Is there a process that you use to separate your parts from the character?
Yeah, that’s a great question. Everyone has their own way of getting into character, the things they need to do to get into character. And sometimes it’s different, depending on who you’re playing. But for me, basically what I do every time, and I did this with Kevin Pearson, I’ll write down a list of things that I have in common with the character that I’m about to play. And then in a separate column, I’ll write down the things that are different. Like, he might be a night owl and I only sleep at night or whatever — which is not true, I’m a night owl. Then I weave in the similarities and the differences, and I can take that character out and say, “Okay, this is who he is.”
It was important to me not to bring Kevin Pearson into this world, because it’s the complete opposite. I’m not going to share [what I wrote], because that’s what I used as a tool, but there are parallels that I didn’t know until I wrote them down. And I think, so now I have three people, a real person and two characters that I’m comparing and contrasting, and I just got a little bit distracted, and I got away with it.
But it really helped me focus on who this guy is, and it’s very simple. Ken and I talked about this a lot: Life happened to Kevin Pearson, right? Life happened to him in a big way. In every way you can imagine: addiction, divorce, twins, his father dying, cancer, dementia, career, fame, money, doubt—everything you can imagine happened to him. Colter happens to everyone. That’s the difference. He has influence. He walks into a room, and everyone feels it. He’s not hurt by it. He’s a tornado!
