‘CIA’: Tom Ellis Says Colin & Bill Are Both Spiraling in Season 2

Avoid, avoid, avoid. That’s the plan for both CIA Officer Colin Glass (Tom Ellis) and FBI Special Agent Bill Goodman (Nick Gehlfuss) when the CBS drama returns. The partners in the joint task force get back at it — starting with investigating a known cartel fixer and the murder of a DEA agent — three months after the finale, and neither wants to talk about what they’re going through in the CIA Season 2 premiere on October 5.

For Colin, it’s his ex-partner Toni (Angela Sarafyan), who faked her death and was revealed to be a double agent. But she’s an asset to the agency, so that’s ripe for plenty of drama. Below, Tom Ellis previews just that and more.

What’s been going on with Colin since we last saw him?

Tom Ellis: Colin has been slowly trying to lick his wounds and get his ducks in a row about how he’s going to move forward in life. He has not spoken to Toni. She has been sent back to Langley to be processed to find out if she’s worthy of going back in the field. But Colin doesn’t really know the ins and outs of it. He’s decided that the best way of moving forward from Toni is to be in complete denial about it. So, he is dealing with everything in a mature way as usual. [Laughs]

But of course, he’s going to have to cross paths with her. Is he prepared for that? Has he been planning that? Has he completely been avoiding that in his attempt to avoid her?

I think Colin’s biggest friend is his ability to compartmentalize and be in denial. And so I think he’s made his mind up that he’s never going to see Toni again. But as we know, it doesn’t always happen how we plan it. But if you hadn’t watched Season 1, when you start Season 2, you wouldn’t think that there was anything up with Colin. He is very good at hiding his feelings and sitting on stuff and just getting on with it, and if there’s somewhere else to point the attention, he’s quite happy to do that.

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And Bill, at the beginning of Season 2, unfortunately, has been through something in those three months because he loses his dad and we join them as Bill’s coming back to work. Colin has gotten used to, in Season 1, being able to lean on a dependable, centered Bill, and what we slowly realize in Season 2 is that Bill is now spinning out of control under all of it, and Colin doesn’t have the crutch that he thought he had. And then Colin starts to spin out, too. So, now you’ve got two spinning out people. You can only imagine what happens then.

Which one of them is going to be more open to leaning on the other during this? Or are they both kind of just like, let’s avoid everything and let’s focus on the cases?

Well, I think the really lovely thing is that they’ve developed this codependency, and they do still lean on each other. It’s just that they’re not particularly in a place to offer the best advice in the world. So, yeah, they’re both going through it at the beginning of Season 2.

I’ve seen some of the photos from filming that show that Toni is in the field and with Nikki (Necar Zadegan). What can you say about the first Colin and Toni interactions that we’ll get?

We find in the first episode Colin has been doing a bit of his own private reconnaissance work and has found out that Nikki is potentially planning on bringing Toni back and putting her in the field, and let’s just say Colin has strong feelings about that. But inevitably, when he sees Toni, he’s made all these decisions, but you can decide as many things as you want when your heart is telling you something. It’s a very different equation. So it’s a melting pot of confusion and a melting pot of, “Where do I put my trust?” And it’s great TV.

Speaking of that, because we know Colin and Nikki’s history, and we saw that relationship a lot in Season 1, too, what does this do to that dynamic?

Well, exactly. What does that do to that dynamic? Nikki has been this dependable person for Colin, one of the very, very few people that he can trust. And when he realizes that he can’t even trust Nikki, then that throws that relationship into a bit of a downward spiral as well. They say in the CIA, you can’t trust anybody. And we find ourselves in Season 2 with a lot of characters that don’t trust each other but pretend that they do. And yeah, basically, there’s lots of different directions that we go in in this season, but it’s teed up from the start to be maximum drama.

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But with the lack of trust and not knowing who you can trust… It feels like Colin and Bill know they can trust each other, at least at this point after everything of Season 1. So, even though they’re both going to be spiraling, are we still going to see that they feel they can trust each other and that partnership is better than ever?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That has been cemented, and thank God, because Colin doesn’t have anybody else. Bill does, but then Bill has a big revelation as well that happens early on that turns his world upside down. And he starts to — from being a very assured person about who he is as a person, he becomes thrown into doubt about who he is, what he is, and why he does what he does.

In the premiere, when a known cartel fixer arrives in New York City, the team tracks him down and discovers the body of a DEA agent. After it becomes clear the case is not what it seems, the team must work quickly to prevent additional murders. What can you preview?

There’s someone in town, and we don’t know why they’re there, and they’re from a Colombian drug cartel, and we get on their tail, and what we think is an obvious case or is going to be an obvious case turns out to be much more complicated and convoluted and involves some former DEA agents. That has its own resonance with Bill because Bill doesn’t particularly like people that commit treason. It certainly gives Colin and Bill an opportunity to be unified about something because we’ve learned prior to this kind of case in the episode that they are both in quite difficult places.

Anything coming up with Colin’s love life? Because that is so complicated.

Yes. And yes, no, there is. And it doesn’t get any less complicated, put it that way. But yes, Colin will be seen with numerous people this season. How he feels about those people, we will find out. But yes, Colin’s love life does definitely get more complicated.

Is he kind of steering away from anything potentially serious given everything that happened last season?

Well, we certainly allude to that in the first episode, for sure. He’s like, “I’m all good. I’ve moved on. I’m single. The world is my oyster.” But as we all know, it can’t be that simple.

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If you say that, that’s when something’s going to come up.

Exactly. No one’s ever got it sorted out, have they?

Are there any new spaces in the CIA office that we’re going to see this season?

I don’t think so. Not that we’ve visited yet, but they’re always tweaking the sets and doing something, so I imagine at some point there might be some new things in there. We do see a bit more of Colin driving this year, because I think he’s a little bit bored of being chauffeured around in Bill’s very useless car. We get a bit more of that.

Doing these long-running shows, they’re constantly evolving. So there will be, I’m sure later down the road, stuff that comes in that we’ll be able to talk about. But right now we came back to start shooting Season 2, and I was like, “God, it feels like we didn’t leave because it’s just so familiar.” But yeah, it’s in a really good place, the show. We really found out what the show was by the end of Season 1. And having that confidence now to be able to hit the ground running and go for it and take our audience on the ride, we’re in a really good place.

CIA, Season 2 Premiere, Monday, October 5, 9/8c, CBS