‘Carter’ Star Jerry O’Connell Teases ‘Will-They-Won’t-They’ TV Romance With Sydney Poitier Heartsong
Oh, Deere: A gruesome tractor accident turns out to be murder on this week’s Carter, the light freshman procedural about charming (and slightly spoiled) Hollywood actor Harley Carter (Jerry O’Connell). But, hey, it’s all in a day’s work for the TV detective, who’s taken up residence in his tiny Canadian hometown, where the starstruck locals have made him a police consultant.
The gig is a far cry from the six seasons O’Connell spent playing a detective on dead-serious whodunit Crossing Jordan. “When Carter first came into my life, it really made me laugh,” he says. “Much like myself, Carter doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. He gets manicures.”
The overconfident recruit has been tackling his new job in earnest, to the annoyance of his old pal (and childhood crush), actual detective Sam Shaw (Sydney Poitier Heartsong). “They are the will-they-or-won’t-they couple,” says O’Connell, who attended NYU with the actress. “Sydney’s performance keeps the show from straying too far into wacky. It’s still a real crime drama. Murder happens, funny things happen, but there are actual stakes. We skirt death.”
During the pair’s investigation of foul play on the farm, Carter will mishandle the case by approaching it as his character would in a script. Despite warnings from another longtime friend, the sarcastic Dave Leigh (Kristian Bruun), Carter illegally enters suspects’ homes in search of clues, attempts good cop/bad cop–style interrogations and ends up in a near-deadly showdown that resolves with a classic genre plot twist.
The action just keeps getting sillier — and scarier. In the upcoming season finale, O’Connell’s wife, Rebecca Romijn, will guest star as Carter’s producer, visiting from L.A. “Bec plays a woman who wrote a TV show about FBI profilers. She ends up helping us profile the serial killer — all in a show where the fake cop is helping the real cops,” O’Connell says. “It’s crazy!” Crazy fun.
Carter, Tuesdays, 10/9c, WGN America
