At the heart of CIA, the newest Dick Wolf series (an offshoot of FBI) to hit primetime starting February 23, is the partnership between CIA Case Officer Colin Glass (Tom Ellis) and FBI Special Agent Bill Goodman (Nick Gehlfuss), the latter of whom is added to the fusion cell investigating cases on U.S. soil. (The CIA needs an FBI agent in order to operate here.) But holding that team together (and rounding out the main cast) is Deputy Chief of Station Nikki Reynard (Necar Zadegan) and giving everyone what they need is CIA analyst Gina Gosian (Natalee Linez).
Just one year ago, Nikki was doing the same work Colin was — they would bump into each other in the field all the time, and just like any good spy who doesn’t reveal much, you don’t quite know how long they’ve known each other. (Read more about that in our CIA digital cover story here.) Now, she’s adjusting to not being out in the middle the action. And Gina’s experience is mainly in the office — the CIA SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) is her domain — but she longs to go into the field.
Read on for insight into Nikki and Gina from Necar Zadegan, Natalee Linez, and showrunner Mike Weiss.
Nikki Reynard: Meet the Boss
Mark Schafer/CBS
“She’s the best boss,” Zadegan says of her character, describing Nikki as “smart, communicative, and powerful, caring.” But just because it sounds like she’s right for the job doesn’t mean she necessarily wants it.
“Her struggle Season 1 is her desire to still be out in Sheffield, which can be dangerous and becomes even more dangerous once people out there in the spy game understand who you are,” explains Weiss. “You’re now actually a bigger target for someone to take down now that you’re the Deputy Chief of Station.”
Because of that, Zadegan expects, like usual when someone makes the change from fieldwork to more of a desk position, there’s a personal reason for this move for her character as well.
“She’s decided now to come on and take a more kind of stable job, let’s call it, and also work with a team, which she seems to be taking to quite well, but those things offer challenges and offer for her character uncertainty all the time,” she says. “We’ll see how she gets sucked back into the field, and so we’ll get to do a lot of undercover stuff, and it’ll be very fun fantasy, spy storytelling.”
As for who Nikki is away from work, she has ex-husbands — yes, more than one, and we’ll find out how many “pretty quickly” — who will come up. “She has a very rich backstory and adventurous life as one would have in this kind of a position. And no doubt got involved in a lot of relationships that were due to the work, but that are relationships she calls on for assistance and for fun for story points,” Zadegan shares, adding with a laugh, “I’m already picturing her Slaloming down the slopes in Zermatt in a backstory somewhere.”
The star speaks seven or eight languages, Weiss tells us, and Zadegan notes that she hasn’t used any of them on the show just yet — nor does she necessarily want to. “I think it would be cool if she slips into something I don’t speak, if she just starts speaking Mandarin,” she admits.
Gina Gosian: The One With the Intel
Mark Schafer/CBS
Gina is “very ambitious, very smart,” Linez says of her character. “She definitely has her eye on working her way up the ranks, but she’s young, so she understands that she’s got to put the work in. If someone wants to put something on her desk, she is down to do it. She’s not going to pass it off to anyone else. She wants to show that she’s ready for anything that’s thrown her way. She likes to anticipate the needs of Colin, of Nikki, of Bill.”
She does want to work her way up and get into field work (and she thinks she has the skills for it). “She can read people very easily,” according to Linez. “I think the ultimate idea of going undercover is very appealing for her. She just knows she’d be really good at it.”
But for now, at least in the early episodes of the series, she’ll be in the office, the one passing along the necessary and relevant investigation for the fusion cell’s operations. That doesn’t mean she’s strictly going to be at her desk.
“You will see her a couple times out, not on a whole mission, and I think it’ll be kind of shocking [when that happens],” Linez teases. “She gets very excited about that.”
Team Dynamics
Coming into the series, both Nikki and Gina have established relationships with Colin. Nikki’s worked with him out in the field, and Gina’s been working with him as part of this fusion cell.
As Zadegan points out, only people in their line of work can really understand what they do, and such is the case with Nikki and Colin. “They trust one another, and we don’t know exactly what happened yet in their relationship that made that [the case], but we’re going to find out,” she promises. “It’s likely a life and death reason because their lives are constantly at stake. You learn really quick who you can trust and who you can’t in those kinds of situations.”
It’s also because of that history that she can see that Colin is hurting, due to a trauma he suffered prior to the series, and so she doesn’t just bring Bill in to be his partner but because she knows that the case officer needs a friend. And since they say laughter is the best medicine, “the banter and hazing that Colin does to Bill and the enjoyment they share in watching Bill trip a little bit,” as Zadegan puts it, as he gets used to the work they do should provide just that.
According to Linez, Gina “looks up to” and “feels comfortable with” Colin. They’re the kind of teammates who get beers at the end of the day. She’s also the one still looking at their work through the eyes of an analyst, which means she’s the one to suggest an idea might not be the best from a logistical standpoint.
And while it may be hard in their line of work and she “has her guards up for anyone outside of the SCIF,” Linez confirms that Gina trusts Colin and Nikki and “Bill is slowly earning” it. She adds that there will be some amusing moments when it comes to this being her domain and Bill being the new guy.
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Mentor & Protégé
Though Gina doesn’t exactly want to follow in Nikki’s footsteps and stay in the office, she is her protégé, says showrunner Mike Weiss. “We’re going to get to see a really nice, smart, fast-paced female mentor-protégé relationship that I’m really excited about writing and seeing these two women in these scenes is, I think, super fun.”
Nikki can see the potential in Gina and what she brings to the table. “Gina’s very eager to not only learn, but to work and to do. And so I think there’s an element of that that feels good,” Zadegan tells us. “It’s got to feel good to Nikki, who’s always been so used to doing it all alone, that somebody wants to be there for her, help her, and learn from her.”
And from Gina’s side, “she’s like an older version of me. I like the way that she handles herself. I like that she’s been such a badass for the last 15 years or whatever in the field,” explains Linez. “And the stories that she shares with Gina offscreen really inspire her. It’s like, yeah, that’s why I went to school for this and why I wanted to do this.”
She adds, “We haven’t gone into Gina’s backstory, but I feel like there’s either a mother or a father that maybe is absent. And so to have Nikki always kind of be there for me… I think it would actually be very weird if I went to the office one day or there was a week that went by and she wasn’t there. I would feel like some sort of void.”
That doesn’t mean she’ll always agree with Nikki’s calls. In fact, Linez teases, there’s an upcoming decision that the Deputy Chief of Station makes that results in Gina being “very thrown off. She literally said, I wouldn’t do that.”
CIA, Series Premiere, Monday, February 23, 10/9c, CBS
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