John Boyd and Shantel VanSanten opened up.
FBI continues the Scola/Nina storyline in “Best Laid Plans” to follow up John Boyd’s appearance on FBI: Most Wanted last week in the 2024 TV schedule. On the heels of FBI’s three-season renewal, new Most Wanted series regular Shantel VanSanten crossed over to her former show for a high-stakes case that had bullets flying before the episode even hit the halfway point. Nina and Scola went undercover together as a married couple and had to make some tough decisions as parents. The stars speak with CinemaBlend about what went down, and I’m already ready for another crossover.
The case of the week pulled Nina while an inside man on a diamond heist happened to be one of her informants, but Scola and Co. couldn’t just let him go due to his involvement in the robbery that killed a retired agent. After the two were bumping heads over on Most Wanted, they had another personal conflict in “Best Laid Plans” when they had to make travel plans to a wedding in Napa, but Scola wanted to travel separately so that there was no risk of both of they dying and leaving baby Dougie parentless.
When I spoke with John Boyd and Shantel VanSanten, they revealed that a lot of thought went into their characters’ dynamic and different points of view in “Best Laid Plans.” Boyd shared:
“One thing that we talked about preparing for the episode was kind of what would be the house rule for two FBI agents raising a baby, in terms of their job and the risk. So if mom is flying on the jet to go down and take a suspect down, is dad’s risk involved in his case lighten as he tends to a child? This would be what a family in their shoes would have to navigate. So I think what’s interesting is that moment, the sort of inciting incident of them have a rule in the house that someone always comes back. Somebody has to come back, and if we both get on an airplane with leaving our child behind for the first time, we’re putting ourselves at risk.”
While Scola had a breakthrough about staying in a dangerous job despite the pressures of parenthood last season, it’s hard to fault him for worrying a little extra in this episode. Not only was a former FBI agent murdered, but Scola, Tiff, Maggie, and OA were pinned down under machine gun fire in the streets of New York early in the episode. He had multiple near-death experiences in just that one scene alone, so it was only natural that he had mortality on the mind. Still, Nina definitely had a point that they couldn’t avoid all risks all the time. Boyd continued:
“So it was really fun to sort of set those rules and then go into the case. And of course, in true FBI fashion, we’re put in the hairy situation and we can barely get out by the skin of our teeth. It was was really fun to do and navigate that stuff as actors and as an on-screen couple that way.”
Luckily, both agents survived unscathed, and Scola had enough of a courage to agree with Nina that they could take the same flight to the wedding. They can set all the rules they wanted; they just can’t control everything, and that has to be okay. On the whole, while this was a rough episode for the characters, the actors clearly enjoyed the experience. Shantel VanSanten shared her own perspective, saying:
“But it’s cool too, with each episode that I’m given, I get to understand more about Nina and more about Scola and Nina and their relationship. And like he said, establish these rules, you know, like, what is their relationship like? Because we can do as much background stuff as we want to on the characters and where they’re at, but when you’re given a script that talks about risk, it lends us to have the conversation of ‘Oh, how do they navigate? Okay, what [are] our house rules? How do we do this?’ “
Thanks to the delays from the WGA writers strike and SAG-AFTRA actors strike, the better part of a year passed between John Boyd and Shantel VanSanten’s work together in FBI’s Season 5 finale and their on-screen reunion this April, so this was the first time that fans get a good look at their dynamic as parents. According to the Most Wanted actress, they were able to hear from some real-life agents about situations like Scola and Nina’s. VanSanten continued:
“And we actually had the opportunity to speak to two FBI agents who are married, and it was really interesting to listen. They’re parents [and] to listen to the way that they’ve navigated both of them being able to have wonderful careers, and the way that they view their job with more of a priority actually, after a child because of the world that they’re creating for the future of their children.”
All in all, it’s not every week that any of the three FBI series dig into the personal lives of characters, let alone in two episodes across two of the shows over two weeks. Scola and Nina coming to an agreement about risk by the end of the hour really just makes me want to see more crossovers with Boyd and VanSanten joining forces on screen.
That doesn’t seem particularly likely with the sixth season of FBI and fifth season of Most Wanted nearing their ends, but both shows are guaranteed to return in the 2024-2025 TV schedule, so perhaps in the fall! For now, keep tuning in to CBS on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET for new episodes of FBI, followed by FBI: International at 9 p.m. and FBI: Most Wanted at 10 p.m. You can also revisit earlier episodes of all three shows streaming via Paramount+ subscription.
