Necar Zadegan as Deputy Chief of Station Nikki Reynard, Nick Gehlfuss as Special Agent Bill Goodman, and Natalee Linez as CIA Analyst Gina Gosian in CIA – Season 1 – “Directed Energy” | ©2026 CBS/Zach Dilgard/

Created by Dick Wolf & David Hudgins & Nicole Perlman & David Chasten and Warren Leight, CIA is the newest series in mega-producer Wolf’s FBI franchise (there are crossover ties in the opening episode). The show premieres Monday, February 23 on CBS, broadcasting episodes thereafter on Monday and streaming on Paramount+.

In CIA, Tom Ellis plays secretive Colin Glass, who reluctantly realizes that to legally function as an Agency operative on U.S. soil, he must team up with an FBI agent. This results in a joint New York-based CIA/FBI task force, pairing Colin with straight-laced FBI Special Agent Bill Goodman, portrayed by Nick Gehlfuss. Both report to CIA Deputy Chief of Station Nikki Reynard, played by Necar Zadegan. Together with CIA intelligence analyst Gina Gosian, played by Natalee Linez, they attempt to thwart criminals who are plotting acts of mass destruction.

As part of their virtual press day for the Television Critics Association (TCA), CBS arranges for Ellis, Gehlfuss, Zadegan, Linez, and executive producer/showrunner Mike Weiss – whose resume includes being a writer/producer on FBI and CHICAGO P.D. – to do a Q&A session on CIA.

For six seasons, Ellis starred as the title character on LUCIFER, who was literally the Devil – albeit with a conscience and a heart – who was very confident of his opinions and abilities and felt everyone else needed to catch up to him. How does Colin Glass compare?

“Well,” Ellis replies, “in that way specifically, I think they’re quite similar. I think Colin is two steps ahead of everybody else, or at least he thinks he is. I’d say the biggest contrast between him and Lucifer is that Lucifer prided himself on the fact that he never lied, whereas Colin predominantly deals in lies. As the season goes on, we delve into how that really has an effect on the human and what that creates in his own personal life.”

CIA Key Art – Season 1 | ©2026 CBS

Colin is so adept at concealing the truth that Ellis observes there have been times reading the scripts when he can’t tell beforehand if his character is being forthright or concealing facts. “I think a lot of what we’re trying to do with the show is have an experience. I mean, the CIA is essentially a voyeuristic agency, and so we want to have that experience for our viewers, as much as we can. So, we want to keep them guessing. But I guess that’s the fun of working at a secret agency – everything is secret.”

Gehlfuss spent ten seasons as a series regular in Wolf’s CHICAGO franchise, starring as Dr. Will Halstead on CHICAGO MED. He says that he didn’t know when he was doing his final season on MED that CIA was professionally around the corner.

As far as character comparisons, Gehlfuss quips, “Going from a Will to a Bill? Not every actor can do that. It’s no surprise I’m still working with Wolf Entertainment because it’s a great company, and I was looking for a new playground and I sure have it.”

Gehlfuss continues that he was so energized about having a more action-oriented role that, “Our first day on [CIA] of running, I was so excited to jump out of an FBI surveillance van and sprint toward the gunfire that I pulled my quad. And then I go over and I’m nursing it and I told Tom, ‘You’re never going to believe what happened,’ and,” he addresses Ellis, “what did you say?”

“I said, ‘I’ve done exactly the same thing,’” Ellis reveals.

Weiss volunteers with a laugh, “I pulled my quad watching that scene.”

Gehlfuss doesn’t want anyone to think he’s complaining about the physicality of his new gig. “It was a seamless, wonderful transition.”

Asked to describe her character, Linez, who has been a regular on SIREN, offers, “Gina Gosian mostly works in the SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] under Nikki right now. I think my job is to gather as much information as I possibly can to help the team with whatever threats there might be. So, they’re out in the field and I’m, ‘Here’s everything that I’ve gathered and everything you need to know.

Nick Gehlfuss as Special Agent Bill Goodman in CIA – Season 1 – “Directed Energy” | ©2026 CBS/Zach Dilgard/

“I wouldn’t peg Gina as quirky, but the cool thing about being in the CIA is that you’re not dressing up to go to work. You’re undercover twenty-four/seven, even when you’re walking into the CIA building. So, I would say Gina being in New York, working hard at a huge opportunity for many years, she has more grit to her, and is extremely smart. She would like to, as much as she can anticipate the needs of Colin, of even Bill, and definitely of Nikki.

“I think she takes herself seriously in a way, but seamlessly, because she’s really good at her job. Little things I’m adding – she’s a coffee drinker, for sure, because she’s at the agency all day, every day. And I really look up to Nikki, because she’s been at this for years, she’s been in the field for years. And so, I think I’m hoping my trajectory goes in the way that she’s done it, because she’s such a badass.”

Zadegan, a regular on multiple series including GIRLFRIENDS’ GUIDE TO DIVORCE, NCIS: NEW ORLEANS, and MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN, reports that she really enjoyed shooting a scene with Linez that appears in the opening episode. “We’ll hopefully get to work together a lot. I play Nikki Reynard, and I think we’ll get to do a lot of fun things with the character, who used to be out in the field like Colin, played by the wonderful Tom. There’s a history between the two characters. We don’t really know what it is yet, but Mike will definitely give us information about that as we go forward.

“Nikki comes in with a conflict about where she used to be out in the field and the decision she’s made to come and take this position. And there will be a lot of drama that will ensue from that conflict for her personally. [She] works with the FBI team to bring these two guys together, masterminding this duo that will come to be. So, I think we’re going to get to see a lot of great scenes this season.”

In terms of casting Gehlfuss to act opposite Ellis, Weiss relates, “Tom is a dashing, handsome perfectionist, and you only can pair him with a certain type of actor if you’re going to be able to have someone go toe to toe with him.

“We knew from the beginning that this was going to be a show with a strong male growing friendship that’s going to start out as conflict and eventually grow into trust of all different kinds – someone you can eventually trust with your secrets, someone who you trust to have your back to keep you safe, someone you can trust in ways big and small, when the stakes get really high and things like national security are on the line.

“And so, we were trying to find someone who could go blow for blow with Tom and keep his character honest. And I could not be more excited that it wound up being Nick, who we all worked with. We wrote scenes for Nick on CHICAGO P.D. and CHICAGO MED a decade ago and it’s fantastic to be able to come full circle and put Nick in the arena with Tom. I think we chose really well.”

How have Ellis and Gehlfuss found working with each other so far?

“Oh, it’s a nightmare,” Ellis deadpans. “No, it’s eerily easy. We spent a long time trying to find the person to play Bill. And then it’s that strange thing of, when they walk in the room and open their mouth, it’s like, ‘Oh, it was so obvious, it was right in front of our eyes.’

“Nick is just a lovely human being, very conscientious and very kind to people, which I love. But he’s also brilliant at what he does. And we have a very similar work ethic in terms of how we approach the script, we both have theatre backgrounds and we both think deep and hard about character and story.

“Sometimes I feel like that might annoy people that I work with, but actually, I’ve got someone who’s just as keen on it as me. So, it’s great. We have a lot of fun, don’t we?”

Gehlfuss responds, “I consider myself very lucky to have been paired up in this relationship, because Tom is a great leader. Everything he just said about our work ethic, it’s like we’re going to collide on screen, we certainly don’t [off-screen]. So, that’s good. And he’s pretty funny. Give him time and he’ll prove it. But yeah, I’m very grateful for him.”

Ellis adds, “We’re both dads and we deal predominantly in dad jokes.”

Wolf franchise series often run for decades – his LAW & ORDER: SVU is on Season 27. Are the CIA leads prepared to play their characters for a good while should the show prove a hit?

Linez opines, “It’s like a dream for me. I planted the seed to manifest something similar to a show and role like this, a network series regular. So, I am so excited, I feel so lucky to go to set every day, having these three incredible actors, because they’ve all been on long-running series. I’m like, ‘What should I expect here? What do I do there?’ And they’re all so kind and giving with advice.”

For Ellis, “Myself, Nick and Necar, we’ve had the privilege of working on long-running shows before, and it is different to going from job to job to job. One thing I love about doing [a long-running series] is that you really get to be inside the skin of your character and you really get to play them in a fully relaxed state, where you’re not second-guessing any of your choices, where it becomes instinctual.

“That in itself is a real privilege, to spend that amount of time on set in the shoes of someone else and it feels like it’s part of you. I don’t think that necessarily [happens] going job to job. It takes a long time to build up your confidence as an actor. And so, working in an environment like this, where it’s nurturing and we’re encouraged to speak up and bring stuff to the table, is a real privilege.”

Zadegan concurs. “I think it’s a real privilege as well. I don’t like to make predictions about these kinds of things at all, but I think you take a look at different factors, the fact that we are shooting this in New York, the fact that I get to work with this wonderful team.

“I met with Mike – immediately, the way that he was talking about the characters and the possibilities, not just because we’re in New York, but because we’re working on a show within this paradigm. There are a lot of opportunities we have a places we can go with the story.”

Gehlfuss states, “I don’t gamble, but if you’re going to gamble, you gamble with Wolf Entertainment. You run towards the Wolf pack, because the show that I was on is still running. I recently went to a twenty-five-year LAW & ORDER anniversary party. And yes, SVU is in its twenty-seventh season. It is a gift for any actor to be able to constantly verify and work your craft over a period of time, along with just deepening and evolving with the character. So, I’m ready, especially with this group.”

Given that the intelligence community is more chaotic than usual these days, how much is CIA following what’s actually happening with the CIA and the FBI and how much is it an idealized look at those organizations?

“In terms of storyline,” Weiss explains, “we set up certain goals for ourselves. There are absolutely counterterror and Homeland Security taskforces that draw from all three of the three-letter agencies that work in D.C. and New York and lots of major cities. And so, there are certain rules that we’re abiding by, like Colin is not going to carry a gun, certainly not in the U.S. Bill is going to do his best to abide by the U.S. Constitution while he’s on U.S. soil.

“I think in the future, there are going to be opportunities for us to travel overseas and challenge some of these dynamics, but that’s basically the concept behind this CIA/FBI fusion cell that the show takes place in.

“I don’t know what CIA people are going to expect when they tune into the show. I think I think that one of the benefits of making a show about the CIA is that a lot of the activities are secret, they’re shadowy, and this is an opportunity to have that way of working butt up against the FBI, which is very much a by-the-book, traditional, patriotic, out-in-the-open, sunshine is the best disinfectant style of law enforcement.

“I’m pretty proud of the research that the writers and everyone involved in the show has done – I think we’re predicting some current events around the edges. We’re definitely inspired by technology, stories, threats, and maybe more the activities that the bad guys are up to around the world. For better or worse, there are a lot of really creative bad guys out there who keep themselves and the FBI and the CIA busy.

“In terms of being inspired by the specific activities of today’s FBI or CIA, we’re not really looking to delve deeply into that. The show is not political. The show is absolutely meant to be grounded fun, character-driven, with these four fantastic actors at the center of it.”

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Article: Profile: Cast and executive producer discuss new FBI spin-off CIA

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