SDCC 2024: Tracker Star and Writer Talk Jensen Ackles’ Season 2 Role
In addition to emerging as the biggest new hit on network television last season, Tracker became the talk of the town when it was announced that Supernatural star Jensen Ackles would be joining the show as one of its most important characters. Ackles guest-starred in an episode of Tracker Season 1, playing the long-revealed Russell Shaw, the mysterious brother of Justin Hartley’s Colter Shaw.
There’s no telling exactly what to expect from Russell when Tracker enters Season 2, but the actor has said he plans to return. At San Diego Comic-Con, ComicBook sat down for a joint interview with Hartley and Tracker executive producer Elwood Reid, and we asked them about Ackles’ role on the show. While they didn’t reveal any secrets about Season 2, they were open about how the former Supernatural actor fit into what the show was trying to do and how the natural chemistry with Hartley allowed Russell and Colter to create something unique.
“It’s great. You wrote a good dynamic,” Hartley told Reid. “The brotherhood is taken straight from the book, it’s a difficult relationship, the way he writes it. Of course there’s tension, because of what’s happened, what they’ve been through. But then, they’re brothers. And from the beginning, there’s this silence that they had and they didn’t speak, they didn’t talk, they didn’t do anything, they didn’t communicate. And now, they’re here together and they have to do this together. So, I think it’s great. And that dynamic is great, because we see this lone wolf character. He’s always doing his own thing. And there’s a little tension there. But I also think at the end, there’s a little bit of respect and love. So it’s an interesting place to see Colter that we haven’t seen before.”
Reid took the opportunity to talk about the specific dynamic between Hartley and Ackles, and how it influenced his writing of Russell Shaw going forward.
“It’s not really acting when you see [Hartley and Ackles] together. It’s crazy,” Reid said. “You’re always nervous when you write something to see if they have chemistry. The dynamic — I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t say anything. And these guys, ‘I was like, ‘This could be a disaster,’ because I’ve worked with Jensen before and you never know,'” he joked. “It’s funny because the first couple days you guys shot, I was there. I was just like, ‘Oh okay, I want to know what this is.’ But they showed me how to write it. Just to see the chemistry they had. It’s crazy… He’s got such a long history with him, it’s so much work to get that.”
