The following contains spoilers for Monday’s “CIA”!
Special Agent Bill Goodman has fallen even deeper down the rabbit hole of his father’s past. And in the latest “CIA”, his hunt for Felix Vincente took a wicked turn.
In the episode’s early moments, Vincente triggered a targeted explosion in the Upper East Side that killed an international arms dealer, causing Bill’s personal and professional lives to suddenly collide. Still searching for answers, Bill dropped by Carl Shannon’s for another visit. But after another inquiry into Vincente’s whereabouts prompted Carl to pull a gun on Bill, Bill beat him to the punch, shooting his dad’s former partner dead on the spot.
After the team successfully tracked down Vincente (with a little help from Toni), Bill chased him into a factory and took him down, only he didn’t hand him over to the FBI as he promised to Colin. Instead, he moved Vincente to a secret location that not even his partner knew about. “Now, you’re gonna tell me what I want to know, or you’re never getting out of this room alive,” Bill threatened.
Below, Nick Gehlfuss talks to TVLine about Season 2’s action-packed sixth episode including Bill’s quest for truth, his unraveling mental state, and how the entire ordeal may be changing him as a person and agent.
TVLINE | Bill’s dealing with shocker after shocker in terms of his family’s past. What’s been your favorite part of this whole arc?
NICK GEHLFUSS | Episode 6 is one of my favorite episodes of the show so far, but also of this 10-episode arc for Bill and his father. I’m so thankful for the storyline. Actors talk about “the moment before,” we always think about that before a scene, but the moment before the season, Bill’s coming back and his father has died. That’s quite a circumstance to thrust him back into work, and coming back for the first day of work after bereavement leave. So already there was just all this juicy circumstance to play with. And then, of course, he has this bomb dropped on him that his father had this secret life. I’m filming Episode 10 right now, and it’s so satisfying. I was praising the writers just a few days ago at how great they did with throwing everything up in the air and then bringing a beautiful culmination by Episode 10.
But Episode 6, I’m really proud of. It took a lot out of me physically and emotionally, but that’s because it’s that point in the story where we’re at. Bill is going to be led down his darkest path yet because of Felix Vincente, the assassin, and if audiences were wondering if the clean-cut, buttoned up, by the book FBI agent was gonna turn, this is it. These are certainly the circumstances.
TVLINE | As an actor, what’s been the biggest challenge for you in dealing with such heavy material?
The balance of emotional material and the physicality of the stunts. There’s a lot of stunt work and an iconic subway sequence. It’s just so New York. I like to do a lot of that. I like to do what I can as long as it’s all safe. And we have wonderful stunt coordinators helping me through all of that. I don’t do it alone, although I realize I’m kind of capable of it. I grew up playing sports and all that’s coming back. It’s fun. It’s a lot of material. We do these in eight business days, and they’re big episodes, big stories, and just all the technical stuff, all the balancing of it. It’s great material and it’s a wonderful gig. Living in New York and working in New York, there’s nothing better, in my opinion.
