‘FBI: Most Wanted’: Shantel VanSanten on Nina & Remy Tension Due to Kristin’s Exit

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the FBI: Most Wanted Season 5 premiere “Above & Beyond.”]

Why did Kristin Gaines leave the Fugitive Task Force? That’s what new team member Nina Chase (Shantel VanSanten, moving over from FBI) wants to know in the FBI: Most Wanted Season 5 premiere following Alexa Davalos‘ exit, and there have been some rumors about her and Remy Scott (Dylan McDermott)…

As Remy reveals in therapy near the beginning of the episode, he’s been through two new agents since Kristin left. Something Nina said when he met with her put him off. She asked if Kristin leaving had anything to do with him. “I guess I just didn’t care for the tone of Nina’s question. It’s like she was implying something about me,” he explains. Later, he brings that up with Nina. He says he’s been going through family stuff and thought he was doing a good job of keeping it in, but if she thinks it’s affecting his work… “It wasn’t that,” Nina says. “It was a rumor … that you and Kristin had a thing outside of work,” Remy says his personal relationships are none of her business or anyone else’s. She understands and asks him not to hold it against her.

But are they past that? VanSanten tells TV Insider they are. “Nina’s very direct, and she wants the truth, and I think Remy is very much the same in that way, and that may be why they butt heads a little bit,” she explains. “It’s not something where there needs to be a bunch of drama, but it’s something that needed to be addressed even if it was uncomfortable.”

Mark Schafer/CBS

She continues, “I think that it’s an important part of their relationship because she’s the type of person, unlike me, who isn’t afraid of confrontation and not in a disrespectful way, but in a way that calls out needing truth or needing to have her voice or opinion heard. But vice versa, she’ll hear and understand other people’s voices as well, even if it’s not something she agrees upon. And I think that her being confident and headstrong can come across to certain characters in a different way, but conflict always lends itself to really interesting stories of two people finding respect and understanding for one another.”

The episode also reveals, in a conversation Nina has with Sheryll Barnes (Roxy Sternberg), that she returned from maternity leave a week early. “I was ready to come back to work,” Nina says. But there’s more to it than that, right?

“There’s always more to it,” VanSanten laughs. “We don’t get to see that for a little bit. I think it’s important that we see the passion and the drive that Nina has in the workspace to understand her a little bit better and the side of her that is just turning on the music and singing, ‘Here I go again on my own’ and heading to work, and that’s her focus and then being able to switch into family life a little bit later.”

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For the star, this was an important storyline for her to explore and show onscreen. “I’m not a mother, but I have a lot of friends who are, and I think that lends itself to me knowing and understanding their truth and their stories and their struggles as a mom. And I think oftentimes we assume that it’s, ‘Oh, I feel so guilty for going back to work, and what about my baby?’ But sometimes, the truth is actually different, and people are scared to say it. They’re scared to say, ‘Gosh, I love being at work, and I really love pouring myself into this. And, of course, I also love being a mom, but this is what fills me up.’ And so I feel like I have this opportunity—and it’s something I really spoke with the showrunner David [Hudgins] about—to tell a different story and tell a story of a collective of women who’ve shared with me how much they love their job and that’s filling them up and is really important to them. Oftentimes, we don’t hear that story, and so I think that we definitely will get to dive more into what Nina is struggling with and what is filling her up later on in the episodes.”

We’ll gladly go on that ride with her—after all, as we saw in the premiere, she has quite the driving skills!

FBI: Most Wanted, Tuesdays, 10/9c, CBS