Colter Shaw will reunite with a familiar face on Sunday, Oct. 27, when Sofia Pernas reprises her Season 1 role as rival bounty hunter Billie Matalon.
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While CBS has only revealed that Billie needs Colter’s help tracking down a missing high school athlete, real-life married Pernas and Justin Hartley tell TVLine that her latest appearance packs an emotional punch and will further explain why these dueling bounty hunters have a connection beyond their specific professions.
“We get a glimpse into her backstory,” Pernas says. “I feel like we shared bread in 106, and she’s comfortable in 203”—comfortable sharing more about herself with Colter, who she hasn’t necessarily trusted with sensitive information before. “That ice-breaking moment [on the phone in Season 1, Episode 6] gave her a certain comfort level to be able to say, ‘I need help,’ and she asked him for help in the third episode.”
“Of course, he was skeptical,” Hartley points out, because when the audience first met Billie, we learned that she had kidnapped him once during a joint mission and taken the reward money herself. But this time, Billie’s plea was “legitimate.” Along the way, “you learn a lot about her, about her childhood, and it gets pretty intense. It’s a very sad story, but it’s also a story of triumph and perseverance.”
“You understand why she is who she is, in a lot of ways, and that comes from her mother,” Pernas adds. And who better to understand deep family trauma than Colter Shaw?
“They have a beautiful scene where she really opens up to him in a way that you….” Hartley pauses, then turns to Pernas: “The way he plays it is beautiful. His performance shows that he has never shared [this information] with anyone, ever.” And we know that, that’s exactly how Pernas chooses to play it. “In my mind, she’s buried this really deep, and she’s making a living out of this wall that she’s built,” Pernas explains. “I don’t think this is something she would just say to someone over coffee, so I wanted it to be more than that.”
